Cameron Cummins

Recent ludomusicological scholarship has explored how music shapes possibilities for play (Grasso 2024a; Summers 2016; Summers 2021). Julinane Grasso’s spectrum of ludonarrativity positions games between narrative-driven progression and rules-based interpretation (Grasso 2024b), but less attention has been given to how musical parameters, such as tempo, texture, timbre, and rhythmic articulation, shift as soundtracks move from narrative to ludic contexts. William Gibbons (2014) has shown that prolonged absence of non-diegetic music can disrupt immersion and shift narrative perspective, yet the role of music when play is governed by rules rather than story remains underexplored. Drawing on Erick Verran’s (2021) concept of negative affordance, this paper argues that as music becomes less texturally dense and less rhythmically structured, the responsibility of timing musical events shifts from the composer to the player, increasing negative affordance. Using minigames from Wii Sports Resort (2009) as case studies, this paper maps temporal determinacy across varying degrees of ludonarrativity. Swordplay: Showdown, the most narratively framed, features dense non-diegetic music in 4/4, harmonically static in A minor, with layered drums, brass, and strings that adaptively respond to player health and actions. Temporal determinacy is high: periodicity is composer-imposed, and hypermetric articulation varies across phrase lengths. Swordplay: Duel occupies a middle position, reducing music to a drum groove mixed with environmental sounds. Here, temporal grids remain, but textural saturation and harmonic support are not present, increasing player influence on event timing. Archery represents the most ludic scenario: non-diegetic music is absent, leaving ambient environmental sounds and player-generated arrow releases to define temporal organization. Without composer-imposed metric or harmonic cues, players assume responsibility for articulating musical time, creating heightened negative affordance. Across these examples, reductions in structured rhythm and textural saturation progressively increase negative affordance. By tracing these musical changes along the ludonarrative spectrum, this paper demonstrates that silence and textural sparsity in ludic contexts do not signify loss but rather enable focused, rule-aligned action. The findings suggest that in games, reductions in musical determinacy can function as a design resource, evolving player experience and agency through temporal control.

Included Figures & Captions

• Figure 1: Grasso’s Ludonarrative Spectrum (2024) graphed as a function of temporal determinacy.
• Figure 2: Minigames from Wii Sports Resort plotted along Grasso’s Ludonarrative Spectrum (2024) as a function of temporal determinacy.
• Figures 3–5: Rhythmic and structural transcriptions of Swordplay (Showdown & Duel) and Archery.

Selected Bibliography

Presented At

Deserts, castles, and ghost houses— Super Mario’s environments are whimsical and charming, but why are they so compelling, and what happens when our analysis extends beyond individual levels to worlds or even entire games? Drawing on Cresswell’s theory of place (2014) and recent work on musical place-building in Mario Kart 8 (Heazlewood-Dale, 2024), I propose a spectrum between localized and globalized scale in games. As game environments become increasingly globalized, the music may similarly be affected. Consequently, players encounter a broader, less musically congruent sense of place. This leads to different “affective energies” and potential interactions compared to those in localized environments (Grasso, 2024). Using Mario Kart World as a case study, I apply a mix of qualitative and quantitative musical analysis to demonstrate that the game’s Free Roam mode produces a uniquely globalized sense of place through its trans-environmental musical “radio.” Employing statistical modeling, musical congruency, and transformational media analysis (Grasso, 2024; Summers and Farmer, 2023), I argue that the affective potential (“sense of play”) in Free Roam becomes more exploratory than that of other modes because of its more globalized sense of place. In doing so, I adopt the developers’ term “interconnected world” to describe games with this globalized structure. By plotting interconnected worlds, open worlds, and level-based video games along a continuous spectrum from localized to globalized senses of place and play, this paper offers a new framework to demonstrate that games produce differing musical-spatial coherence across environments of various scales.

Included Figures & Captions

Selected Bibliography

Presented At

Discover a groundbreaking approach to inclusivity in educational music! Join us for an enlightening session introducing the concept of flexible instrumentation and varied-ability parts in educational music. In this session, you’ll experience the premiere of a dynamic new piece and engage in a discussion on how to build a program focusing on inclusivity using this methodology. Ideal for high school bands, orchestras, choirs, and community or university ensembles, this session promises to expand the boundaries of musical inclusion. Explore how individuals of all abilities can contribute meaningfully, with every part carrying significance. Don’t miss this opportunity to embrace a more inclusive future in music!

Presented At

The gameplay of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015) relies on a fundamental musical imbalance: one player, the “bomb defuser,” is placed in a landscape of escalating musical tension, while the “experts” remain in the comparatively silent real world and use a physical manual to guide the defuser. Drawing on William Ayers’s theory of musical distraction (2020) and Tim Summers’s “playful listening” (2021), I propose a theory of secondary musical distraction. As the defuser listens playfully to the increasingly distracting music, their growing cognitive load creates less coherent exchanges of information. Consequently, the "affective energies" (Grasso 2024) experienced by the group descend from a coordinated “team identity” into disarray (Séguin 2025). I argue the musical distraction experienced by the defuser spreads secondarily to the experts through communication, and that the ensuing breakdown is central to the game's appeal. I investigate the seven musical tracks in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes by extracting their Root Mean Square (RMS) energy and plotting their dynamic musical layers (Collins 2007) over time, demonstrating that acoustic intensity increases with gameplay urgency. A popular Twitch streamer’s gameplay transcripts likewise show linguistic markers of stress (including speech rate, repetition, profanity, and sentiment polarity) spiralling across each round. Together, these analyses frame the music as an “unreliable musical narrator,” luring the defuser into a false sense of security before rapidly escalating toward chaos and secondarily distracting the experts. This paper thereby introduces a new framework to demonstrate that musical distraction can sabotage collaborative play in local multiplayer environments.

Included Figures & Captions

Selected Bibliography

Presented At

We usually think of listening as simply receiving sound, but video games show us that listening can also mean imagining what else that sound could be. In many games, music reshapes itself based on our choices, training us to expect variation and to imagine alternative versions of a moment. Tim Summers calls this the “potential to be otherwise.” I believe this mindset of “playful listening” can transform how we understand people. It encourages us to pause and reflect before assuming motives. In fact, playful listening helps us combat a sociological bias called fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency to assume a person’s behavior reflects who they are rather than the situation they’re in. Students will leave with the idea that playful listening isn’t just for playing games; it’s a pragmatic tool to better understand people and engage more thoughtfully.

Selected Bibliography

Presented At