Atmosphere as a Concept in Video Game Music Discourse

This chapter reviews the use of the concept of atmosphere, a term that has become ubiquitous in the discourse surrounding video game music. From an academic perspective, Gregor Herzfeld, building on the philosophy of Gernot Böhme, has considered game music in general in terms of atmospheres. Looking at the use of the term more broadly, also taking into account journalistic and player discourse, it is possible to distinguish four ways in which it is used to describe video game music: as a holistic descriptor of the soundtrack of even the game as a whole; as aesthetic evaluation of a game's musical qualities; as a generic classification of compositional style; or as the classification of the music's function within a game. After comparing this discursive taxonomy critically with the work of Herzfeld and Böhme, the chapter concludes with a case study of an atmospheric cue in Elden Ring (2022) to come to a better understanding of what it is like to engage with musical atmospheres in video games.