I was recently looking for ways to express emotion in games through a dynamic soundtrack. I’m a long way from actually using this myself, but am doing research into many aspects of game creation with the intention of increasing player immersion. During my stumbling through the expanse of the interwebs, I stumbled across this…
The link to the original page that I found is:
This outlines the basic principles and summarises the paper that describes the experimental application. I found it to be very interesting reading, but could not find a free copy of the original paper that it refers to.
However… I have now tracked down a free download of a *.pdf of the original paper. It’s from a google search so is a bit of a long link…
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.114.9497%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&rct=j&q=The%20soundtrack%20of%20your%20mind%3A%20mind%20music%20-%20adaptive%20audio%20for%20game%20characters&ei=WMxTTvfmGYKv8gPs0tnYBQ&usg=AFQjCNG3ogEQ2QkVH5YkG2d_RBB_Q-2dhg&cad=rja
I found this to be very interesting so thought I’d share. Game creators who want to develop a more dynamic situation-specific soundtrack for increased player immersion might find it interesting.
To quote a quote from the paper:
I find it surprising that the authors of the paper make no reference to the “Music Director” in Valve’s games Left4Dead and Left4Dead2. These games make use of leitmotifs for the spawning of certain ‘boss zombies’ and individually tailor the music to the player’s local environment so each of the four cooperative players experience a unique soundtrack that is relevant to their personal location and experiences.