Abstract

Video game music within current industry practices often operates within an if, then, until system of logic (Collins, 2009, 5). For example, If the player attacks, then play the combat music segment until the player is victorious. If the player is victorious, then play the victory music segment.

Broadly defining musical narrative as a sequence of compositional elements existing to represent and develop an acknowledged story (generalized from: Maus, 1987; Kramer, 1991), I suggest that this type of if, then, until logic is often restrictive of musical narrative, as player actions may consequentially result in indeterminate durations of musical repetition and disjunct musical changes (Medina-Gray, 2014, 2).

Considering storytelling is a primary feature in many games (Sinclair, 2014), I propose this restriction is a problem that weakens music’s ability to communicate the game’s narrative development to the player in congruence with the player's actions.

Throughout this thesis I investigate why these challenges are prevalent to video game music composers, I identify the various techniques that composers have developed throughout the history of game music to overcome these challenges, I observe and demonstrate the pros and cons of current video game music composition techniques, I develop a new way of analyzing existing dynamic music systems in games, and I demonstrate a new way of creating adaptive video game music using current industry techniques within a more complex logic system. Chapter 3 includes four playable games that I have written music for to demonstrate how different dynamic music techniques function. The primary contribution of the thesis is the dynamic music system (DMS) prototype in Chapter 5. The DMS prototype is a short playable game that I have written over thirty minutes of music for, which has been organized into two-hundred twelve individual music segments, and implemented so that the musical narrative is developed by player actions. The playable games within the thesis were made in collaboration with game developer Phi Dinh, who contributed to art and programming.


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