A Music Information Retrieval Approach to Classify Sub-Genres in Role Playing Games

TL;DR

This paper presents a systematic method for classifying sub-genres of role-playing game music based on quantifiable musical features, revealing correlations with genre perceptions and storytelling elements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to analyze and classify VGM sub-genres using extracted musical features, filling a gap in genre-specific music analysis.

Findings

Identified distinct musical features for different RPG sub-genres

Correlated musical features with genre perceptions and storytelling

Provided a basis for automated sub-genre classification

Abstract

Video game music (VGM) is often studied under the same lens as film music, which largely focuses on its theoretical functionality with relation to the identified genres of the media. However, till date, we are unaware of any systematic approach that analyzes the quantifiable musical features in VGM across several identified game genres. Therefore, we extracted musical features from VGM in games from three sub-genres of Role-Playing Games (RPG), and then hypothesized how different musical features are correlated to the perceptions and portrayals of each genre. This observed correlation may be used to further suggest such features are relevant to the expected storytelling elements or play mechanics associated with the sub-genre.