Category: News

Ludo2024 Call for Papers

The Ludomusicology Research Group is pleased to announce the Ludo2024 Thirteenth European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound, hosted by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona at the Technocampus – UPF in Mataró, Spain, 11 – 13 July next year. The organizers of Ludo2024 are now accepting proposals for research presentations.

We welcome proposals on all aspects of sound and music in games.

This year, we are particularly interested in papers that support the conference theme of ‘Sound, Music, and Space’. Papers on this topic may include:
➢ Soundscapes (e.g. relations between ambient music and environmental sound)
➢ Spatiality and technology (e.g. spatial audio in games)
➢ Music in ludic spaces (e.g. pen & paper sessions, LARPs)
➢ Alien spaces (e.g. musical soundtracks and building fantastic realities)
➢ Crossover spaces and sound (e.g. game sound vs. other media realities)
➢ Sound, theatrical spaces and games (e.g. performances in games; game performances outside games)

Presentations should last twenty minutes and will be followed by questions. Please submit your paper proposal (c.250 words) with a short provisional list of literature by email to ludomusicology@gmail.com by February 29th, 2024. We aim to communicate the programme decisions by March 14th, 2024. If you require more information, please email the organizers.

We encourage practitioners and composers to submit proposals for showcasing practice as research. The conference will be held in person, but with remote access options available.

www.ludomusicology.org | #ludo2024
Hosted by Lidia López Gómez, Tecnocampus – UPF, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Organized by Melanie Fritsch, Andra Ivănescu, Michiel Kamp & Tim Summers.

Queer Game Audio Network

For informal discussions, sharing work and community support, consider joining our network of folks interested in queer perspectives on game audio.

We welcome anyone who wishes to engage with game audio from a queer perspective. To join, please contact tim [dot] summers [at] rhul [dot] ac [dot] uk telling us your name and areas of interest.

We welcome those identifying under the LGBTQ+ umbrella and allies. On this page, you can find some brief information and resources. For more interactive discussion use the contact above to join our private discussion channel and mailing list.

Discussions and Plans

We plan to hold semi-regular sessions where we share work and discuss a piece of queer theory in the context of game sound. In our first session on 16th August, we plan to discuss Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism (2020) in the context of game audio. We also aim to schedule a symposium and methods workshops. Watch this space…!

Some Places to Start…

There is very little scholarship that pertains to queer studies and game audio. Here is a starter bibliography, but we hope it will grow. Please give us suggestions to add!

On music and queerness in games:

  • Summers, Tim, The Queerness of Video Game Music [Cambridge Element] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

On music and queerness in Gone Home:

  • Synder, Shane, “The Impossible Relationship: Deconstructing the Private Space in Gone Home’, Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 10 (2018): 7–20.
  • Tulloch, Rowan, Catherine Hoad and Helen Young, “Riot Grrrl Gaming,” Continuum, 33 (2019): 337–350.

On gender and sexuality in game music in the context of animation:

  • Chapters by Karen M. Cook, T.J. Laws-Nicola and Brent Ferguson, Dana Plank and Ko On Chan in The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music, edited by Lisa Scoggin and Dana Plank. New York: Routledge, 79–132. Karen M. Cook’s chapter on Xandir P. Wifflebottom explicily deals with queer themes.

On gender coding:

  • Austin, Michael, “Orchestrating Difference: Representing Gender in Video Game Music.” In Masculinity at Play, edited by Nicholas Taylor and Gerald Voorhees (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2018): 165–183.
  • Meléndez, Elisa, “For Those About to Rock: Gender Codes in the Rock Music Video Games Rock Band And Rocksmith,” PhD diss., Florida International University, 2018.
  • Mera, Miguel, “Invention/Re-Invention,” Music, Sound and the Moving Image 3, no. 1 (2009): 1–20.
  • Yee, Thomas B. “Feminine Themings: The Construction of Musical Gendering in the Final Fantasy Franchise” in The Music of Nobuo Uematsu in the Final Fantasy Series, edited by Richard Anatone (Bristol: Intellect, 2022): 261–290.

Broad ideas of game music, gender and identity:

  • Cheng, William, Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chapter 5 on voice and identity in online games.
  • Rietveld, Hillegonda C., and Andrew Lemon, “Female Credit: Excavating Recognition for the Capcom Sound Team,” in The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music, edited by Melanie Fritsch and Tim Summers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 376–388.
  • Tonelli, Chris, “Game Music and Identity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music, edited by Melanie Fritsch and Tim Summers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 327–342.

On music, dance and gender in Dance Central:

  • Miller, Kiri, Playable Bodies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) and “Gaming the System: Gender Performance in Dance Central”, New Media & Society 17 (2015): 829–1003.

Queer Game Audio: An Opportunity for Initial Conversations and Discussions

There are a number of academics and practitioners who are currently working on topics related to game sound/music and queer themes (to greater or lesser extents).

This is an open invitation for a one-hour meeting to discuss whether there would be appetite for events, networks, workshops (etc.) related to this theme, and if so, what might be most useful. Some proposed ideas have included workshops on queer methods, opportunities to share work in progress, or roundtable/dialogues.

All working on, or with an interest in, this topic, are welcome to attend.
It will be held on Tuesday 6th June at 4:30pm London time via video conferencing.


If you have an interest in this topic but cannot make the meeting, please let us know. We can receive suggestions by email, and/or keep you updated about outcomes.

To register, email tim.summers [at] rhul.ac.uk with your name.

Ludo2023 Programme and Registration

The draft programme schedule for the Ludo2023 Twelfth European Conference on Video Game Music and Sound held at the University of Edinburgh from March 23rd to 25th is now available here. Paper abstracts can be viewed on the programme page as well.

Registration has also opened and tickets can be booked via Eventbrite for both online access and in-person attendance.

For more information on the conference, including location and travel information, please see the conference information page.

We look forward to you joining us in person and remotely in March!