Diegetic Music - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 62

A further form of occurrence evolved in the
context of music-based computer games, having
its origins in the aesthetics of music video clips:
music that is visualized on screen. In this scenario,
the virtual scene is literally built up through music.
Musical features define two- or three-dimensional
objects, their positioning, and set event qualities
(for example, bass drum beats may induce big
obstacles on a racing track or timbral changes
cause transitions of the color scheme). The visu-
alizations are usually of an aesthetically stylized
type. Thus, the scenes are barely (photo-)realistic
but rather surrealistic. Typical representatives of
music-based computer games are Audiosurf: Ride
Your Music (Fitterer, 2008), Vib-Ribbon (NanaOn-
Sha, 1999), and Amplitude (Harmonix, 2003).
However, music does not have to be completely
precomposed for the interactive context. Games
like Rez (Sega, 2001) demonstrate that player in-
teraction can serve as a trigger of musical events.
Playing the game creates its music. One could
argue that this is rather a very reactive non-diegetic
score. However, the direct and very conspicuous
correlation of interaction and musical event and
the entire absence of any further sound effects
drag the music out of the “off” onto the stage.
The surrealistic visuals emphasize this effect as
they decrease the aesthetic distance to musical
structure. In this virtual world, music is the sound
effect and is, of course, audible from within the
scene, hence diegetic. The conceptual distance
to virtual instruments is not far as is shown by
the game Electroplankton (Iwai, 2005) and the
lively discussion on whether it can still be called
a game (Herber, 2006).
In the contexts of Jørgensen's (2011) terminol-
ogy discussion, a more precise clarification of the
use of diegetic and non-diegetic in this chapter is
necessary. The diegesis , mostly seen as a fictional
story world, is here used in its more general sense
as a virtual or fictional world detached from the
conventional story component. It is rather the
domain the user interacts with either directly
(god-like) or through an avatar which itself is part

of the diegesis. The diegesis does not necessarily
have to simulate real world circumstances. The
later discussion on music video games 1 will show
that it does not have to be visual either, even if
visually presented. Again, the diegesis in interac-
tive media is the ultimate interaction domain, not
any interposed interface layer. Keyboard, mouse,
gamepad, and graphical user interface elements
like health indicator and action buttons are extra-
diegetic. They serve only to convert user input
into diegetic actions or to depict certain diegetic
information.
The terms diegetic and non-diegetic in their
narrow sense describe the source domain of a de-
scribed entity: diegesis or extra-diegesis. Diegetic
sound comes from a source within the diegesis.
Many theorists add further meaning to the terms
regarding, for instance, the addressee. A soldier
in a strategy game may ask the player directly
where to go. As the player may also adapt his
playing behaviour to non-diegetic information
(a musical cue warns of upcoming danger), these
can be influential for the diegesis. Such domain-
crossing effects are unthinkable in linear, that is
non-interactive, media. The strict inside-outside
separation of the traditional terminology is, of
course, incapable of capturing these situations
and it may never be meant to do so. Galloway
(2006) deals with this subject in an exemplary
way. This chapter does not intend to participate
in this discussion.
For the sake of clarity, the narrow sense of the
terminology is applied in this chapter. This means
that the terms only refer to the source domain,
not the range of influence. Diegetic is what the
mechanics of the diegesis (world simulation, in
a sense) create or output. If the superior game
mechanics produce further output (for example,
interface sounds or the musical score) it is de-
clared non- or extra-diegetic. This is also closer
to the principles of the technical implementation
of computer games and may make the following
explanations more beneficial.