Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music

This review by Hillegonda Rietveld assesses two edited collections that mark the growing academic study of video game music: Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music, edited by Michael Kamp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney, and Music Video Games: Performance, Politics and Play, edited by Michael Austin. The review situates both volumes within an expanding interdisciplinary field at the intersection of game studies, musicology, and sound studies, arguing that the interactive relationship between audio and visual elements is central to understanding the game experience.

The review shows how the two collections differ in orientation. Ludomusicology is published in a series on genre, music and sound, and grows out of an annual conference. It applies musicological methods to games, examining immersion, non-linearity, intertextuality, paratexts, and the classification of music games, with contributions on topics such as the use of classical and modernist music in Dead Space and the role of menus and start screens as peritexts. Music Video Games, by contrast, belongs to a series on digital game studies and takes a broader, more interdisciplinary approach, drawing on media and cultural studies to address performance, personas, communal participation, and pedagogy, as in studies of Mario Paint Composer and Rocksmith.

Rietveld also notes areas of common ground and divergence in how the volumes define music games, with Kassabian and Jarman's narrower definition contrasting with Austin's more inclusive framing of music games as instruments, sequencers, and genre-based experiences. The review concludes that the diversity of these collections demonstrates the potential for ludomusicology to develop into a field distinct from a sub-discipline of musicology, one that engages the technological, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of game music, as well as its relationship to popular music.