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The second level of immersion, according to the research of Cairns and Brown (2004), is engrossment, which they define as a higher level of emotional investment and a corresponding decrease in self-awareness. These two outcomes are attributed to a combination of strong visuals, interesting tasks, and a compelling plot.

Keeping to our leveling up metaphor, let’s assume that we have beaten the engagement level of this immersion game. With our music, we have helped the developers to overcome those obstacles that keep a player from giving the game the fullest attention possible. Now, as we move on to level two, let’s look at the three prerequisites to

engrossment—strong visuals, interesting tasks, and a compelling plot. In examining these three concepts, let’s contemplate some ways in which our music can help the developers beat these challenges and achieve full player engrossment.

The Path to Engrossment: Strong Visuals

So, how can music help visuals appear to be stronger? Presumably, music reaches the ears, not the eyes. However, music affects the activity of the brain in ways that have a direct influence on how we visually perceive the world around us. Researchers have long known that music has the power to elicit changes in the emotions of listeners, altering moods and inducing emotional states ranging from happiness to fear. Recent studies have found that music can also have a direct effect on our ability to perceive and interpret visual stimulus. In a research study conducted in the Netherlands at the University of Groningen, subjects were asked to identify happy and sad faces that were inserted subtly in a noisy pattern, making them challenging to detect (Jolij and Meurs 2011). Music was used to alter the mood of the subjects while they performed the task. The study found that playing sad music resulted in the successful identification of sad faces as opposed to happy ones, while happy music would lead the test subjects to identify happy faces. The test subjects even thought they saw faces when there were no faces at all, and the nature of those imagined faces corresponded to the mood of the music that was playing.

Does this mean that music influences the details that we visually perceive? Would sad music in a gameplay sequence lead a player to notice the grim and somber aspects of the visual presentation, while failing to notice cheerier elements? Conversely, would happier music lead a player to notice small joyful details of the environment that would otherwise go unnoticed? If this is the case, then it becomes imperative that the visual artists, composer, and music team coordinate their efforts conscientiously. A bad audiovisual match could mean wasted effort on the part of artists who have created extraordinary visual works that players subsequently fail to perceive. An excellent audiovisual match, on the other hand, could draw the eyes of the player to the outstanding beauty and power of the art design, bolstering the perception of the visuals as a strong contribution to the overall experience.

Music can have a profound effect on the mood of the listener, and a change in mood can affect not only what is visually noticed, but also how much visual detail can be perceived. At the Affect and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Toronto, researchers conducted an experiment to determine how mood influences visual perception (Schmitz, De Rosa, and Anderson 2009). They showed study participants photographs of people displaying either positive or negative emotions. The study participants reported that these photographs had caused them to feel a similar positive or negative emotion. The display of these initial photographs was then followed by composite images of various houses and locations assembled in a collage. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers monitored the subjects’ visual

cortical activity. Those study participants who were first shown faces with positive emotions also showed much greater visual cortical processing of the composite images that followed. The researchers concluded that a positive mood increases a person’s field of view, allowing them a wider range of vision than those experiencing a negative mood, whose field of view would be comparably narrower.

The results of this study have complex implications for the use of music within the video game framework. Often, game developers will want a composer to create sad music to enhance the atmosphere of a grim environment or to intensify the tragic implications of a story development. If sadness really has the power to narrow a player’s field of vision, then this could possibly focus the player’s attention solely on their own avatar and a limited surrounding sphere, ignoring the rest of the environment on which the artists have poured so much labor and passion. On the other hand, sad music could have the power to help direct the player’s attention to singular events or objects to the exclusion of all else that may be happening onscreen. Conversely, happy music may have the power to expand the player’s field of vision to encompass more of the full picture, allowing for a greater awareness of the entire visual presentation and all activity occurring in the environment.

Whatever musical strategy is employed, music will certainly have an effect on how a player visually perceives a game. Our goal as composers will be to create music that matches the emotion of the visual aesthetic, so that the player will be able to perceive the beauty and detail of the graphics and animations. Should we also consider that our invocation of sadness might narrow the visual focus of our listeners? This is a more complicated question. Perhaps this sadness might serve to enhance the experience of fighting the final boss at the end of a long game, when it is best for the player’s attention to be focused to a laser point. A thread of tragedy, and a possible narrowing of visual focus, might together make such a final confrontation feel even more intense. At any rate, we will have to consider this issue on a case-by-case basis.

However we choose to interpret these findings, or however they influence the way we compose, it is important that everyone on the development team understands how profoundly music can affect the player’s visual enjoyment of the game they are creating.

The Path to Engrossment: Interesting Tasks

The second of the three essential elements that contribute to an engrossing gameplay experience is the inclusion of interesting tasks. In order for a game to ultimately become immersive, it must provide activities that are intellectually engaging and enjoyable. As composers, let’s now ask ourselves—is it possible for music to make a gameplay task seem more interesting and enjoyable? If so, how can we accomplish this? Here, again, science has provided plenty of research for us to think about.

First of all, let’s consider the question of whether music can have any positive effect

on the enjoyment of a task. In a 2005 research study conducted by Dr. Teresa Lesiuk of the University of Windsor, Canada, computer software developers at four different companies were studied over a five week period to determine if music listening exhibited any beneficial effect on either work performance or work enjoyment. The study found that listening to music exerted an appreciable increase in both the quality of work and the workers’ enjoyment of their jobs. According to these findings, listening to music may help us enjoy our tasks more, and may also make us better at them.

Several studies have also reported that music can make us temporarily a little smarter.

The reasoning behind this effect is that when listening to exciting music that we find enjoyable, our focus becomes sharper and our mood improves, leading to better intellectual performance. Music listening has been shown to improve performance on tests of cognitive ability (Schellenberg 2005), tests on spatial ability (Husain, Forde Thompson, and Schellenberg 2002), and even some standard IQ tests (Schellenberg et al.

2007). The effect wears off, but it is a well-tested and documented phenomenon. Two common factors remain important components of this effect. The music needs to be peppy and upbeat, and it has to be in a major key (what we might otherwise call “happy music”). While this phenomenon used to be called the Mozart Effect, recent research studies agree that this effect has more to do with how enjoyable and exciting the listener perceives the music to be and less with whether it is written by Mozart or not.

If music has the power to make a task more enjoyable and make the person performing that task more capable of achieving success, then only one question remains. Can music make a task more intrinsically interesting? This is a more difficult question to answer, but there are two intriguing studies on the subject. We know from an abundance of previous research that music has the power to induce a happier mood. A lighter mood has also been shown to increase both interest and positive evaluation of a task. In a study involving a group of physicians assigned to perform a routine diagnostic task, researchers induced a happy mood (via a gift bag of candy) in the test subjects while providing no sweets to the control group (Estrada, Isen, and Young 1994). The results showed that those study participants in the happier group reported that the assigned task was more intrinsically motivating. In a second research study into the effects of music on sport and exercise, researchers from Brunel University found that music helped athletes to achieve the attainment of Csikszentmihalyi’s state of flow, which the researchers defined as “the zenith of intrinsic motivation” (Karageorghis and Priest 2008).

So, if we are to infer from this research that music has the power to make gameplay tasks more interesting, then we now have an important problem to consider. Many of the positive effects described above are dependent on peppy and cheerful musical styles, whereas the artistic style and atmosphere of many games would clash sharply with such a musical approach. But we may be well advised to remember that slow tempos and negative emotional effects may not always help a player feel interested in the tasks posed by the game’s design. There are certainly times within a game’s overall musical score in

which a somber and ponderous style is the only possible choice for a composer, but most often, we composers have the liberty to brighten those dark moments with subtle traces of light. A hint of optimism, coupled with an undercurrent of energy and purposeful resolve, may serve to help enhance the player’s interest and enjoyment, even in the bleakest moments of the game.

The Path to Engrossment: A Compelling Plot

One could argue that a game with no plot at all can nevertheless cause a player to reach Csikszentmihalyi’s state of flow. For instance, a plot-free puzzle game, when well conceived and designed, has the potential to cause that loss of self-awareness and those automatic physical responses that typify the flow state. However, while the flow state shares similarities with the concept of immersion, the requirements for immersion as set forth in the research of Cairns and Brown are higher. The last component of solid game construction needed for the attainment of the engrossment state is a compelling plot.

At this point, we come full circle to the subject matter we were discussing at the very beginning of this chapter—the willing suspension of disbelief. Not only is this a fair literary proxy for the concept of immersion, it is also one of the core ideas at the center of a compelling plot. No story can have an impact upon its audience unless it is believable, or, as Aristotle would have phrased it, “necessary and probable.” Mark Twain (1895) summed up this idea very well while writing an otherwise scathing article of literary criticism: “The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.” So, according to Twain, if a plot is to be compelling, we must be able to believe in it, to put our faith in the writer’s hands and set our skepticism aside for the duration of the experience. The writer, in return, must justify that faith by creating a world that is consistent and plausible, peopled by characters that behave in ways true to both their natures and to the human condition. How can the composer enhance the believability of a game’s storyline and environment? Can music make a game feel more real?

While it is well understood that music has a profound effect on emotional states, research has also shown that music can have a dramatic effect on the understanding and appreciation of plot. In a research investigation conducted at the Universität Hildesheim in Germany, a short film was produced in which the actions of the characters and their motivations were purposefully ambiguous, with an open-ended culmination that suggested the film’s story would progress beyond what had been seen (Bullerjahn and Güldenring 1994). The researchers hired three professional composers to create several different underscores for the same short film. Working separately, each of the three composers created dramatically different original musical interpretations of the actions and emotions of the short film. The musical styles of the alternate scores ranged from the tension and mystery of a crime thriller to the heartwarming sentiments of a family

melodrama. Study subjects were organized into groups, each of which was shown one of the various versions of the short film. The subjects then filled out a questionnaire in which they were asked to interpret the apparent plot and predict the subsequent actions of the characters beyond what the film had depicted. Not only did the nature of the music dramatically influence how the viewers interpreted the actions they saw onscreen, but the music also had a powerful effect on the predictions they made regarding the future actions the characters might take. Music was clearly acting beyond its typical role as an emotional enhancer, stepping into the role of a storytelling agent and shaping the audience’s understanding of the plot.

In this controlled experiment, music could be singled out as an experimental factor among other elements that did not change, allowing the researchers to judge how music influences the interpretation and appreciation of story. In most real-world circumstances, it is difficult to judge what impact music has on an audience’s understanding of plot given all of the other plot-oriented messages that are constantly being delivered in any story-driven work of theater, film, or interactive entertainment. A research study such as that conducted by Bullerjahn and Güldenring allows us to appreciate the strong messages that music can deliver to the audience, not only about emotion but about action, as well.

Further, we can consider the words of noted researcher Claudia Gorbman, who strongly advocated this idea in an article for Yale University Press: “The moment we recognize to what degree film music shapes our perception of a narrative, we can no longer consider it incidental or ‘innocent’” (1980, 183).

If we accept that music has the power to deliver storytelling messages, then our responsibilities as game composers must broaden to include the interpretation and enhancement of plot. This would involve an understanding of what makes a story compelling and enjoyable, and an ability to recognize the strongest aspects of a game’s story so that we can attempt to heighten the player’s appreciation of those elements. It is useful for a composer for any type of storytelling media (film, television, games) to study dramatic writing at some point. We don’t need to become excellent writers but, by learning about the craft, we can better understand how the plot functions within the larger framework of the gameplay experience. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll have a better chance of recognizing when a particular plot point needs to be musically highlighted or when a set of character actions needs clarification by way of some strategic musical emphasis.

As composers, we have many tools at our disposal for accomplishing these tasks. In dramatic works such as films, television programs, or video games, music can communicate on both the purely emotional level and on a more intellectual level governed by associated concepts. For instance, a particular musical instrument can be connected with a character when first introduced, with an important object or location, or with a recurrent plot element that is a central issue of the overall storyline. This musical instrument can then serve as a mnemonic device, reminding the player of that character,

object, or plot element (even when such things are not present). This sort of mnemonic association can also be accomplished with short melodies or melody fragments, which are sometimes called leitmotifs. More detailed discussion of leitmotifs, and other types of musical themes, will follow in chapter 4.

Music can also enhance the player’s suspension of disbelief, and thus strengthen the effectiveness of the storyline, by creating a musical atmosphere that reflects both cultural and environmental authenticity. This is where the concept of pure musical score (non-diegetic music) begins to take on some of the aspects of source music (diegetic music), which is perceived as music belonging inside the story itself. The traditional difference between source music and musical score is that source music is typically performed visibly. When hearing source music, we can either see the musicians playing their instruments or we can perceive the music to be emanating from a playback device that the characters of the story can also observe and possibly manipulate. This is in stark contrast with the musical score, which is not perceived by the characters and is performed invisibly. When composing a musical score that strives to convey a sense of cultural and environmental authenticity, we are adapting principles of source music into the body of the score.

Many video games take place in exotic or unfamiliar environments, ranging from real-world locations of the past to imaginary realms. As an example, we would assume that a game about organized crime taking place in 1920s Chicago might feature source music evoking ragtime and the jazz age, but there is no reason to limit this musical approach just to music that is performed onscreen. When the musical score reflects the strong permeation of ragtime and jazz in the culture of the 1920s, it also serves to make the environment and storyline feel more real. Likewise, a video game about a completely imaginary environment can benefit from a musical score that seems culturally influenced by the histories and peoples of its fictional world (more about this in chapter 6).