The Rhythm's Going to Get You: Music's Effects on Gameplay and Experience

Music exerts powerful effects on human performance, behavior, and experience, yet very little is understood about how they are affected by game music. This paper describes a works-in-progress study examining the effects of music and music tempo on game play performance, behavior, and experience in a cognitive game. We found that music influenced mouse activity not directly related to game play, and increased players' feelings of flow.