ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that gameplay experience represented a musical form of “ludonarrative dissonance,” a term coined by game developer Clint Hocking in 2007. It addresses the relationships among music, narrative, and gameplay by further unpacking Hocking’s term. The chapter considers this experience from a phenomenological and semiotic perspective in terms of Heidegger’s theory of signs. It returns to the case of Diablo III itself, and how moments of ludomusical dissonance like this one might be seen as signifiers or markers of genre expectations. The chapter reveals the importance of genre in musical ludoliteracy. Similarly, to recognize the bridge cue as a broken sign requires more than a familiarity with video game music conventions and the ludic and narrative functions that music can have. Musical signs like the bridge cue in Diablo are likely understood as “broken” by players who possess a ludoliteracy based in ludomusical conventions of the action role-playing game genre.
