Music in games as a tool of influence—and what a composer and research have to say about it

In the video game industry, the soundtrack has long since stopped being mere decorative background. It is viewed as a factor that shapes emotional response, helps hold attention, supports storytelling, deepens immersion, and sometimes directly affects the desire to return to a game years later.

The impetus for this discussion was the observations of a working composer who writes original music for games and works with interactive audio formats. He bases his argument not only on professional experience but also on research findings on how music is connected with pleasure and autobiographical memory.

How music triggers a sense of pleasure

The psychological effects of music are usually described in terms of emotion, but a number of works also link them to neurophysiology. A paper by A. J. Blood and R. J. Zatorre shows that intensely pleasurable musical experiences correlate with activity in brain regions involved in the reward system and emotional appraisal.

Following their main finding, the researchers mention specific structures that often appear in studies on reward and emotion:

• ventral striatum
• amygdala
• medial prefrontal cortex

In practical terms for games, this means that a well-chosen music’s dramatic arc can enhance the value of the gameplay experience on a sensory level. However, this approach also has limitations: the response to music depends on cultural context, personal associations, and even on how receptive the player is to musical language in general, so there is no universal formula that fits every genre.

How music in iGaming becomes more important amid an active influx of customers

This proven psychological effect is also used by composers who write music for games in the iGaming segment. It creates an effect of psychological reinforcement, especially important for retaining new players. The musical accompaniment of slot games and other games is part of a chain that usually begins with bonus incentives – no-deposit bonuses, promo codes, or free spins.

According to data we gathered from industry websites in the top search results, more than half of new players choose bonus offers when registering. This effect is explained by the authors of a website about online casinos with no-deposit bonuses, available if tap here.  According to them, such a bonus incentive is perceived by them as “free money.” But bonuses alone are not enough to keep players – and that’s where positive emotional reinforcement comes in. It is shaped in part through music tracks. They are typically composed so that the player always feels like a winner.

Music in iGaming activates the dopamine system and increases engagement. In other words, it does essentially the same thing as music in video games.

Why game melodies outlast screenshots

If music manages emotions, it also helps anchor what has been experienced in memory. Nostalgia often works with this pairing: a familiar theme can bring a person back to specific scenes and states, even when the visual details have already faded.

A 2016 paper by Amy M. Belfi, Brett Karlan, and Daniel Tranel describes an experiment in which participants listened to excerpts of music and looked at photographs of well-known faces, after which they recorded the memories that arose in response to each stimulus. According to the authors’ description, it was music that more often evoked more vivid autobiographical memories, rich in internal details and perceptual features.

For game series, this turns the soundtrack into a recognizable anchor that holds onto not only a specific scene but the world’s overall image. At the same time, an important gap remains for a fair interpretation: the laboratory format with separate stimuli does not fully capture the complex experience of playing through a game, where music, mechanics, and plot are intertwined.

A hidden narrator that speaks through subtext

In game narratives, music often functions as an independent layer of storytelling, especially where direct explanation would feel heavy-handed or overload the scene. According to the composer’s observations, the soundtrack can convey information not through facts, but through a shade of meaning, as if underscoring the episode’s emotional subtext.

The functions of this musical narrator can be conveniently grouped by purpose:

• the scene’s mood and a sense of anxiety or safety
• the pace and direction of action in dynamic segments
• the character’s inner feelings and unspoken thoughts
• the era, culture, and geography of the world
• a hint of danger and the presence of an unseen antagonist

The technique’s strength is that music helps make the story subtler and more economical, reducing the need for straightforward markers like excessive lines or literal visual prompts. Its weakness is also clear: part of the audience may interpret musical cues differently, and in some genres, deliberate musical neutrality becomes an artistic choice.

Atmosphere as a collaboration between music and sound design

Immersion is usually born not from a single element, but from their coherence. The composer emphasizes that music enhances the atmosphere when it supports sound design and adds an emotional layer that is not present in the noise and object-based textures.

As an example, he cites an episode from Arctic Awakening, where the protagonist comes to after a crash in a snowstorm. In this scene, sound design handles the physical realism of what’s happening, while the music conveys the psychological meaning. The division of roles is described as follows:

• sound design conveys the storm, gusts of wind, creaking trees, and brittle branches
• the music adds loneliness, confusion, fear, and a sense of a story deeper than the image

The practical effect is that understanding the emotional state of the character being controlled in the game strengthens the sense of presence. At the same time, developers have to find a balance so the music doesn’t overpower the space’s real sounds or make the interactive scene feel like an illustration for a pre-made film sequence.

A reason to return—and flexible scoring technologies

The connection between music, memory, and atmosphere naturally leads into the topic of returning to the game. The composer notes that sometimes it is precisely the feelings from the soundtrack that become the reason to boot up a game again, even titles with low replayability. As a personal example, he mentions returning to Homeworld and What Remains of Edith Finch because of the emotional imprint the music leaves.

For studios, the practical implication is the original soundtrack as a tool for controlling emotional tone. Methods of adaptive music are discussed separately, that is, music that changes depending on the player’s actions and the game state:

• nonlinear horizontal mixing, where tracks are rearranged over time and in different combinations
• vertical sequencing, where layers are added or removed, changing density and tension
• other dynamic techniques that support interactivity without breaking musical logic

This approach helps tie the sound more deeply to what is happening and increase franchise recognizability at the level of auditory memory. At the same time, it increases production complexity, since the musical system must be technologically reliable and artistically cohesive across dozens of possible variations in how a scene can unfold.