Adaptive Game Music: Introduction
Imagine this scenario in your favorite shooter game: Your player is battling through a bright and dreary multiplayer map against her friends. She takes refuge in the second floor of a building, accompanied by urgent music with a sound of morbid intensity.
This music is an orchestral arrangement of strings, horns, and drums playing in your player’s headphones. There are no enemies in sight–for now. As she stops and crouches at the dimly-lit window, the music subtly lulls to a less urgent volume. Your player dawns her sniper rifle, settling into the shadow of the windowsill. She knows the other team is coming, and her position is perfect.
When she looks down her scope, the mix of the music shifts slowly, until almost all she hears is the rumbling drums beating along to the rhythmic sound of her character’s breathing. She aims directly at a corner of the only building the enemy has for cover.
