Can We Dance? Considering the role and meaning of music in videogames through "thinking in movement"

Abstract

Disciplinary background A. Ludomusicology. Videogame music is typically experienced as embedded in the game and activity of gaming. However, the research on videogame music, or ludomusicology, has mostly adopted approaches from traditional musicology, treating music fundamentally as a text with certain function and meaning in accordance with the narrative and mechanics of the game (e.g., Summers, 2016). While the interactive and crossmodal nature of game music has also been acknowledged (e.g., Collins, 2013) there is still a need for theoretical perspectives to account for the integration of game and its music in the experience. Disciplinary background B. Human-computer interaction (HCI). In the field of HCI a crucial concern has been the development of approaches that take into account the bodily engagement involved in the interaction with technology. One proposal is the choreography-based approach to interaction, which foregrounds the dynamics of the movement as the source of meaning and the way our actions are organized by technologies (Parviainen et al., 2013). Abstract The aim of this presentation is to provide a theoretical analysis of the gameplay experience following the choreography-based approach outlined within HCI and to consider the role and meaningfulness of videogame music in accordance with this perspective of gaming as dancelike participation in the game. Videogame music describes a category of music in which music is not the sole focus of attention but rather embedded into a particular context of game and activity of gaming. With respect to this embeddedness, an important question is how to investigate videogame music in a manner that approaches the experience of videogame music as inherently entwined with the gameplay. We suggest that one problem is a lack of overarching perspective that taps into the common ontological framework underlying both music and games. In this paper, we aim to provide such a common framework by considering music and gameplay fundamentally as activities. We begin by framing the gameplay through the metaphor of dance (see Kirkpatrick, 2011) and applying the choreographic-based