Using Musical Codes to Enhance the Gaming Experience

Abstract

Musical codes are musical devices, including melodies, timbres, or themes that carry predetermined associations for the listener. These types of codes have been used frequently in the world of film. However, the strange visual landscapes of video games provide composers with interesting opportunities to utilize and combine these codes in new ways to elicit different responses from the player. This chapter explores the different characteristics of sound that carry associations and how one can use these sounds to create new ones. It dives into a variety of well-known games that have used this technique and discusses the effectiveness, or conversely the ineffectiveness, of the resulting portrayal. Since codes can also be attached to a specific time period, this chapter also covers the concept of using codes in the creation of musical anachronism: using musical codes to layer multiple time periods on top of each other to blur the game’s timeline or create a stacked temporal atmosphere.