Time for New Terminology? - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 83

game. His approach is interesting as it takes into
account the fact that game music provides informa-
tion relevant for gameplay, but by being tied to the
traditional meaning of non-diegetic it is equally
misleading as other adaptations of the concepts.
A scholar who does see the diegetic/non-
diegetic division as complicated is Karen Collins
(2007, 2008). She points out that the division
between diegetic and non-diegetic sound is
problematic since the player is engaging in the
on-screen sound playback process directly (2008,
p. 125). Her separation between interactive and
adaptive sound is based on functionality. Whereas
interactive sound refers to sound events occurring
in response to player action, adaptive sound reacts
to events in the environment (2007, 2008, p. 4).
In this respect, sound is understood as a dynamic
feature closely related to events, at the same time
as it takes into account the agency of the player.
Huiberts & Van Tol (2008) also point out that
using diegetic and non-diegetic is complicated
in connection with game sound, since interactiv-
ity allows non-diegetic sounds to affect diegetic
events. They still decide to use the terms because
they see them as established within game studies.
By putting diegetic and non-diegetic in context
with setting and activity , their IEZA framework
takes into account the interactive aspects of game
sound, but does not take into consideration that
gameworlds are designed for different purposes
compared to diegeses, and that they therefore
influence sound in a different way.
There are also other models for describing
sound in this anthology. Wilhelmsson & Wallén's
(2011) general framework for sound design and
analysis combines theories of listening with both
the IEZA framework and Murch's description of
five layers between “encoded” and “embodied”
sound in film ranging from speech to music via
effect sounds: However, like many others, they
take the fruitfulness of diegetic and non-diegetic
for granted. In his discussion of diegetic music,
Berndt (2011) claims that what he calls visualized
music must be considered diegetic. This is the

visualization of structural features of a musical
composition, exemplified by the stylized visu-
alization of patterns found in the user interface
of music games such as Rock Band (Harmonix,
2007) and Electroplankton (Indies Zero, 2006).
From the point of departure of this chapter, this
view of diegetic is problematic, since it distances
itself from the original use of diegesis and thereby
creates confusion. Milena Droumeva, on the other
hand, outlines a framework of game sound accord-
ing to “realism” in terms of fidelity and verisi-
militude, and connects these to acoustic ecology
and Barry Truax' idea of an acoustic community
that includes physical world sounds that have an
impact upon gameplay. Examples of this are the
acoustic soundscape of group play, and online
conferencing (“live chat”) (Droumeva, 2011).
From this perspective, she argues that the use of
diegetic and non-diegetic terminology is limited
because it fails to acknowledge the importance of
these kinds of sounds. Although a valid point when
discussing the general soundscape of the gaming
activity, this point has only limited value to the
argument of this chapter, since it is restricted to
how game internal sound works with respect to the
gameworld, and only briefly mentions externally
produced sounds.

Diegetic theories of Game sound

Some of the more critical attempts at adapting
diegetic and non-diegetic to games have resulted
in analyses that show that game sound has more
significant layers of meaning than can be explained
by using the terminology above. In this section,
I will evaluate the most comprehensive of these
adaptations and discuss their strengths and weak-
nesses. However, even though the following ac-
counts are attentive to how the concepts of diegetic
and non-diegetic when used for describing games
differ from how they are used for films, emphasiz-
ing this difference may lead to a situation in which
one keeps leaning too heavily on a terminology
that is meant to describe film sound, without be-