Research

    In video games, music plays a crucial role in helping players become immersed in a virtual world, establishing the setting, tone, and atmosphere of the game. Additionally, music is often just as critical for getting players immersed in the game’s objectives. This kind of immersion is known as “flow” and is characterized by total concentration, a feeling of intrinsic motivation, automatic reactions, and a distorted sense of time (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 1997). A common assumption is that music design relates to a player’s flow experience, yet no prior research empirically connecting the two exists. In this study we investigate how specific sound design and composition techniques—specifically musical loop lengths and transitions—contribute to this experience within the context of open-world, action-adventure games. We hypothesize that players will achieve the greatest state of flow with loop-lengths lasting 60+ seconds, and that a game whose audio design that incorporates short silences between musical tracks will be more conducive to flow than a game where music crossfades directly between tracks. We have built a small, open-world-style realistic game in Unity. The game includes four distinct areas with background music transitioning between different tracks as the player moves between areas. We have designed a between-subjects design study in which participants play the game with either a 9-second or 90-second-long musical loop and with either smooth audio crossfades or silence inserted between transitions. Then, we evaluate which musical conditions resulted in players achieving a greater sense of flow based on participants’ estimates of their time spent playing the game along with their responses to the Short Flow-State-Scale (Jackson et al., 2008) and Game Experience Questionnaire (Ijsselsteijn et al., 2008).