Music Games: Synesthesia, Telegraphing, and Physicality
In my last article about music games I talked about how music games create atmosphere and context with the their game mechanics. As a reminder, in my last article I defined a music game as a game that’s sound output plays an integral part in the experience, one where the audio packages information about the game (I). As a result, music games provide the optimal way to experience tactile, audio, and visual information, at least in theory.
In this article, I’d like to focus on specifically the physical/mechanical aspect of the player experience in music games and their gameplay, and how ‘music’ informs player interactivity. Instead of explaining the physical component of musical gameplay, let me show you.
The video above consists of a two minute gameplay sequence from Playdead’s Inside. You may notice there is no soundtrack per se, no music in the background, but there is a distinct rhythm that informs the gameplay. What specifically makes this physical is the gameplay’s emphasis on the player pressing the desired inputs. Combined with a timing challenge, this creates an experience that is centered on the physicality of pressing buttons and executing the game’s desired musically informed result. The transition to this is also handled masterfully: as the player character is forcefully placed in a line filled with the world’s brainwashed inhabitants, a robot light shines down onto the character, informing the player of the consequences of failing to fit in with the line’s behavior. Being in the spotlight only heightens the intensity of the situation. The sound and atmosphere enhance intensity as well, and in this short segment of gameplay, a few things are made clear to the player.
1. There is a rhythm to the marching and inputs.
2. If you mess up, you have to start again.
3. You do what the others in line do.
These 3 steps culminate in informing the player that they are now playing a strict rhythmic gameplay segment. Essentially, the moving line’s rhythm provides the player with instructions. In addition, the sounds, environment, and animation play a key part in forging this experience.
One of the most crucial components to this experience isn’t musical at all. The rule of when the player has to execute a prescribed action, besides just moving forward in the line, is decided by being within a simple yellow box drawn on the ground. Without this simple design solution, occupying the temporal and spatial dimension of the segment, player’s could easily find this exercise frustrating and arbitrary. This keying in, letting the player know that something important is about to happen and that the player will need to react to continue the game, is called telegraphing.
Now I know this is supposed to be about music games, but Mark Brown has an especially ludological video covering telegraphing.
Another great game that takes advantage of rhythms and telegraphing is Cuphead. Cuphead provides a huge amount of sensory information that is essential to its gameplay. Although it is not a music game, the animations, sounds, and overall telegraphing of the bosses gameplay provide an experience akin to music games. What I mean by that is, if Cuphead could have composed a music track to each of its bosses it would by all means fit into the music game genre.
Most music games are based on an experience similar to playing music, a physical drumming, or melody that the player plays along to. Like in Inside’s gameplay segment, Amplitude, or Guitar Hero, they create this strict execution based experience, although Inside does it a bit more subtlety. The games that Harmonix creates turns the audio and visual feedback up to the point where you actually feel like a guitar playing maniac.
Unless you include music generation games (which I’ll get to in future articles), all music games, like all music, involve a physical act in the world. Take Cuphead, as if it were a music game, like 140. The player would still react to the music of the world, just in time with their own internal dance. There are some examples of strategic thinking in music games, but as a rule, physicality is a priority.
I’ll be sure to include toolsets to use in the next Music Games related article!
Works Cited:
I, Article 07:
Img source: