Many thanks to everyone who came to Ludo2015. We are especially grateful to our wonderful keynote speakers, David Roesner and Karen Collins, and indeed to all the speakers for delivering such interesting and engaging presentations.
This year we enjoyed presentations on a range of topics, including: ludo-sonic player profiling, ludo-musical dissonance, music videos drawing on game music, new models of flow, gender issues in the context of mermaid games, issues and opportunities in procedural music, zen in open work casual ‘sound toys’, the balance of complexity and accesibility in music games, and the hot topics of realism and immersion, to name just a random selection. The conference theme of education was picked up on in a number of different ways, with a paper on the limits and possibilities of instrumental teaching using guitar games, a practical demonstration of game music implementation, and discussions on competition and creativity in pedagogical contexts, and the broadening of academic outreach through live interactive orchestral music and documentaries like Beep. All conference abstracts are available here.
It is clear to us that recent scholarly efforts to theorise and analyse videogame music are maturing into an increasingly robust and confident sub-discipline. Our hope is that the annual conference provides opportunities for networking and collaboration, and our vision for this website is that it becomes your community resource. Please share news of your research projects, submit blog articles, and help us to enrich the bibliographic resources.
We would like to thank our sponsors, The Institute for Cultural Enquiry (ICON), Utrecht University Focus Area Game Research, and the Center for the Study of Digital Games and Play. Finally, thank you to the University of Utrecht for hosting us at such a fantastic and friendly venue.
