The convergence of alternate controllers and musical interfaces in interactive entertainment
NIME '05 Proceedings of the 2005 conference on New interfaces for musical expression
Using MIDI to modify video game content
NIME '06 Proceedings of the 2006 conference on New interfaces for musical expression
NIME '06 Proceedings of the 2006 conference on New interfaces for musical expression
Audio interaction in computer mediated games
International Journal of Computer Games Technology
Implementation and evaluation of a background music reactive game
IE '07 Proceedings of the 4th Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment
Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design
Rhythmic blueprints: a tutorial for design and evaluation of rhythmic interaction
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments
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In this paper, we discuss the concept of games that react to their background music. Instead of limiting the player to a fixed set of songs, the background music can be any song chosen from the player's own music collection. Due to the relative simplicity of such existing game titles, we wanted to explore the potential of the concept more broadly in both digital audio and MIDI domains. Mappings between several musical and game parameters were studied by modifying two open-source games to react to their background music. The feedback collected with the game prototypes suggests that players appreciate the concept and find it entertaining. Based on the feedback and our experiments with different mappings, we present a set of design considerations for background music reactive games. The concept can be used to bring new life to existing games, and even a trivial game can be made interesting if the player can affect the game by changing the background music to his or her favorite song.