“Press Start to (Fore)Play: Sex and Sexuality in Video Game Music”

Michael L. Austin begins his chapter with a history of sonic representations of sex and sexuality in erotic film and pornography, tracing the friction between such media and public morals and showing how the media borrowed musical tropes and clichés from mainstream media and used developments in technology to make the soundtrack hyperreal. Austin then turns his attention to sonic depictions of heterosexuality in mainstream video games such as The Sims, as well as a range of niche games, before focusing on sonic representations of homosexuality. Throughout, Austin shows how the use of music and sound supports the developing role of games as tools for constructively “enacting our real-life identity and personhood.”