Whalen’s article examines videogame music on multiple levels. The author uses previously discussed Galloway concepts of diegetic and nondiegetic to classify different music clips. Whalen discusses how the source of the music itself is diegetic while associated character actions are seemingly nondiegetic.
In my opinion, the most intriguing aspect of the article is the psychoanalytical analysis of videogame music effectiveness. This lens allows the effectiveness of sound within videogames to be related to previous class discussions and new questions to be introduced. In previous classes, it has been discussed why a player relates to a videogame character, how the given soundtrack of game provides a trademark for that particular game play, and the role of the game as a narrative.
By providing the research of Annabel J. Cohen, a psychologist who studied subject interpretation of movement and emotion in relation to music, Whalen successfully combines the preceding class discussions. Exploring “the potential for simple shapes and sounds to evoke a narrative, cognitive meaning” (Whalen 2004) conveys how stories are told through diegetic and nondiegetic gamic actions.
As previously mentioned, early class discussion included the connection of the player to the game character. Cohen’s studies suggest that the reason for this connection may be a subconscious reaction to the sound accompanying character actions while a trademark sound allows the brain to create a correlation between the game and reality.
With the above statements one must ask what other factors create subconscious or conscious relationship with an aspect of the game? Is it universally agreed upon that music has an immense impact of game play? How would a change in music result in the alteration of the game narrative?
A simple way to answer your question about changing a videogame’s music is to simply play a game with the sound off. It’s amazing how much both diegetic and nondiegetic sounds contribute to the overall experience of the game. I might say they impact the game’s atmosphere more than the actual narrative though.
I agree with you that Whalen’s point about music influencing how the player relates to the game character is very interesting. In my reading of Whalen’s article, I found the section about musical “rewards” or “punishments” fascinating. Probably from my mere lack of attention, I had never noticed how the noise for collecting coins in Super Mario Bros. is a satisfying little ching, for example. Also, how Cohen’s research (which you mentioned above) found “low, slow bounces [of an animated ball] were judged as sad, and high, fast bounces were judged as happy” (2000) is interesting to me. The fact that humans can project emotional feeling onto virtual objects in clearly a factor in the huge popularity of both cartoons and video games.
“Mickey mousing”, i.e. creating music that mimics or reproduces a film or game’s visual action, is such an old trick in media that I feel most viewers don’t even notice it anymore. It is such a subtle, but effective, way of engaging the viewer with the action that is hard to imagine any successful video game functioning without it. I am sure there are video games without a soundtrack, or players who play with the sound turned off, but I feel these games are missing a important dimension of gameplay without music.