Conclusion

Music in narrative video games plays a powerful role in inviting an audience to engage more deeply with fictional environments, shifting from observing a narrative unfold to experiencing imagined worlds. The journey to immersion is initiated by a player's investment in the world, characters, and narrative of the game, a budding attachment which composers can enhance by representing both the nature of and the experienced qualities of the environment. Music expands the game beyond the screen to convey a sense of a broader world. As players progress through the game's narrative, they engage in a range of experiences formed by a combination of kinetic and affective components. Writing music that reflects these experiences, composers build affective ties between the player and game, turning the narrative from a story observed into one experienced. For an interactive medium such as video games, this connection between player and world is essential to forming an immersive experience. As the player's attention remains focused on the narrative game, they find themselves transported from the real world into a fantasy.

As composers, we write music for many different reasons. Sometimes, that music is to dance to, other times to cry to, and other times it is an exploration of what it means to create art. For me, composition has always been a way to express the beauty I find in all my surroundings: through writing music, I am able to share the way I perceive the world in a way I find impossible with words. By careful choice of music in a particular moment, I have found that I can craft a heightened sense of presence—music has this incredible ability to turn any activity into an experience worth noting. Choosing this music is no easy task. What may be appropriate for a specific environment or experience can change drastically depending on the qualities of that moment. By investigating how composers use musical representation of environments and experiences, this thesis analyses music's role in creating this sense of place within video games, which offer clear depictions of environment and experience. While this project is certainly not a comprehensive accounting for all music that appears across all video games, the scores studied here indicate that there are many musical techniques that, when utilised well, enrich our perceptions of the world around us.

As seen in four case studies—the environments of the sky and the cave and the experiences of adventure and conflict—investigated throughout this thesis, the ways that composers represent game environments and experiences vary greatly. Each environment in a game presents the player with a unique combination of focal and peripheral components that directly impact gameplay or situate a sense of place. While the extensive use of chordal extensions and harmonic suspension create a sense of space that evokes qualities of the sky, fast lines in low strings drive the player forward, urging them to move. Combinations of these techniques are not necessarily exclusive; a composer may choose to sketch features of the sky through harmony and timbre while rhythmically driving the player to fight. Crafting immersion through music requires careful deliberation on how the player witnesses and experiences the environment, representing the qualities of that environment most connected to the player's experience of the narrative. The specific mixture of these many musical techniques shapes the player's connection to the game, enhancing immersion in distinct, complex ways.

Beyond the games, music, and questions covered throughout this work, there are still many questions around music's part in video game immersion that one may consider. While this thesis primarily investigated the role of the composer in targeting immersive experiences in narrative games, one could think about the psychological aspects of how well the player responds to that music: Can player immersion be measured quantitatively? How might music behave similarly or differently in another type of game—say, a strategy game, where more emphasis is placed on the player's careful thinking than on the kinetic actions of their game avatar? Narrative video game music often responds dynamically to the player's actions: environmental music changes are cued by the player moving from one region to another. How does the player's role in orchestrating the score's development connect with immersivity? Further, video games are not the only media that uses music to immerse the player in a narrative. Film composers, for instance, immerse the viewer in a story over which they have no control. How might composers use environmental and experiential representation to create immersion in other media, and where might adaptations be necessary? Last, shared musical literacy formed by cultural experiences gives composers a wealth of ideas to draw upon as a starting point for representation. To what extent does this literacy vary in other media, and how might composers write differently as a result?

Music creates bonds between performer, audience, and environment, a moment when we can, through sound alone, be drawn into fantastical, imagined worlds. Unlike language, music holds the power to communicate ideas through abstraction, conveying environments and experiences through melody and harmony, rhythm and timbre. Composers use music to enhance stories, crafting meaning and emotion while leaving space for individual interpretation. Through creating and experiencing music, we form beautiful connections to games, each other, and ourselves.