Songs of Transistor

While there is a lot of research about other aspects of game design, there are fairly few studies about music and sound in video games. Since music and sound are components of next to all games, it is interesting to investigate how this aspect affects the perceived immersion of gamers. The aim of this study is to investigate how sound and music affect player sense of presence in a video game, Transistor [19], which was chosen due to its distinct and strongly emotional music and sound. Five video prototypes were made using gameplay and sound from the game. The videos presented different variations of the soundscape. These were tested by a web survey with questions from the PENS questionnaire [15], providing the users a seven point Likert scale by which they could rate their experience. The answers were analyzed with a mixed model regression and compared with an estimated image of which degree of immersion would be experience for each of the videos. The result of the study showed that the complete soundscape was significantly more immersive than all the other soundscapes, while silence was significantly less immersive than the other soundscapes. The conclusions were the more complete the soundscape is, the more immersive it is, and that even a small part of the total soundscape is more immersive than complete silence. Author