Sound Research WIKINDX

"...studies of the relationship between audial and visual elements in older media (for example, film) prove useful for understanding game music because certain basic ideas (for example, diegetic versus non-diegetic musical sound) apply to videogames." (Chion 1992; 1994) See also Curtis 1992) etc.

"The metaphoric behaviour of game music is that which relates to the game as a story or world. It is the function that draws the player into the experience, giving shape and semantic meaning to that experience. When the constant background music in the classic Super Mario Brothers switches from its sunny major theme to a tense minor theme, the visible environment of the player-character has switched from broad daylight to a subterranean cavern. This switch can be seen as paradigmatic in that the game's syntagmatic structures of play are still in place – Mario must still move from left to right and progress toward the final castle. The metonymic function of game music facilitates the player's accomplishing the goals of the game. To remain with the Mario Brothers example, whatever music is currently representing the environment increases in tempo as the end of the level approaches. This teaches the player to move faster toward the level's completion, and thus enforces the syntagmatic properties of the game by pushing it forward in a contiguous progression." (van Leeuwen 1999) See also