The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, ten experts in game music provide their responses to these issues. This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music. In the course of developing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing game music (Chapters 2, 3 and 4), it explicitly considers other critical issues in game music, including the distinction between game play and music play (Chapters 5 and 6), how notions of diegesis are complicated by video game interactivity (Chapter 7), the importance of cinema aesthetics in game music (Chapter 8), the technicalities of game music production (Chapter 9), and the relationships between game music and art music traditions (Chapters 10 and 11). This collection is accessible, yet theoretically substantial and complex. It draws upon a diverse array of perspectives and presents new research which will have a significant impact upon the way that game music is studied. The volume represents a major development in game musicology and will be indispensable for both academic researchers and students of game music.
Michiel Kamp is finishing an AHRC funded doctoral thesis on video game music at Downing College, Cambridge, focusing on phenomenological and psychological approaches to listening. Previously he completed a Research Master's degree in Musicology at the University of Utrecht. He has contributed to a special issue on video games for the journal Philosophy & Technology. Dr. Tim Summers' research focuses primarily on music for new media and he is currently writing a monograph on music in video games. As well as contributing to essay collections, he has written for the Journal of the Royal Musical Association on music in comics, for Music, Sound, and the Moving Image on music in multimedia franchises, and for The Soundtrack and Act on video game music. Tim has lectured extensively on media music topics, including video game music, television music and film music. Mark Sweeney is currently writing up his doctoral thesis on the aesthetics of videogame music at Hertford College, Oxford. He received an AHRC research grant to complete an MSt (Distinction) in musicology with a dissertation on analysing the music to the video game, Crysis (EA/Crytek, 2007). He teaches musical analysis and various history topics at Oxford and held a non-stipendiary lectureship at St. Catherine's College for the academic year 2011-12.

Melanie Fritsch

Michiel Kamp

Tim Summers

Mark Sweeney