At the Push of a Button: Player/Avatar Fusion and the 'Gestural Potential' of Video Game Music

This paper proposes a new gestural analytical framework for understanding how video game music engages players and draws them into the ludo-narrative worlds they inhabit. Its central concept, the "gestural potential" of music, extends Robert Hatten's theories of musical gesture by treating the player as both listener and performer with agency over the game's virtual landscape. The author argues that prior theories of musical gesture, which assume a passive listener, are inadequate for game music, and that a framework must account for individual differences in how players move through games. The analysis draws on film and media studies, dance pedagogy, and art research, bringing together scholarship that has rarely interacted.

The paper's primary case study compares the musical and ludic design of two 2D side-scrolling platformers for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Mario World and Super Metroid. Through this comparison, the author identifies a phenomenon termed "ludomusical cocooning," in which players, attuned to the musical gestures of the score and embodied through the tactility of controller inputs and the self-expression afforded by their avatars, reach heightened levels of immersion. The analysis combines tactile input data, player performance, and musical gesture, and it proposes graphical methods for visualising individual player movement in relation to audiovisual cues. The framework is intended to capture both individual and collective experiences of game music.

The study is positioned within ludomusicology and motivated by the surge in video game engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. The author suggests the framework could extend to other genres, including massively multiplayer online games, where sustained immersion is central to the experience. The work is primarily theoretical and analytical, drawing on close readings and conceptual synthesis rather than a reported empirical sample, and it offers a model for future game analysis that foregrounds playfulness and attention in an increasingly crowded field of audiovisual entertainment.