Digital Games as a Source of English Vocabulary for Finnish Writers
The material for this paper comes from Finnish people who wrote about their experiences of the music of digital games. We collected 184 texts, all but one written in Finnish. There is relatively little code-switching into English at the clause level, but the vocabulary of the texts is influenced by English on a continuum from clearly English words such as comfy to established loanwords such as uniikki (‘unique’). We will consider how the influence of the English language used both in the games and in discussions about them characterizes the vocabulary of these texts and how the English language enables the authors to enter the game world. peerReviewed
Linkages Between Gameplay Preferences and Fondness for Game Music
In this paper we explore connections between players’ preferences in gameplay and their desire to listen to game music. Music always takes place in cultural contexts and the activity of music listening is likewise entangled with versatile cultural practices. This is arguably evident in the case of game music since the primary context of encountering it is the active and participatory experience of gameplay. By analyzing survey data (N = 403) collected from the UK, we investigate how contextual preferences in gameplay activities predict fondness for game music. It was found that player preference for Aggression and Exploration are two precedents for liking game music. These findings indicate…
Käsitemetaforan näkökulma pelimusiikin henkilökohtaiseen merkityksellisyyteen
The perspective of conceptual metaphor on personal meaningfulness of game music
 The use of metaphors is prevalent when talking about music in everyday life as well as in more professional contexts. As such, the role of metaphors in describing and understanding music has been a topic for philosophical discussions and more recently also for empirical research. While most of the focus has traditionally been on the meaning of music, in this article we consider metaphors as related to the personal meaningfulness of music. More specifically, we investigate metaphoric expressions in personal narratives of fond game music memories, aiming to understand what the metaphors tell about the relati…
Identifying the Impact of Game Music both Within and Beyond Gameplay
This paper presents an overview of and a brief critical reflection on game music’s impact on players both within and beyond the context of gameplay. The analysis is based both on the current literature as well as on preliminary (work-in-progress) observations of our research project Game Music Everyday Memories. We consider how the functions and uses of game music potentially extend to people’s everyday life, thus constituting a personally and culturally meaningful relationship with music that is not immediately connected to gameplay. On the other hand, we consider the ways game music and a person’s attachment to the music are involved in gameplay motivation and potential game retention. As…