Authenticity in the Music of Video Games

Lind explores gamers’ relationship to the concept of authenticity, from historical realism to the structuring of expectations and its resulting impact on emotional engagement. The result is a complex web of interactions between sound and the visuals, story, and mechanics of the game.

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Authenticity in the Music of Video Games explores the many facets of gamers’ relationship to the concept of authenticity. From historical games to hyperrealism to retro gaming, authenticity proves to be a sticky, ever-shifting term. What do gamers believe authenticity to be? How are their expectations structured and manipulated by the soundtrack? Are they conscious of music’s impact on their gameplay? And how do their actions as gamers impact the overall interaction of sound with game world and narrative? Stephanie Lind explores three facets of authenticity—accuracy, expectation, and emotion—through the lens of music analysis. Ranging from harmonic analysis, mappings of musical form, to more multimedia approaches to the overall soundtrack and game world, the book takes a theoretical approach as well as links analysis to the practical experience of gamers. Lind shows how specific processes of musical organization help to structure player experience with a focus on games as true multimedia experiences and that all three components of authenticity are inseparable.