Emotion, Content, and Context in Sound and Music - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 237

EMOtION • Diegetic. Sound or music that is directly

related, or at least perceived to be related,
to the environment in which the subject is
intended to be immersed. For example, in a
movie this could be the sound coming from
a television that is in the room pictured on
screen. Another example would be the
voices of the characters on screen or the
sound of a character firing a gun or driving
a car. In a nutshell, the subject is able to
reasonably identify the source of the sound
given the surrounding virtual environment
• Non-diegetic . These sounds are generally
presented to augment or complement the
virtual environment but come from sources
that the subject cannot identify in the cur-
rent environment. To go back to the horror
movie example again, consider the famous
shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's
classic Psycho from 1960: the screeching,
stabbing violin sounds as the character of
Marion Crane is stabbed by Norman Bates
(dressed as his mother). There is no reason
for the watcher of Psycho to believe that
there are a collection of violinists in the
bathroom with Norman and Marion, rather
the music is there to enhance the environ-
ment that is presented.

Emotion is a key factor to consider in computer
applications given that almost all applications
will have some form of Human Computer Inter-
face (HCI). Humans are emotional beings and
the interaction with the machine will have some
emotional effect on them to a greater or lesser
extent. The computer, therefore, has an ability
to invoke an emotional response in the user. The
user may bring their own emotions with them to
an interactive experience which has been affected
by external factors in the environment around them
(Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 2003). The qual-
ity and resultant experience that a user has with
a machine is important and this is also true when
we consider the frequent interaction that we have
with entertainment media and computer games.

Emotion in Multimedia

The use of sound in multimedia, and especially
in computer games, is commonplace. This is
unsurprising if one considers that, in order to
successfully engage a human user in an immer-
sive experience, the interaction must be achieved
through one of the primary human senses. Speech
and hearing are hugely important in our daily lives
and allow us as humans to send and receive large
amounts of information on an ad-hoc basis.
Naturally, it is hearing and the use of sound
that we are interested in examining in this chapter.
Sound is used in complementing and augmenting
other stimuli, especially visual. Consider, for ex-
ample, the last time you watched a horror movie
and were embarrassed by the unintended jump or
flinch you experienced at a big bang or crescendo
that accompanied the appearance of the bad guy in
the movie! Proof, if it were needed, that the con-
structive use of music and sound can provoke one
of the most primal of human emotional instincts;
fear. Sound in multimedia environments is clas-
sified into two distinct categories (see Jørgensen,
2011 for a fuller analysis of these terms):

Emotion in computer Games

Game players exhibit larger emotional investment
in games than in many other forms of digital en-
tertainment, primarily due to the interactive nature
of the medium. Jansz (2006) argues that game
players often emotionally immerse themselves
in games to experience emotional reactions that
cannot reasonably be stimulated in the real-world:
a sandbox environment for emotional develop-
ment and experience. This notion will probably
be familiar to most readers, as many of us will
have deliberately watched a scary movie to try
and frighten ourselves and because we enjoy ex-
periencing the sensations and physical responses