Emergence: Music’s Role in Player Experimentation

Abstract

In the context of computer science, “emergent behavior” is when a number of simple behaviors interact and evolve into a larger, more complex behavior. This concept is quite common in video games. In cases of designed emergence, the music is designed to react to the player’s personality and to musically encourage the player to carry out certain actions. However, in unpredicted emergence, one must ask the question: how will the players’ personalities then affect the resulting music itself? This chapter will discuss different techniques that can be used to create a system that adapts well to both designed and unpredicted emergence, including the uses of model-based sound design, as well as modular orchestration. Among other examples, this chapter examines how Avalanche created a highly reactive music system which accounted systematically for the many possibilities in Just Cause 4.