Time for New Terminology? - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 79

response to a player command, the “More work?”
question has an ambiguous status in relation to the
gameworld: If we ask ourselves who the peon is
talking to, it appears to address the player, who is
not represented as a character in the gameworld,
but manages the troops and base from the outside
of the gameworld. The warning music heard in the
role-playing game is also ambiguous. Although
there is nothing to suggest that the music is being
played by an orchestra in the wilderness, there is
no doubt that the music influences the players'
tactical decisions and therefore has direct conse-
quence for the player-characters' actions and the
progression of the game. The confusion comes
into being because game sound has a double status
in which it provides usability information to the
player at the same time as it has been stylized to
fit the depicted fictional world. It works as sup-
port for gameplay, while also providing a sense
of presence in the gameworld (Jørgensen, 2007a,
2009; Nacke & Grimshaw, 2011). From this point
of view, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds tend to
blend systematically in games, thereby creating
additional levels of communication compared to
the traditional diegetic versus non-diegetic divide.
Although sound may be categorized and
discussed in several ways, the diegetic versus
non-diegetic divide may be especially attractive
for describing modern computer games since
they are set in universes separate from ours and
that on the surface remind one of the fictional
universes of film and literature. This makes the
terminology seem like an illustrative approach
for describing auditory properties with respect
to the represented universe in games. The con-
cepts enable us to separate what is perceived as
internal to that universe from what is perceived
as external to it. However, as this chapter will
argue, the concepts of diegetic and non-diegetic
are developed with traditional media in mind,
and are therefore confusing and misleading when
attempts are made to uncritically transfer them to
computer games. First, the participatory role of the
player is not accounted for in this theory, which

means that the functional aspects of game sound
therefore disappears when applying diegetic and
non-diegetic to game sound. Also, gameworlds
cannot be appropriately described by these terms
since they are designed for different purposes than
traditional fictional worlds. Since gameworlds
invite users to enter their domains as players, they
are qualitatively different from other fictional
worlds, and this makes the traditional diegetic
versus non-diegetic divide problematic when
applied to computer games. While the aim of the
chapter is to evaluate the use of the two concepts
in relation to game sound, the chapter will also be
a revision of my earlier theory on transdiegetic
sounds (Jørgensen, 2008b). I will discuss my own
and other attempts at adapting the concepts to
game sound, based on the original meaning and
uses of diegesis , and present an alternative way
of conceptualizing the phenomena in relation to
game sound. The main argument of this chapter
rests on two principles. One is that the participa-
tory nature of games allows the players a dual
position where they are located on the outside of
the gameworld but with power to reach into it. The
other is that gameworlds differ from traditional
fictional worlds in fundamental ways as they are
worlds intended for play. This difference requires
game sound to be evaluated on terms other than
those used for analyzing film sound.
A short reader guide is appropriate. The
chapter is organized according to principles of
clarity where an overview of earlier theory cre-
ates the basis of the argument and, in order to
get the most out of the chapter, it should be read
from beginning to end rather than being dipped
into. I will introduce the chapter with a discus-
sion of the origin and application of diegetic and
non-diegetic in traditional media before going on
to present other attempts at categorizing game
sound (Collins, 2007, 2008; Huiberts & van Tol,
2008; Stockburger, 2003; Whalen, 2004). Next,
the chapter will review different attempts to
adapt diegetic terminology to games (Galloway,
2006) and game sound (Ekman, 2005; Grimshaw,