Group items tagged

"Examination of the history, development, and future of adaptive, dynamic, and interactive music in video games. Discussions include nonlinear music historical developments, compositional approaches for adaptive music, generative music, testing methods in the compositional and implementation stages, the evolving industry of adaptive music composition, future technological developments in music production and gaming, and adaptive music beyond games. Also included is an appendix of video game case studies, as well as an appendix of professional insight from game industry veterans."

Abstract: "Identifying and measuring a musical talent is not a simple task that could be performed by computers. In addition to the technical challenges, it also involves social, emotional and cultural issues. This problem is aggravated when the task needs to be performed taking as input the huge amount of music content available on the Internet today. In this paper we report work in progress on a social interactive Game with a Purpose using fun as a key motivational factor to assist in recruitment and measurement of musical talent. "

Abstract "Background music is often used to generate a specific atmosphere or to draw our attention to specific events. For example in movies or computer games it is often the accompanying music that conveys the emotional state of a scene and plays an important role for immersing the viewer or player into the virtual environment."

Abstract: "How much time will a player spend in an interactive scene? For the majority of game scenarios this is impossible to predict. Therefore, their musical accompaniment is usually disposed to continuously loop until player interaction triggers a change. This approach involves an existential danger: Sooner or later the player becomes aware of the repetitive character of the ambience design; the game scenario emerges as a mere mechanical arrangement and loses much of its integrity. In this survey paper we systematize and discuss the common approaches to conceal musical repetition. Furthermore, we complement them by a number of approaches that incorporate arrangement techniques, aspects of expressive music performance, and generative variation methods that work actively against repetitiveness."

From Berklee College of Music, not only a video game music orchestra, but a video game music choir

Published 2013, excepts in Google Books. Includes an overview "History of Video Game Music," chapters on interactivity and game audio and music in specific time periods (the '90s), etc.

Abstract: "People with motor disabilities have a limitation or a loss of capacity carrying out activities considered as normal for human beings. This may incline the relationship with the society and thus it is essential for these people to undergo therapeutic treatments. However, rehabilitation is a tedious process that often fails due to that patients drop treatment. For this reason, this thesis investigates if music in a serious game for rehabilitation can make the experience to become more engaging and, accordingly, whether positive experiences from playing such a game can encourage the rehabilitation process of a patient i.e. to make the rehabilitation process less tedious for the patient. The results, based on a pilot study conducted in a rehabilitation center, indicates that this is the case and further research on the matter is suggested."

Abstract: "To improve musical auditory habilitation for children post cochlear im- plantation, we developed MOGAT: MObile Games with Au- ditory Training. The system includes three musical games built with o-the-shelf mobile devices to train their pitch perception and intonation skills respectively, and a cloud- based web service which allows music therapists to monitor and design individual training for children. The design of the games and web service was informed by a pilot survey (N=60 children). To ensure widespread use with low-cost mobile devices, we minimized the computation load while retaining highly accurate audio analysis. A 6-week user study (N=15 children) showed that the music habilitation with MOGAT was intuitive, enjoyable and motivating. It has improved most children's pitch discrimination and production, and several children's improvement was statistically signicant (p < 0:05)."

"Many games and consoles today allow for a player to substitute a personal music playlist into the video game. We examined the influence that a player's choice of music has on the player's experience in one particular game, Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage. "

Abstract: "This study develops a way to use the technology of video games to help teach people the violin. The unique characteristics of this research are to create a visual representation for music for violinists, to utilize pedagogy for violin education within a video game, and to use the Fast Fourier Transform to process input from an actual acoustic instrument and use the data to track user progress. Music games like JamGuru [9], Rocksmith [19], LittleBigStar [13], and Rock Band [18] have made strides in these areas of research; however, most of these technologies have not been applied to the violin. Expected results are that students' progress rate will increase as a result of playing the game. The input processing used in this research could be applied to areas where sound recognition is important. Furthermore, the concept of an adaptable game can be applied to other academic subjects."

From the abstract: "The acquisition of musical skills on a new instrument can be a slow and laborious process, requiring sustained effort and commitment. A strong alignment between many of the pro perties of game - based learning and the practice of learning to play a new instrument, especially at the early stages, is identified. After laying out the theoretical connection, a collection of new game design prototypes are described, designed with the go al of augmenting conventional skill - acquisition practice and increasing student motivation and engagement."

Founded by a Berklee School of Music graduate, plays orchestral arrangements of video game music

Responding to research showing most players replace game soundracks with their own musical selection and miss game cues, software named Harmonious is introduced to improve such substitutions

Enabling streaming of music from social media sites and integrating into online game play

"Abstract The eective information processing (e.g. search, organi- zation) of the heterogeneous information spaces requires metadata layer above the resources. However, the acqui- sition of resource metadata and domain models are chal- lenging tasks. Here, the crowdsourcing has emerged as an alternative to expert-based and automated semantics acquisition approaches. One of its branches are the games with a purpose (GWAPs) which encapsulate the seman- tics acquisition tasks into the game processes. We analyze existing GWAPs and propose their classication. Fur- thermore we devised our own GWAP-based approaches. For acquisition of lightweight term relationship network, we devised a search query formulation game, usable also for specic domain models. For acquisition of (personal) image tags, we devised a card game, where players mem- orize positions of concealed cards and identify identical pairs. For validation of music metadata, we devised a multi-choice question-based game, where players identify tag sets that are characteristic to music tracks they hear. We also looked at the GWAPs from their design per- spectives. We present a design oriented classication sys- tem for GWAPs, adress several design issues recurring in GWAPs and present new design patterns to solve them"

From the abstract: Recent studies show that the second generation of migrants is not adequately integrated into mainstream society but tends to segregate into secluded segments. 'Internet Use and Friendship Structures of young migrants in Vienna: a Question of Diversity within Social Networks and Online Social Games'1 is a transdisciplinary2 research project with the objective to create a serious music-based online social game, which firstly is intended to be a positive impact game with the purpose of furthering integration and encouraging the manifestation of meaningful multiethnic relations. Secondly, the game shall make social interaction observable for evaluation. This paper gives an overview of which methodological approaches can be combined in the phases of the game's design process and shows how the mutual embedding of game design researchers and social scientists works in this context."

Abstract: "Macquarie University, in 2012, introduced two undergraduate coursework programs in the area of video games. These programs are a joint initiative of the Departments of Computing and Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies. The programs represent an innovative approach to curriculum structure in this area, combining technical, design and reflective critical practice to produce rounded graduates with a wide knowledge of issues and practices in interactive media. This paper describes the process of designing these programs, the aims and rationales guiding their design and their detailed structure. The central guiding principle behind the programs was that accomplished designers of interactive media, particularly video games, need both a sound technical background and an appreciation of the relationship between users, society and their designs. This is reflected in both the structure of the programs and the pedagogical approaches in the specialist units."

Abstract: "Application domains for Computational Creativity projects range from musical composition to recipe design, but despite all of these systems having computational methods in com- mon, we are aware of no projects to date that focus on pro- gram code as the created artefact. We present the Mechanic Miner tool for inventing new concepts for videogame inter- action which works by inspecting, modifying and executing code. We describe the system in detail and report on an eval- uation based on a large survey of people playing games using content it produced. We use this to raise issues regarding the assessment of code as a created artefact and to discuss future directions for Computational Creativity research."