The Player-Composer. Interactive Video Games as a Medium for Collaborative Composition

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Musicology - Miscellaneous, University of Birmingham, language: English, abstract: This dissertation explores how players' interaction and engagement with video games affect their musical content. The author builds principally upon previous research undertaken by Elizabeth Medina-Grey concerning video game music's modular compositional process. He claims that the players of video games, though their vital role in the final realization of video game scores, act not merely as instruments in the composer's vision but as co-composers in themselves. The dissertation is in three parts. In the first part He will be explicating relevant scholars' work, with some discussion and critique. The second part is devoted to an in-depth case study of the compositional process of the 2014 puzzle game Hexcells, to which He will apply theories and concepts explained in the first part. The final part is an extended discussion based on the findings in part two, ending with conclusions and implications.