Alright, well it’s been just over a week since the final version of my paper was submitted for grading.  With the end in sight, I suppose it is time for another update.  This update does presume some familiarity with the project, so reading the previous update and the project page is recommended.

The testing went reasonably well, many participants who played through the demonstration preferred the adaptive music to a more traditional passive approach.  The application also ran correctly in all cases; the adaptive music was consistently successful at matching game events with specific elements of the music.  The seamless transitions between sections of the music appeared to go unnoticed by the participants (as they should, since they are supposed to be seamless) and there were a wide range of positive responses to this.

Still, the testing revealed some weaknesses in the testing process.  Many revolved around the questionnaire, which had questions that may have unintentionally biased some participants and others that could have been more direct.  The possible bias was taken into consideration when writing the project’s conclusions and that participants could have been biased in either direction depending on how they interpreted the labels of the musical implementations.  Other questions, which were looking for participants to acknowledge the synchronization of game events with the music were too vague and received suitably vague responses.

These problems meant that the more useful results from the testing were drawn from the conversations with participants following the hands-on demonstration and questionnaire.  Some people found it much easier to describe verbally what they felt the difference between the two musical implementations was.  These results were more interesting.

The final pdf! Gotta love LaTeX.

For instance, although few people wrote about the connection between the colour changes (game events) and the music, most participants noticed it.  Many did not think to include it in their answer based on the wording of the questions.  These responses also reinforced the positive reaction to the adaptive music, whether or not the participants were aware of what the difference was.  It seemed that since the events were playing out during the music that was designed for them, participants felt some sort of subconscious enhancement to the game.  Some felt it was “faster”, “more fun”, and “more epic”.  So although they weren’t the expected responses, which may have been too technical in nature, these answers which concerned a more intangible feeling were valuable.

The colour changing events may have also been too similar to the player’s goal, which was to change the colour of the “goal cubes”, although this was never mentioned by a participant.  More variety, or no goal cubes, could have brought more attention to the connection between the events and music.

Anyway, the rest of the conclusions are in the paper and are too much to review here.  I have to make more changes to the project page to outline the project more clearly.  A great deal of future directions were proposed at the end of the paper, so those will be included as well.  Now, to wait for a response to my submission.

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