The soundtrack of your mind

Abstract

In this paper we describe an experimental application for individualized adaptive music for games. Expression of emotion is crucial for increasing believability. Since a fundamental aspect of music is it's ability to express emotions research into the area of believable agents can benefit from exploring how music can be used. In our experiment we use an affective model that can be integrated to player characters. Music is composed to reflect the affective processes of mood, emotion, and sentiment. The composition takes results of empirical studies regarding the influence of different factors in musical structure on perceived musical expression into account. The musical output from the test application varies in harmony and time signature along a matrix of moods, moods that change depending on what emotions are activated during game play.