Music and Immersion

   How often have you been playing a videogame and been emotionally immersed by the music? How often have you stopped, been taken out of the games world and noticed the music, really admired it? Or found yourself humming the battle theme as it loops, convinced that your harmonising with the tone will somehow make your strategy more effective? Maybe it's just me but the music that fills the games I play has a massive role in how engaged I am, or become, in the game. Videogame music tends to have this evocative quality that creates the worlds, the locations and scenarios, regardless of whether the game is an RPG or a first person shooter, or Crash Bandicoot-- music amplifies the "feel" of the game and more deeply immerses the player.

   I am a self-proclaimed Final Fantasy nerd. The music in these games inspired me into finding a dusted old keyboard and learning to play (bastardised versions of) the songs that have stayed with me for the last fourteen years or less, and will stay with me well into decrepit-ness. It's preposterous to not think of videogames as an artistic medium really, when it is one that flourishes with art, and maybe some of it is "low culture" but some art, some music and some literature and film is considered low grade while others become classics or are awarded for their brilliance-- and games are similar. The development and design of videogames is an artistic practice in its own right, and its music (as well as being an immersive device) is and example of this.

  That with every Final Fantasy title from the main series an OST is released usually alongside a compilation of "Piano Collections" says a lot about the impact of videogame music upon the players, that the music on its own without the agency of actually playing the game, has a market. And I am sure the Final Fantasy series is not alone in this. Music tends to evoke nostalgia; people dig nostalgia. We can listen to a track from a game we haven't played in a decade, and instantly we will know where it is from and have the craving to play that game again, if it had a large enough impact on us.

  Yet again I'm probably being presumptuous but sometimes I cannot fully engage with a games storyline or characters if the music doesn't inspire something in me. It was a struggle to be immersed in Final Fantasy XIII (linearity, a completely different story...) until the Oerba portion of the game (quite far into it I might add), the location track Dust to Dust making me stay in the area much longer than was necessary.