Time for New Terminology? - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 78

Chapter 5
Time for New Terminology?
Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sounds
in Computer Games Revisited

Kristine Jørgensen
University of Bergen, Norway

AbstrAct

This chapter is a critical discussion of the use of the concepts diegetic and non-diegetic in connection with
computer game sound. These terms are problematic because they do not take into account the functional
aspects of sound and indicate how gameworlds differ from traditional fictional worlds. The aims of the
chapter are to re-evaluate earlier attempts at adapting this terminology to games and to present an al-
ternative model of conceptualizing the spatial properties of game sound with respect to the gameworld.

INtrODUctION

tween two characters is seen as diegetic, while
background score music is seen as non-diegetic.
In connection with game sound, a likely adapta-
tion of these concepts would describe the response
“More work?” from an orc peon unit in the real-
time strategy game Warcraft 3 (Blizzard, 2002) as
an example of a diegetic sound since it is spoken
by a character within the gameworld. Music that
signals approaching enemies in the role-playing
game Dragon Age: Origins (Bioware, 2009)
would according to this view be an example of
non-diegetic sound since the music is not being
played from a source within the game universe.
However, when analyzing the examples more
closely, we see that using these terms in computer
games is confusing and at best inaccurate. As a

Two concepts from narrative theory that often
appears in discussions about game sound are
diegetic and non-diegetic (Collins, 2007, 2008;
Ekman 2005; Grimshaw 2008; Grimshaw & Schott
2007; Jørgensen 2007b, 2008; Stockburger, 2003;
Whalen, 2004). The terms are used in film theory
to separate elements that can be said to be part of
the depicted fictional world from elements that the
fictional characters cannot see or hear and which
should be considered non-existent in the fictional
world (Bordwell, 1986; Bordwell & Thompson,
1997). According to this approach, dialogue be-