Meaningful Play: Performativity, Interactivity and Semiotics in Video Game Music

Abstract

Video games are a challenging object of study for the musicologist because they are never played the same way twice. As interactive texts, they lack the static and repeatable form of other audiovisual media. Furthermore, the timing of musical events in video games is dependent on both player interactions and conventional cues, and the analysis of these musical events must be able to account for a dynamic context of reception. The relationship between the pre-composed music of video games and interactive gameplay is consequently difficult to analyse. However, through an understanding of interactivity as a performative act, we can treat the musical experience of gameplay as the text to be studied—a text the player has a non-trivial role in creating. The player's unique series of actions during gameplay evolves into an interpretation of the designers' complete, preconceived game experience. Similarly, although music is received in a series of unique contexts during gameplay, the player's actions shape the music into an interpretation of the musical experience envisioned by the composer. This article discusses a video game music analysis that incorporates a performative approach to interactivity. The article examines the types and sources of meaning found in video game music, with particular focus on the player's role as a producer. In doing so, it is argued that video game music exhibits a twofold semiosis, the analysis of which must contextualize both the music's initial composition and the player's interactivity in relation to the complete musical experience.

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