Tag: gamestudies

This presentation is on the practical development of Play Your Own Accompaniment: Suspense (PYOA) as a living extension of a research archive. Often, the work of developing an underserved archive is fraught with untold effort. Tasks such as digitizing records, organizing and finding said records, and collating materials is an arduous process. When I was digitizing silent film music cue sheets for the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive’s (SFSMA) Grauman Collection, I felt 1) such records should be accessed in a more accessible way for young scholars and 2) creating new music for silent film would help to keep the archive alive. Therefore, my recent game Play Your Own Accompaniment: Suspense (PYOA), teaches silent film music history through gamification of the compositional process while addressing both the desire for accessibility and bringing attention to the silent film music archive.
The archive is a living collection that changes with new information and understandings The passing on of knowledge to others is at the heart of pedagogy, and teaching through use of play has a long tradition of success in schools (McGowan et al., 2023; Marinelli et al., 2023; Crespo-Martinez et al., 2023). Specifically in music, there are gamification studies on early childhood learning (Nguyen, 2020), middle school band students (Peasant, 2020) and even with orchestral experiences (Hunt, 2024). Importantly, the archive is collated through community and given breath in praxis. The game puts the player in the shoes of historical White Palace Theatre’s pianist Ursula Bloom as she is tasked to accompany Suspense (1913), a film by Lois Weber. PYOA replicates the creative process with modern technology, and its mechanics allow for the player to continue this compositional ritual, adding to and taking part in the archive in each play through.

In his 2021 JSMG article, Juan Pablo Fernández-Cortés rightly argues that ludomusicology has “begun to be normalized in academia” with no need to spend considerable time justifying video game sound research (Fernández-Corté and Cook 2021). Beyond the academic, however, video game players continue to face assumptions and anxieties on virtual play as acts of immaturity, that a “Peter Pan syndrome” (Kiley 1983) occurs in which individuals refuse to “grow up” and play games to avoid errands and other forms of “adulting” (Willams Brown 2013). While scholars and the wider video game community have debunked such assumptions, the role of sound in enabling or preventing gamers’ guilt as they play video games is under researched in ludomusicology. Drawing upon research on guilt and play (Maynard et al 2025; Rennick and Roberts 2025; Ahn et al 2021) and the importance of play for adults (Johannes et al 2021; Lubbers et al 2023), this paper presents an examination on the role of adult player guilt with experiences of video game sound. Through an autoethnographic study of the honour system in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games, 2018), I focus on the role of music and character voices with themes of morality, disease and economic survival as examples of adult virtual play which explicitly avoid immaturity. From this enquiry, I propose a significant challenge for the ludomusicology community: what does it mean to study video game sound when there may be personal guilt in the practice of playing, listening to and studying digital games?

Background music, soundscapes, and sound effects shape immersion, narrative experience, and player interaction in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). While sound has been more extensively studied in video games, its use in analog role-playing has so far been addressed by only a few scholars, like Andrew Borecky and Nicholas Johnson. Drawing on ludological theories, including Cover’s narrative frames and van Elferen’s ALI model, this study examines how sonic elements co-construct the imaginative spaces of TTRPGs. The analysis is grounded in semi-structured interviews with eight players and gamemasters (GMs) who regularly use audio in their sessions. Comparing three genres of play (fantasy, horror, and science fiction), this paper explores how sound shapes recurring narrative scenes (socializing, exploration, combat). Findings suggest that sonic elements enhance immersion by guiding attention, triggering emotional responses, and supporting a sense of shared presence. This seems to be especially effective in horror settings. Players and GMs describe sound as both an atmospheric tool and a performative prop, blurring the lines between game mechanics and storytelling. While technical limitations (such as rule-heavy systems or faulty bots in online gameplay) can disrupt musical immersion, most participants emphasized sound’s power to pace and enrich collective play. This study contributes to the growing field of TTRPG studies by demonstrating how sonic elements actively shape gameplay in fantasy, horror and science fiction systems, through contributions from both players and GMs. It also extends theories of musical immersion into a new medium, highlighting the multisensory, collaborative nature of analog role-playing.

This paper examines how non-playable characters (NPCs) backed by Large Language Models (LLMs) can enhance narrative agency and player experience in audio-only games. It focuses on voice-based interaction and 3D binaural audio as core mechanics for inclusive, immersive storytelling, with particular relevance for blind and low-vision (BLV) players.
The paper draws on a functional audio-only game prototype developed in Unreal Engine 5 using the ConvAI plugin, which enables open-ended, voice-driven dialogue with LLM-powered NPCs. Twenty participants engaged with the prototype during structured play sessions and completed the System Usability Scale (SUS), selected GUESS subscales, and semi-structured interviews. These data were triangulated with annotated gameplay recordings to analyse usability, narrative agency, NPC believability, and interaction flow.
Findings suggest that LLM-backed NPCs significantly strengthen players’ sense of narrative influence and emotional immersion when combined with spatialised audio design. Participants consistently described conversation itself as a central game mechanic, highlighting the importance of vocal performance, timing, and sonic feedback in shaping narrative engagement.
The paper argues that LLM-driven NPCs offer substantial potential for inclusive, voice-first game design, while also introducing new challenges related to conversational grounding, speech recognition, and pacing. It concludes by proposing a set of design recommendations for integrating LLM-backed characters into audio-only interactive environments, with implications for game audio design and ludomusicological approaches to narrative and agency.

My compositional practice aims to bring participants of various (or nonexistent) musical backgrounds together in improvisatory collaboration through video game environments. Through playful environments, I hope to erode the audience-performer boundary and lower participant inhibitions by establishing a suspension of consequences using game structures. In this paper, I reflect on the successes and failures of three of my participatory video game pieces.
First, I analyze The Pecking Order, a quartet for big arcade buttons based on a simple line-based audiovisual instrument. This piece requires just one hour-long dress rehearsal, embracing the potential for failure in executing text score instructions. Over four performances, I have refined the “underrehearsal” aspect of the piece, gleaning insight on terminology and frameworks to explain musical concepts to those unfamiliar with specific jargon.1
Next, I present Catching Sparks, a collaborative game installation for three participants of any background. This work encourages collaboration toward consuming “spark” objects synchronously to induce a more visually and auditorily satisfying improvisation environment. Through four stagings, I encountered pitfalls in inducing desired behavior and reframed instructions and visual cues accordingly.
Finally, I discuss Performance Review, a parody of corporate dashboards that involves two prepared musicians interacting with an audience participant. This piece, premiered in March 2025, attempts to fold in and subvert the idea of audience participant as disruptor (and contributor) to the musical environment. By instating the audience participants in an oppressive middle-management-like role, this piece facilitates various tense dynamics between the rehearsed musicians and the unrehearsed audience member.
Drawing on the scholarship of Claire Bishop, Lucy Harrison, Marko Ciciliani, and other scholars and practitioners of participatory art, I interrogate these works’ efficacy in involving participants with no formal musical training in proscenium contexts. I hope these case studies will serve as useful examples for other ludomusicology-informed composers that aim to transgress the hierarchical divides of traditional musical performance.

Video game music faces a persistent conflict between in-game changes and time-based musical structures, leading to latency that can negatively impact player experiences (Stevens, 2021). One solution is an Interactive, bi-directional approach; making games aware of, and change in response to, music (Stevens & Raybould, 2014). Such systems may affect humour, thought of as an aspect of playful experiences within product design (Korhonen et al., 2009). They might also lead to greater perceived reward, shown in player studies to contribute to perceived competence (Guardini et al., 2019). However, they risk compromising player agency, where synchronising events may involve wresting control from players, inducing frustration (Stevens & Raybould, 2014). Additionally, despite this concept having been discussed from a technical view (Walder, 2018), such truly ‘Interactive’ music has yet to be employed widely, with few examples like ‘Hi-Fi Rush’ (Tango Gameworks, 2023).
In ‘Zombie Dog’ (currently in development), Interactive Music is a core design pillar. In this practitioner showcase, Technical Audio Designer Will Scoones will demonstrate several practical examples from the game of how physics simulations, among other systems, can synchronize with music in real time. This approach is motivated by the desire to heighten comedy and support rhythmic entrainment in players, and there will be discussion of how this is achieved technically through animation concepts like non-linear transitions (Thomas & Johnston, 1981) and animation curves (Lasseter, 1987), to enable musical interaction while maintaining player agency.
A copy of the game will also be available throughout the conference for attendees to play.

Constructed from in-game footage of Stardew Valley, Soccer Mommy’s music video for “Abigail” is a case study in genre hybridity, transmedial fandom, and boundary-crossing ludomusical practice. Situated at the intersection of game music, popular music video, and fan culture, the video mobilizes the aesthetics and affective logics of the “cozy game” genre to reimagine the music video as a playable, emotionally resonant space. By adopting Stardew Valley’s pixelated aesthetics, ambient soundscape, and relationship-driven mechanics, “Abigail” crosses borders between digital gameworlds and non-interactive music media, foregrounding how game sound and music circulate beyond games themselves. Cozy games are often framed as apolitical spaces of comfort, care, and feminized play. This paper argues instead that Stardew Valley’s audiovisual design particularly its flexible approach to gender, sexuality, and relationality—supports subtle forms of queer worldbuilding and emotional transgression. Drawing on scholarship in queer ludonarratology, game sound studies, and indie music aesthetics (Keogh 2018; Summers 2023; Kehrer 2024; Ruberg 2025; DiPiero 2025; 2023), I show how Soccer Mommy leverages players’ pre-existing attachments to Stardew Valley’s characters, music, and fan practices to produce a layered intertext that merges gameplay logics with music video storytelling. By treating the gameworld as both instrument and stage, “Abigail” pushes the limits of ludomusicology beyond traditional game analysis, highlighting how marginalized voices, queer affect, and musical play circulate across media forms. “Abigail” demonstrates how game music operates as a transcultural, transmedial resource, one that enables experimental storytelling and challenges conventional boundaries between industry, fandom, and media formats.

Theatrical performance and videogames share many core aspects, as has been previously explored by researchers such as Schechner (2020), Fritsch (2021), Fernández-Vara (2013) and Dixon (2018). Huuhka (2020) highlights that both are traversed by concepts such as temporality, concerning the different understandings of time that can be found in theater and in videogames; things, the objects that construct the scenography of a play or the digital ones that accompany gameplay; rules, regarding both the mechanics that regulate the game and the conventions of theatre. While there has been plenty written on MMORPG’s as the stage of theatrical performance, both through their roleplaying aspect (Zagal and Deterding, 2024), and the creation of actual theatre productions inside the game space, there has not been so much attention paid to experiments with musical theatre conducted by players.
Through my PhD research on in-game concerts (Moritzen, 2025), I have encountered the work of the Brandywine Theatre Company in Lord of the Rings Online (2007), a collective of players/musicians that stages musicals inside the Tolkien-inspired online gaming world. Their first experience with the format was in 2021, when they performed The Phantom of the Opera. Since then, they have created adaptations of titles including The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Wicked, The Greatest Showman, Moulin Rouge, Alladdin and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. They adapt the musical mechanics afforded by LoTRO, as well as the script of famous musical numbers to fulfill their creative wishes. The players arrange pre-existing MIDI files concerning the musical at hand, or even, at the lack of previously available files, order them from professional agencies. This connection results in a ludomusical performance, which I define here as the result of the connection between the videogame’s affordances, mechanics, aesthetics, and the player/musician’s artistic self-expression in the form of avatars.
This proposal intends to answer the following question: how do players adapt LoTRO’s affordances to stage musicals? In order to answer it, I conducted a semi-structured interview with three of its members: Khae, Bijon and Tahnys. The conversation took place through an audio call on Discord, on April 25^th, 2025. I will conduct content analysis on the transcription of this interview, building a framework of their creative process that follows it from the conception, going through the actual moment of the ludomusical performance, and subsequent audience engagement.

Figure 1: Advertising for the Brandywine Theatre Company. Source: https://tinyurl.com/brandywinetheatre

In 2024, global consumers spent nearly $3 billion USD on card games with online collectible card games accounting for 30% of revenue. In this paper, I will construct a model for the sounds of card gamesthrough two video game adaptations of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (1998) and Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel (2022), and my lived experiences competing in retro format Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments. As the card game simulation genre realistically places the player into the perspective of the main card player, I will borrow Graakjær’s (2024) framework for analyzing sounds “of cards”, “at cards”, and “for cards” and situate them within Baysted’s (2017) immersion, realism, and gameplay circle.
Analysis of other card game video games, Pokémon Trading Card Game (1998), Hearthstone (2014), Gwent: The Witcher Card Game (2018), and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (2024), support the finding that increased density of the immersion, realism, and gameplay circle increases immersion and sales. Selected digital collectible card games represent a subset of games which build an economic system with a heightened emphasis on immersion to entice players to monetarily invest.
The hybrid physical card game and digital video game The Eye of Judgment (2007) serves as the concluding example and cautionary tale as physical cards construct a 3×3 grid interfacing with the PlayStation 3 software through the PlayStation Eye. This paper will continue the research into video game card games to benefit aspiring card game sound designers and developers creating card video game adaptations.

Video games have a complex relationship with empathy. Both heralded as ‘Empathy Machines’ and criticised for encouraging appropriation, they present a contradiction that game studies has struggled to reconcile (Milk, 2015; Ruberg, 2020). I argue this impasse stems from the ‘immersive fallacy’—the tendency to view video games as tools for complete experiential immersion (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004). Through this lens, games function as tools for empathy because they allow players to live someone else’s experience as their own—a problematic notion.
To resolve this, I adopt Salen and Zimmerman’s view of games as procedural systems, where awareness of the game as a media object is a feature, not a flaw. This model uncovers a new form of identification: blended identity. Here, the player and avatar occupy a shared space during gameplay but do not occupy each other’s identities. In this landscape, music emerges as the key to unlocking empathy without risking appropriation. Through its ability to recall past memories, music acts as a method of emotional communication between player and avatar, illuminating shared emotional journeys without encouraging occupation.
The proposed presentation explores these ideas practically, through my creative practice of developing and scoring a game centred on an Autistic avatar. By analysing FMOD files and gameplay, I demonstrate my approach to creating interactive soundtracks that foster connection and empathy, with practical advice for composers and insights for researchers alike.

There have been recurring generalizations both online and offline that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise attracts neurodivergent fans, and even further, that the music of the franchise attracts neurodivergent listeners. Relating Sonic to neurodiversity has found its way to official conventions such as Sonic EXPO 2025, wherein a panel of neurodivergent fans of Sonic cited the franchise’s music as a prominent factor in their interest. While considering this frequent colloquial association between neurodivergence, the Sonic franchise, and its music, I combine ethnographic accounts from several neurodivergent fans of Sonic, specifically regarding their personal connections to the franchise’s soundtracks. With these fans’ narratives I argue that neurodivergent expressions of listening to Sonic music both curbs neurotypical hegemonies of musical interpretation and implies potentially neurodiverse characteristics to video game music. Specifically, neurodivergent listenership prioritizes the often described as embodied, pleasurable event of person-object relations and “direct perception” (Bernett 2022) while resisting neurotypically disembodied and emotion-based listening expressions (Fessenden 2024). Video game music, which ludomusicologists have theorized as kinesonically syncretic (Collins 2013), multiply modal (Kamp 2024), and the stimulative bridge between material and virtual bodies (Plank 2021) therefore may lend well to some neurodivergent sensibilities. Furthermore, neurodivergent fans of game music might connect through each other’s narratives of listening to build community and navigate neurotypical settings (Quinn & Barton 2024). With this emerging ethnographic study, I aim to promote neurodivergent theorizations of video game music and demonstrate instances of video game music as a method of thriving in the neurodivergent experience.

When video games are adapted into films or television series, their soundtracks often undergo transformations that extend beyond changes of function to encompass broader shifts in musical style. These transmedia shifts become especially pronounced in transnational adaptations, where Japanese video-game franchises cross national borders and are reinterpreted within American film and TV industries. In this context, differences in cultural expectations and production norms shape stylistic traits like the roles of melody and timbre, and how hybridized arrangements are reconfigured to suit new aesthetic and industrial environments. Because musical style exerts a strong influence on audience perception, these transformations raise important questions about how the identity of the original work is negotiated during adaptation. This paper examines these issues by focusing on major Japanese franchises – such as Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, and Castlevania – that have been adapted into (primarily) American screen media. Through these case studies, it investigates how musical features – timbre and genre hybridity in particular – can shift when game music is re-authored for film or (post-)TV series. By analyzing these changes, the study explores the interplay of cultural, commercial, and industrial logics in the reshaping of musical style. It assesses the relative influence of cultural translation, audience expectations, and market conventions on decisions to preserve, modify, or replace key musical features. Ultimately, the paper argues that these metamorphoses reveal broader negotiations within a globalized entertainment landscape, illuminating how music travels across media, cultures, and industries in the process of transnational adaptation – which is always a site of transcultural negotiation.

Game-to-television hits such as The Last of Us mark a shift in transmedia prestige: while television franchises have long been adapted into video games, the recent wave of critically acclaimed, musically faithful game-to-TV adaptations represents a new valuation of games as source texts. This paper asks how the direction of adaptation (TV-to-game versus game-to-TV) shapes musical strategies for translating narrative, world-building, and affect across media.
Comparing Star Trek and Stranger Things games (TV-to-game) with The Last of Us and Halo series (game-to-TV), I demonstrate that these directions generate systematically different solutions. TV-to-game adaptations treat television themes as paratextual badges of authenticity, confining iconic motifs to menus and trailers while gameplay features independent music. Game-to-TV adaptations elevate game music to narrative canon: The Last of Us retains composer Gustavo Santaolalla and repurposes his game cues as emotional anchors, while Halo‘s partial sidelining of its famous theme has sparked fan debates about whether the series ‘sounds’ like Halo – revealing how musical continuity tests adaptation fidelity for player-viewers.
To explain this asymmetry, I theorise game music’s ‘three lives’: (1) dynamic in-game systems, (2) fixed OST circulation (streaming, vinyl, concerts), and (3) recontextualisation in linear media. This framework shows why game music, unlike television music, is prepared for adaptation through commercial OST culture cultivating non-interactive listening. Drawing on affect theory (Massumi, Ahmed), musical analysis, composer interviews, and fan reception studies, I demonstrate that the asymmetry is not merely technical but cultural: game music’s OST circulation grants it canonical status that television music historically lacks, reflecting games’ rising prestige as storytelling media.

Scholarship in game studies and ludomusicology has frequently emphasised cinema’s influence on video games, positioning gaming as a successor medium that has inherited, among other things, film’s genre structures, visual grammar, and scoring conventions (King and Krzywinska 2006; Brooker 2009; Collins 2008). Critics including Elleström (2010), Gurevitch (2013), and Larsen (2019) have considered more bidirectional exchanges between media, exploring how game aesthetics have increasingly circulated back into film and television. However, their work has tended to foreground the visual dimensions of gaming rather than the broader impact of game logics and sound design.
Building on these debates, this paper frames Mike Cheslik’s 2022 neo-silent film Hundreds of Beavers (HoB) as an instructive, sonically driven case study through which gaming’s layered media lineage can be more fully understood. Rather than adopting the maximalist aesthetics often associated with game-to film permeability, HoB positions itself as a form of ludified cinema, with the narrative unfolding through a series of iterative set-pieces built around failure, optimisation, and level-based progression. Its wordless sonic approach reinforces this retro-ludic architecture, with musical stingers, abstracted sound effects, and repeated, modular cues functioning as a state-based feedback system that punctuates narrative loops and signals advancement in ways that recall classic arcade gaming and platforming.
In previous interventions at this conference, drawing on Whalen (2004), Lerner (2014), and Garin (2015), I examined contemporary entanglements between gaming and silent cinema. Extending that trajectory, this paper turns to a film that absorbs the logics and aesthetics of early gaming and, in doing so, reinscribes the silent-era techniques from which those gaming forms originally emerged. Resonating with Ludo2026’s theme of pushing limits and crossing borders, HoB collapses linear hierarchies of influence and reveals a recursive exchange across media boundaries, demonstrating how game-derived logics and sonic practices extend beyond interactive systems and reshape contemporary screen culture.

The gaming experience is enhanced by music, both diegetic and non-diegetic. It does not merely accompany gameplay but can structure the experience of players by shaping memory and anticipation over time. Auditory cues communicate game states, such as signaling exploration, danger, or task completion, and gradually train players to form predictive expectations about in-game events. This process contributes to immersion as players learn to interpret and act upon auditive feedback.
The ALI Model rames games’ musical immersion across three dimensions: Affect (the player’s embodied emotional investment and physiological response), Literacy (the learned competence to interpret musical and ludic conventions), and Interaction (the continuous feedback loop between player actions and adaptive audiovisual response).
We will investigate the Affect (A) and Literacy (L) components based on work that investigates musical experience by EEG. We are particularly interested in Mismatch Negativity (MMN) as an indication of surprise triggered by a deviation of an established repetitive pattern, and Early Right Anterior Negativity (ERAN) as an indication of violation of harmonic progression, both as indicators of Affect. We are also interested in P600 as a detection of harmonically incongruous notes as an indication of Literacy. For the latter component, we will work with participants who have experience with games as well as with novices, allowing us to contrast acquired musical–ludic competence against naÏve listening. By operationalizing immersion through quantifiable neural markers, this study moves beyond self-report methodologies and provides an empirical framework for modeling

Farming simulator game Stardew Valley (2016) depicts temporal seasons through changes to graphics and soundtrack, and its day/night cycle via temporal cues such as the cessation of background music to signify evening. Other genres also exploit cyclic structures in gameplay and sound. Despite this, players do not get bored as enough variation is introduced in each gameplay cycle to hold their interest.
This presentation will explore this “sameness yet difference”. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025), the same musical track recurs during a recurring battle with a murderous mime. As the player progressively spends more time in battle, they hear more cycles of the same musical track: listener fatigue is avoided by inserting instrumental solos and varying the theme over a repeated accompaniment. Julianne Grasso’s understanding of ludomusical narrativity explains that “music brings to bear both its own formal syntax as well as meanings packed with discursive potential.” (67) While Grasso discusses how rhythmic and instrumental activity increase as the player progresses, the Clair Obscur example does the opposite: the player progresses, but the sameness of the battle soundtrack emphasizes player progression due to its repeated re-hearing.
Methodologically, my analysis will combine theoretical and musicological approaches to show this sameness-yet-difference and its parallelism in music and gameplay. Grasso’s ludomusical narrativity will be examined in conjunction with KC Collins’s concepts of macro/meso/microloops to map cycles of repetition in both gameplay and musical scoring, and Jesper Juul’s play time versus event time will help to understand real-time events versus turn-based structures.

The question of what constitutes a musical reward in video games remains undertheorized. The closest existing concept is that of musical feedback: short musical sequences that accompany other rewards rather than functioning as rewards themselves.
However, according to Berridge’s (2009) reward model, an effective reward must fulfill three neurological functions: it must be actively wanted (wanting), provide pleasure (liking), and teach each action’s value (learning). Applied to music, this implies that a musical reward should (1) generate anticipation prior to its occurrence, (2) improve the player’s emotional state relative to the current musical context, and (3) convey the relative value of different rewards. Musical rewards therefore require the establishment of a musical context with which they may more or less contrast.
Through this theoretical lens, several rewarding musical structures can be identified across hierarchical levels: micro-level resolutions (harmonic and rhythmic), macro-level forms (buildup-drops, verse–chorus, A-B-A), and meta-level modulations of predictability (driven by prediction error concept).
From this perspective, to our knowledge, there is no video game in which music is truly constitutive of the reward system. One of the main reasons lies in the logic of dominant audio middlewares (FMOD, Wwise), which are primarily designed to mix pre-produced assets. This research aims to cross these boundaries. It relies on real-time algorithmic transformation of patterns composed directly within the software, enabling the generation of potential musical rewards that are shaped by the musical context.
This paper proposes a shift in design perspective: game music that traditionally follows the player’s progression can instead guide the player by rewarding their actions within a structured network of musical rewards operating across multiple scales.

Synchromy 2 is a practice-based research project that reimagines video games as playable musical instruments, crossing borders between game audio, live performance, and audiovisual composition. Inspired by the works of Norman McLaren, a pioneer of scratch filmmaking who would compose the soundtracks for his works by directly defacing the film stock before running it through a projector. Synchromy 2 translates visual game output into sound and music through a light-sensitive pen. Rather than triggering predesigned audio assets, players generate tones directly from the image displayed on the screen at any given moment, producing sounds and music that can only exist through the specific configuration of gestural play unfolding in real time.
The piece is structured as a duet: one participant plays a video game that continuously alters the visual field, switching from one game to another at intervals, while another “performs” the screen as an instrument using the custom pen hardware. Sound emerges through the collaborative gestures of both players, creating a live, bespoke soundtrack that cannot be reproduced or predicted. Each encounter unfolds only in the present moment, positioning Synchromy 2 between installation, game, and performance, and aiming to reframe gameplay as a form of musical improvisation.
Conceptually, the project responds to notions of supradiegesis (van Elferen, 2011), and the modularity of game sound (Medina-Gray, 2016, 2019) treating game sound not as a fixed compositional layer but as something actively constructed through player presence, gesture, and listening. By extending supradiegesis to include the sonic outputs created by the physical actions of participants, Synchromy 2 questions where game sound is located, how it is authored, and who performs it. In doing so, the work hopes to explore the limits of ludomusicological discourse by positioning play itself as an instrument, and game sound as a shared practice emerging through embodied interaction.

Hyperreal videogame environments ludomusically involve players in their detailed virtual playgrounds. This paper argues that game music can be playful and joyful and, like other artforms, conversely has the power to connote violence and negative affectations.
Through focusing on Battlefield 6’s multiplayer(2025) and the ‘No Russian’ mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), this paper proposes how we can analyse game music as creating an environment that is believable but potentially harmful. When combined with hyperreal virtual environments, familiar gameplay loops and affective haptic feedback, repetitive musical gestures engender a form of ludic entrainment that can be both playfully involving and negative given the violent playground in which the player performs. Thus, music can connote violence: videogame musical gestures can and do reinforce the act of virtual violence by not only accompanying but also driving player action. A ludomusically involving, violent gameplay experience can either be playful or cross the boundary into a disagreeable encounter that is potentially harmful to the player.
This paper brings together scholarship including musical gesture theories (Hatten, 2018), ludomusicology (Lind, 2023), sociology (Adorno, 1932) and game scholarship on violence (Vorhees et al., 2013). It argues that videogame play can be violent, but the rulesets and parameters that guard it as a playful act ensure that its consequential potential to ‘hurt’ is muted. In an audiovisual landscape littered with hyperreal games and potentially violent virtual sandboxes, this paper’s analysis and the conclusions posited are particularly apt.

This presentation examines the innovative mechanical design of dance games—focusing on Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)—as notation-forward interfaces that communicate semiotic information clearly and efficiently to the player. Beyond the genre standard “scrolling score” (or chart) which maps musical time to physical space, DDR and its counterparts uniquely couple (1) a streamlined visual chart notation drawing on Western rhythmic practice—subdivision and metrical salience made visible by spacing and color—with (2) calibrated timing windows and a graded accuracy system that supply immediate and post-play feedback. Together, these features support entrainment and the cognitive compression of visual patterns into executable gestural units, such that experienced players can sight-execute unfamiliar charts much as trained musicians sightread. This presentation will demonstrate how these mechanics embed instruction in timing, subdivision, and motor planning within play.
The talk then frames chart authorship as interpretive arrangement under constraints. With considerations towards difficulty, density, and ergonomics, chart makers select and weight prominent musical features and events to create a “choreography” for the music—a mapping that players can read, evaluate, and perform. Framed within published criteria for rhythm-skill training, DDR functions as a criteria-driven case study of how interface design can support accuracy training and procedural learning while shaping musical experience. The presentation concludes by casting chart reading as a unique mode of listening: the mapping heightens and orients perception, and performance realizes that orientation as embodied sound.

This paper examines how video-game music contributes to the construction, reinforcement, or disruption of disabled identity, arguing that ludomusical practices often reproduce cultural borders that marginalise disabled bodies while also offering opportunities to push representational limits. Despite advances in accessibility mechanics, the narrative and aesthetic representation of physical disability remains limited, frequently shaped by longstanding media tropes such as technoableist “cure-or-kill” logics, cyborg enhancement fantasies, and horror conventions that equate bodily difference with danger. These frameworks are further intensified through musical signifiers—dissonant orchestration, minor-key stingers, and asymmetrical textures—that draw from cinematic and modernist traditions to mark disabled bodies as aberrant or threatening.
Through comparative case studies, including The Vale: Shadow of the Crown, BioForge, Cyberpunk 2077, and Dead Space, the paper explores how music operates both ludologically and narratologically to signal identity, agency, vulnerability, and moral status. While The Vale uses binaural design and configurative musical cues to centre blindness as an empowering mode of play, other titles reinforce exclusionary cultural logics by situating disability within fear or pathology. The analysis highlights how journalistic discourse around game music—particularly in cyberpunk contexts—can further entrench the border between “normal” and “abnormal” through dehumanising metaphors.
By integrating disability studies, semiotics, game studies, and musicology, this paper argues for new ludomusical traditions moving beyond inherited cinematic codes challenging the aesthetic borders that marginalise disabled identities. 

In recent years, the “revival of traditional Chinese music” has become a significant cultural issue in China. This trend is reflected not only in academic and the event of intangible cultural heritage but has also permeated screen media industries. Although game companies have not explicitly stated that the musical strategies are directly influenced by this trend, video games have nonetheless become a key platform for disseminating and recontextualising traditional Chinese music.
However, policy or market explanations alone are insufficient. In Chinese ancient-style fantasy games, music builds fictional worlds rather than reproducing tradition, leaving space for creative agency. The key question, then, is who creates these sounds, and how composers’ training, careers, and cultural identities shape how traditional music elements are selected, reworked, and ultimately presented in video games.
This article examines four categories of composers with distinct cultural and educational backgrounds: Hollywood composer teams representing the global mainstream film scoring system; Tan Dun and the Genshin Impact team, trained in Western music; Umebayashi Shigeru, an East Asian but non-Chinese composer; and Zhai Jinyan of Black Myth: Wukong, trained in traditional Chinese opera music.
Drawing on composer interviews, musical analysis, textual analysis of game music documentaries, and promotional materials. The article seeks to explore how composers’ backgrounds shape the construction of “Chineseness” in video game music. What kinds of Chinese elements do they each choose, and what kinds of narratives do these elements construct?

When considering identity from a ludomusicological lens, previous work has looked at identities in terms of race and hip hop culture (Austin, 2018), queer identities (Summers, 2023) and class (Ivanescu, 2018). To begin to evolve this emerging area within ludomusicology, this paper will examine how regional British identity can be constructed, specifically by looking at Northern English identity in the 2024 game Thank Goodness You’re Here!.
British identity has found itself at the heart of the music and game design. The game’s use of sound is evocative of the sense of community and regional pride of the North through the instrumentation and sonic aesthetics it explores. This paper will explore the use of “brass band” timbres, long embedded into the foundations of mining communities in the North through use and scholarship surrounding other media.
To further investigate how this is effective through the medium of the video game, I will examine Iain Hart’s ideas of performative play (Hart, 2014) exploring how the game allows the player to participate in the setting by not only building a comedic and warm atmosphere through music but allowing the player to ludically engage in the cultural specificities of the North the game constructs. The player is invited to interpret the comedic and sonic aspects of the game for themselves, heightening and incorporating the player into the community. Additionally, I will observe reception from streaming and critical reception of the game to help provide insights into how such a hyper-local story is able to reach international audiences. This raises questions of how we can delve further into the layers of interactivity in media to observe how topics of identity, culture and politics can be deeply explored and disseminated globally.

This paper examines how the percussive aesthetics of Shovel Knight (2014) engage and expand the noise-channel practices established in Mega Man (1987). Rather than relying on stylistic description, the study employs histogram-based signal analysis to model the amplitude distributions of noise-channel output and infer underlying percussion orchestration. By examining distributional shape and spread (standard deviation), the method enables identification of hexadecimal register settings governing dynamic behaviour and frequency modes in both soundtracks.
Composed using Famitracker to emulate the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Shovel Knight deliberately adopts the compositional environment of the original console, from register-level implementation to final audio output (Kaufman and Nutt, 2015). Kaufman has openly cited Manami Matsumae as a key influence, whose work on Mega Man expanded percussion orchestration through the noise channel beyond the conventional drum-kit idioms to include open rolls and Latin-inflected percussion instruments. These expansions set Matsumae apart from contemporaries such as Hirokazu Tanaka and Koji Kondo (Chang, 2025). Kaufman’s score extends this vocabulary through electronic inflections–reversed cymbal effects, layered frequency modes, and expanded timbral envelopes while preserving core gestural markers associated with Matsumae’s style.
Through comparative analysis of coded noise parameters, the paper argues that Shovel Knight does not merely imitate surface timbres but reconfigures register-level behaviour inherited from Mega Man. Histogram modeling reveals continuities in amplitude structuring alongside innovations in frequency-mode usage. Extending recent signal-level approaches (Chang 2025), this methodology provides a systematic framework for tracing stylistic transmission within neochiptunist practices, demonstrating how historically constrained hardware behaviours are reinterpreted as compositional resources in contemporary video game music.

It almost goes without saying that the advent of sample-based architectures in gaming consoles had a transformative impact on the aesthetics of game soundtracks. As Altice (2015) and others (e.g. Newman 2025) have noted, the foresight of Masayuki Uemura in allowing the augmentation of the Famicom’s soundchip brought snippets of sampled percussion to Super Mario Bros. 3 while later platforms such as the Super Famicom eschewed synthesis altogether as they opted for entirely sample-based audio systems. Moving forwards, with successive generations of PlayStations and Xboxes offering onboard sample playback chips and direct streaming of music from audio CD, digital sampling was firmly established as the bedrock of audio playback in games. But sample-based systems are very different from synthesis based chips. The latter impart distinctive characteristics and tonalities in the provision of different waveforms, filters or other effects but samplers need samples. So, where do the samples – the actual digital recordings in videogame soundtracks come from? What were the sources of the sonic material loaded into these sample playback engines?
This paper begins by exploring one specific source of material – The Zero-G Datafile sample CDs. Originally released between 1991 and 1992 and developed by UK producer Ed Sutton, this collection of three audio CDs were primarily marketed at electronic music producers, DJs and programmers and boasted hundreds of ‘breakbeats’, ‘vocal hooks’, ‘FX’, ‘scratches’, drop-ins and more. These were carefully curated (but not so carefully copyright cleared) collections of source material that could be loaded into an Akai S-1000, Ensoniq EPS or Emulator in the studio… or N64. The analysis continues by exploring the uses of other Sample CD libraries such as Best Service’s ‘Voice Spectral’ (1993) and ‘Gigapack’ (1993) and Spectrasonics’ ‘Distorted Reality’ (1995) in games including The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Street Fighter III: Third Strike.
In recent years, there have been some media archaeologies, such as the Who Sampled? website, that have begun to document these uses of Datafile samples in commercial music releases as well as extraordinary community projects attempting to uncover the uses of specific instruments and samples in favourite videogame music. Drawing on work on video game music technology (Cook et al 2025), this paper reports on and seeks to develop these discussions by charting the appearance of these samples in game soundtracks as diverse as Super Mario 64 and the Silent Hill series. In particular, the paper considers these sample CDs as a shared musical resource that creates a technological, compositional and aesthetic connection between game soundtracks and other forms of commercial (electronic) music.

The YM2612/YM3438 FM synthesis chip shaped a generation of Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game music, yet large collections of presets extracted from VGM recordings (e.g. DrWashington, Project2612) remain underexplored as structured data in ludomusicology. We present DAFMExplorer, an open-source pipeline that treats these presets as a corpus for reproducible, data-driven analysis. Our objectives are threefold: to build and document a full pipeline from raw OPM/VGM sources to an analysis-ready dataset with metadata on games, composers, nationalities, and tools (e.g. GEMS); to characterise timbral and structural organisation at scale using unsupervised methods; and to release code, notebooks, and methodology for reuse by researchers and practitioners.
Two Jupyter notebooks implement the workflow. The first handles data extraction: parsing OPM presets from the DrWashington collection, deduplication (e.g. volume/TL-based), game-name extraction and normalisation, and enrichment via web scraping (Sega Retro, VGMrips, Wikipedia) for composer, nationality, and GEMS usage. The second performs data analysis: a feature set of 58 FM parameters plus derived indices (e.g. Brightness, Complexity), standardisation, PCA for variance analysis, t-SNE/UMAP for 2D embeddings, KMeans with elbow-based choice of k, and nearest-neighbour similarity for recommendation.
The cleaned dataset contains over 93,000 presets. KMeans yields seven stable clusters, interpreted as “sonic realms” (Raw Signals, Neon Action, Polished Arcade, High-Speed Chiptune, Deep Space FM, Fantasy Atmospheres, Experimental Playgrounds). Embeddings reveal structure by composer, region, and tool use; similarity search surfaces timbral neighbours across games. We discuss these clusters as emergent categories of timbral and structural practice on the platform. Treating game audio presets as a structured corpus supports new questions about composer style, regional and tool-based differences, and the shared “sound” of a platform, whilst keeping sounds playable and inspectable. The pipeline is fully open source and documented for reproducibility. This work has led to an interactive web application (DAFMExplorer) that lets users explore the 2D embedding, listen to presets in real time via a software YM2612, filter by cluster/composer/game, and export banks in DMP format. We plan to extend the same methodology to other FM/OPL families (e.g. YM2151, YMF262) for comparative, platform-crossing ludomusicology.

There is both an art and a science to orchestrating 8-bit chiptune soundtracks for HD remakes, crossing perceptual borders between acoustic and electronic music. “Retro Remix Theory: Orchestrating 8-bit Chiptune Soundtracks in HD Remakes” analyses the orchestrational choices of 8-bit-to-HD remixes, distinguishing conventionally-motivated choices from unique, strategic ones. Illustrated by tracks from Fire Emblem Gaiden (original, remix) and Pokémon (original, remix), 8-bit to HD orchestrations are motivated by these musical parameters of the 8-bit original: register, timbral envelope (ADSR), textural role, idiomatic writing, and musical topics. Analysing three case studies reveals a spectrum of orchestration strategies, ranging from conventional to strategic (Hatten 1994):
1. Dragon Quest III | HD-2D Remake, ‘Into the Legend’ – The timbre, fanfare topic and idiomatic writing in the original conventionally motivate the remake’s opening brass fanfare. Strikingly, the rapid sextuplet arpeggiation and rising chromatic gesture in the original is not reflected in the remake’s more pensive B section, giving the original greater textural dynamism.
2. Final Fantasy III, ‘Elia, the Maiden of Water’ – The original melody’s register and timbre conventionally motivate the remake’s English horn solo, and the remake’s harp accompaniment is similarly conventionally-motivated by textural and idiomatic factors. Strikingly, the Pixel Remaster strategically expands the original with greater dynamic range and added vocal solo.
3. Link’s Awakening, ‘Ballad of the Wind Fish’ – The original’s fantastical timbre blurs voice and string qualities. The remake translates this into French horn and violin and the original’s noise channel percussion is similarly conventionalised, attenuating the strategic markedness of the original’s uniquely 8-bit character.
Much ludomusicological insight may be gained by exploring the orchestrational choices of 8-bit-to-HD remixes, intersecting with scholarship in remixes, chiptune and timbre studies. HD remake soundtracks blur musical and aesthetic boundaries of past and present, acoustic and electronic.

In 2013 Uematsu Nobuo was crowned the ‘Beethoven’ of game music by Classic FM. Uematsu, however, revealed his discomfort of being associated with classical music in several interviews. Identifying as a rock musician, and having fronted the bands Black Mages and Earthbound Papas, Uematsu explained that the ‘classical’ sounding influences from Final Fantasy’s music actually came from a different source: the diverse and hybrid styles of 1970s progressive rock. In 2018, William Gibbons had similarly proposed that the supposedly ‘historical’ and ‘classical’ sounds of music found on Nintendo and Sega systems were, in fact, mediations of 1970s progressive rock. In this paper, by applying Gibbons’ insights to the music of Final Fantasy VII, supplemented by clues from interview materials with the composer, I trace some of Uematsu’s music to his rock idols.
Ludomusicologists have produced excellent work highlighting Uematsu’s compositional techniques such as leitmotifs, character markers, musical narratives, and layers of thematic memory found also in the music of John Williams or Richard Wagner. Stylistically, instructive work (including those by Dana Plank, Jessica Kizzire, and James Tate) has elucidated baroque, Stravinskian, and psychedelic tonal languages present in Uematsu’s work too. Based on my previous comprehensive study of 1970s progressive rock, I add to these analyses through specific comparisons of Final Fantasy VII’s music with similar (sometimes identical) musical motifs, textures, and harmonic or rhythmic patterns found in progressive rock. I suggest that progressive rock offered Uematsu a musical ‘topic’ prominent on ‘boss’ battles, including his famous ‘One-Winged Angel.’ Ultimately, I propose that Uematsu’s pioneering mediations of the progressive rock ethos (progress, stylistic hybridity, and experimentation) provide further avenues to contextualise his music and compositional approach.

Gambling is a core tenet of the Dragon Quest (DQ) JRPG series. From the randomness rate of enemy encounters in battles, to the scarcity of regular save points, DQ titles are deeply connected to probability and risk (Kalata, 2008). This design principle has been openly reaffirmed by DQ’s acclaimed designer Yuji Horii (Miyake and Sakata, 2024). It is no coincidence, then, that casinos are also a core recurring institution within the myriad worlds of the DQ series.
Building on explorations of musical imagery associated with gambling (Kamp, 2024), this paper examines the music and soundscapes of differing iterations of the casino within the DQ series across multiple gaming platforms, with particular attention given to examples within Dragon Quest IV, Dragon Quest VIII and Dragon Quest XI. I will argue that the audial rhetoric of the DQ casino often projects satirical images of opulence and iniquity. Compositions of prominent and triumphant brass sections played within these casino locations convey a consistent rhetorical message of prosperity and success. The DQ series conveys the historical influence of the black-tie environments of Monte Carlo to the loud neon pachinko parlours popular across Japan, sonically portraying casino cultures through the overwhelming spectacle of money, the musical rhetorics of wealth, and an overloading of the senses (Bergman, 1999, 11).