PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This article aims to explore the possibility of applying the term boundary object to game music. This term was coined by Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer in their 1989 article “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects” and later used fruitfully in the context of game studies by Christine Hanke in 2008. The article briefly explains what Star and Griesemer meant when they created the term and how it might be applicable to the objects of media studies (i.e., digital games). The main argument of this article is that the concepts of a boundary object as a thought pattern and of game music as a key component of digital games share similar traits, and so the concept of the former can be valuable when thinking about and studying the latter. To support this proposition, this article presents a short analysis of the game music of Inside (Playdead, 2016) to illustrate how and why it might be beneficial to view game music as a boundary object. Such a perspective sheds light on the complex relationship between sound effects and music in digital games.