Attitudes to Representations of Medieval Music in Role-Playing Computer Games

Abstract

The proliferation over the past two decades of computer games that reimagine the European Middle Ages has produced a powerful agent through which medieval music is represented in popular culture. This article evaluates attitudes to the music of medieval-themed role-playing games through the framework of medievalism. Recent ludomusicological research has used musical and intertextual analyses to locate and describe medieval sonic signifiers. These signifiers borrow from cinematic and cultural conventions to inform the game player about the virtual world. While some signifiers such as plainchant are derived from music of the Middle Ages, others have acquired medieval meaning despite historical or geographical incongruencies. To measure the effectiveness of these signifiers, this research compiled audiovisual samples within a Likert-type scale to assess and to compare attitudes toward modern musical medievalisms and reconstructed medieval music in the setting of medievalist game imagery. The survey was delivered online and sampled 110 participants of varying age, gender, musical education, and gaming experience. It found that attitudes toward modern musical medievalism in games were not only favorable but were equivalent to attitudes toward reconstructed medieval music in the same setting. Higher levels of music education correlated with more critical attitudes toward either music. Notably, the length of time spent playing computer games was connected to an increasing acceptance of medievalist game music and a decreasing acceptance of reconstructed medieval music. The findings of this research indicate that computer games are potent disseminators of medievalist sound. They provide timely advice for music educators and lay the groundwork for further research into informal musical learning connected to historically inspired computer games.

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