Surge: an experiment in real-time music analysis for gaming

Abstract

Most current music-based games rely on the player's objective of following the rhythm of the game's music as precisely as possible using an external control interface. The emergence of these rhythm-based games has been due to the popularity of titles such as the Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band series of games. As a multi-discipline collaboration at Drexel University between the Digital Media graduate curriculum, ECE Music Entertainment Technology (MET) lab, and the RePlay Lab for gaming research, we have focused on expanding the concept of the music game genre through merging novel audio-analysis algorithms together with music-driven dynamic gameplay. This research has produced a new style of game, termed a music-reactive platform game.