The Role of Music in Video Games

In this article, Whalen makes gives us several interesting interpretations on the role that music has on influencing a player’s experience in video games. One of the most interesting observations that was made in the article comes from an experiment where there were two objects trying to escape another object. There were two different soundtracks played in the background with two different groups of participants. The participants were asked which character they thought was more active. In both of the different soundtracks the participants found that the character in which the music matched their actions was found to be more active. This led the experimenter to develop the “Congruence Associonist framework” in which it is determined that music, in a game or video, can cause the viewer to make visual associations in that media. This is a very interesting concept on how our brain interprets and combines audio and visual signals, and how they both play a role in influencing one another.