Ludomusicology

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Fernández-Cortés
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Video Game Music

In the past two decades, the study of video game music has come into its own and gained acceptance in the academic community. This subdiscipline, now commonly referred as ludomusicology, is still attempting basic questions concerning how it can be researched. This article aims to present the current situation and to reflect about some of the main lines of research related to the music of video games and their culture, a field of ongoing research that has received little attention in Hispanophone academia up to the present time. This article was originally published in Anuario Musical 75 (2020): 181–99 and has been translated for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games. https://doi.org/10.3989/anuariomusical.2020.75.09

The Atari VCS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth B. McAlpine
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Hardware Design ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Home Video ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Sound Chip ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the Atari VCS, the machine that took video games out of the arcades and into the living room and established Atari as the dominant player in the home video games industry, at least for a time. It examines the context that surrounded the birth of the Atari VCS and how that influenced its hardware design, in turn shaping both the sound and people’s expectations of video game music. The Atari’s sound chip, the Television Interface Adaptor, gave the Atari VCS what might charitably be described as a ‘characterful’ voice. By reviewing the hardware, this chapter explores how and why the Atari VCS sounded just the way it did, and by exploring some of the games that were released for the platform the chapter shows how, while sound games did indeed sound dreadful, with a little musical ingenuity they could work wonderfully as game soundtracks.

The author's arsenal: loosening standards for protectability and substantial similarity in video game copyright

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-43
Author(s):  
Oliver Brown
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Case Law ◽  
District Court ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
Economic Expectations ◽  
Cultural Conversation

This article examines and critiques the American copyright regime's increasingly protective approach to video games and their subject matter. Over the past decade, a trio of district court decisions have bolstered protection for video games by relaxing standards for protectability and substantial similarity. Subsequent rulings, concerning both games and other forms of intellectual property, suggest this protective streak will continue. While heightened protection might provide a necessary deterrent to ‘cloning’ and other kinds of impermissible copying, it will also endanger valuable forms of appropriation. After decades of limited copyright involvement, mimesis has become an important element of game creation – widely tolerated by the gaming community as a source of inspiration, interoperability, and cultural conversation. A more expansive view of protectability may inhibit imitative behavior that has, in the past, benefited new creators and fans without harming the economic expectations of prior authors. Moreover, that new approach, which relies heavily on juries for unpredictable, case-by-case determinations, may restrict the financial and creative outlook of the video game industry at large. In its first section, this article identifies the elements of video games that have been deemed protectable under copyright law. The second section summarizes foundational video game case law, in which courts established restrictive standards for protectability and substantial similarity. The third then discusses the paradigm shift towards more expansive protectability, recounting cases where courts found games worthy of heightened protection. In its fourth section, this article argues that the protective trend has yet to peak, looking to evidence gleaned from recent copyright suits. A concluding section outlines the risks of overprotection, cautioning against a potentially unreasoned and impractical copyright standard.

scholarly journals Soaring Through the Sky

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Analytical Potential

In this article, I explore the analytical potential of musical topics and tropes in the study of video game music. Following Neumeyer (2015), Almén (2008), and Hatten (1994), I establish a methodology with which to approach musical topics in video game music. By way of a case study, I begin by defining the soaring topic through a historical and cultural examination of flying in cinema and video games. Flying, and more specifically soaring, has been a staple in film from the earliest days of cinema, and the music that accompanies it is also found in video games that prominently feature flying. I then engage the music of flying sequences in two specific video games, Final Fantasy IV (1991) and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011). The resulting analyses demonstrate that this approach helps to unpack the complex narratives found in video games.

scholarly journals Impact of Censorship on the ‘Historical’ Video-Game

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Andrew John Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Past

This article presents two related ideas. Firstly, video-games should be considered a historically relevant medium through their capacity to generate narratives and lessons of the past. Secondly, the issue of censorship – the doctoring of the past when creating said narratives – is as equally detrimental to history as shown within video-games as it is in alternative formats. The historical significance of censorship within video-games, however, has been largely ignored, mainly due to the perceived ‘trivial’ or ‘ludified’ nature of the medium. As a result, the historiographical capacity of video-games continues to be trivialised and undermined. These arguments are covered over three sections. The first unpacks several criticisms of video-games, in turn showing the medium’s historical capacity. The second uses the example of Nazism to describe and explain the presence of censorship within video-games and the rationale that informs it. The final section links these two ideas, discussing the historical impact of censorship within video-games and why the ‘ludic frame’ of video-games seemingly shadows their equally significant ‘historical frame’. 

scholarly journals Use of Progressive Rock in Donkey Kong Country (1994)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Background Music ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Video Game Music ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Progressive Rock ◽  
Oxford University Press

Whereas most of Nintendo’s music from the 1990s used basic looping structure and simple chiptune-reminiscent sounds, Donkey Kong Country (1994), composed by British composer David Wise rather than by Nintendo’s in-house composition team, featured texturally more complex music, including features characteristic of the 1970s/80s progressive rock style such as short repeated melodies and chord progressions with layering (Collins 44).  For example, in “Fear Factory” (Figure 1), we hear a repeated chord progression of (VI, iv, i) underneath a faster eighth-note melody. Very little harmonic movement occurs and the focus is more on the melodic layers that occur in this top voice. In addition, “Fear Factory” includes unconventional punk, “mechanic/industrial”, and “glitch” noises that emphasize melodic content (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18pEFQb3EM&t=45s). As William Cheng discusses in Sound Play, the use of such unconventional sounds often contribute to a feeling of dissociation and alienation in the player, and create a divide between diegetic (that is, music the characters are aware of) and non-diegetic (that is, “background” music) soundscapes (Cheng 98-9). While this is not a direct element of prog-rock, both industrial and prog-rock music styles feature a strong focus on texture. Collins speculates that this may have been an attempt by Nintendo to capitalize on the ‘edgier’ market of other game producers such as Sega (Collins 46). In this paper, an analysis of form, melodic structure, and instrumentation from Donkey Kong Country’s “Treetop Rock” and “Fear Factory” will demonstrate features atypical of Nintendo style, which normally features catchy tunes, simple instrumentation, and pop-inspired harmonies. Figure 1: e-:  VI               iv                      I                                       VI                    ivBibliography Cheng, William. Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. The Oxford Music/media Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Collins, Karen. Game Sound an Introduction to the History, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.

scholarly journals Cognitive and Behavioral Correlates of Achievement in a Complex Multi-Player Video Game

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 198-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam M. Large ◽  
Benoit Bediou ◽  
Sezen Cekic ◽  
Yuval Hart ◽  
Daphne Bavelier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
Behavioral Correlates ◽  
Action Video Game ◽  
The Past ◽  
League Of Legends

Over the past 30 years, a large body of research has accrued demonstrating that video games are capable of placing substantial demands on the human cognitive, emotional, physical, and social processing systems. Within the cognitive realm, playing games belonging to one particular genre, known as the action video game genre, has been consistently linked with demands on a host of cognitive abilities including perception, top-down attention, multitasking, and spatial cognition. More recently, a number of new game genres have emerged that, while different in many ways from “traditional” action games, nonetheless seem likely to load upon similar cognitive processes. One such example is the multiplayer online battle arena genre (MOBA), which involves a mix of action and real-time strategy characteristics. Here, a sample of over 500 players of the MOBA game League of Legends completed a large battery of cognitive tasks. Positive associations were observed between League of Legends performance (quantified by participants’ in-game match-making rating) and a number of cognitive abilities consistent with those observed in the existing action video game literature, including speed of processing and attentional abilities. Together, our results document a rich pattern of cognitive abilities associated with high levels of League of Legends performance and suggest similarities between MOBAs and action video games in terms of their cognitive demands.

Classifying Game Music

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Video Game Music

This final chapter considers the ways in which video game music has rapidly entered the concert repertoire, and what that change might mean for how listeners, critics, and musicians understand classical music. In the wake of successful long-running concert tours such as Video Games Live (which pairs local orchestras with a traveling multimedia show) and Final Symphony, many financially strapped orchestras have embraced game music as a way of reaching out to millennial audiences, much to the chagrin of some traditionally minded audience members. Moreover, some groups have begun to advocate for reclassifying game music as classical, thus breaking down persistent barriers between high and low arts.

scholarly journals In-Game Instructions: The Extent of Their Usefulness in Enhancing the Vocabulary Acquisition of ESL Learners

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Pei Qin Tan ◽  
Kim Hua Tan
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Vocabulary Acquisition ◽  
Language Level ◽  
The Past ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Esl Learners

The contributions of video games to learning, including vocabulary acquisition, have been acknowledged over the past few decades. In-game instructions may account for the majority of such contributions. This study checks whether such instructions can pique the curiosity of participants and subsequently enhance their vocabulary acquisition. Ten 11 to 12-year-old pupils were recruited for a month-long video game experiment. Three instruments, including vocabulary tests, interview questions and observation checklists, were employed. The qualitative data were analysed to determine the key aspects of in-game instructions and how they enhance the vocabulary acquisition of these pupils. Findings show that not all participants have gained additional vocabulary from in-game instructions. Whilst all participants were interested in playing the video game, only four of them showed curiosity towards the in-game instructions. Therefore, the usefulness of in-game instructions fundamentally depends on the attitudes of players towards the game, the suitability of the language level being used in the game and the players’ demand for such instructions.

scholarly journals Ghosts of the Present Past: Spectrality in the Video Game Object

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Justyna Janik
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Game World ◽  
Digital Materiality ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Dual Status ◽  
Game Environment ◽  
Game Environments

The aim of the article is to analyse the phenomenon of ghost characters in video games from the perspective of Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, and to use this as the starting point for a hauntological engagement with the video game object’srelationship with its own past. The paper will investigateghostly figuresand their spectral status inside the video game environment, as well as their uncertain hauntological status as both fictional bygone souls and digital in-game objects.On the basis of this analysis of ghostly figures in video game environments, I draw a line between the past of the fictional world and the past of the game world, and examine what happens when they overlap.The dual status of the in-game ghost will thereby serve to metonymically anchor an investi-gation into the duality of the game as a whole, as both fiction and digital materiality, and of the dif-ferent dimensions of the past that exist in between these two levels of the game object.

scholarly journals Concordia Discors or Teach the Conflicts. Reflections on the Validity and Heuristics of Scholarly Conflict

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Implications

What kind of methodological and axiological lodestars would the academic community of Islam scholars do wise to observe in the current situation of intense political and medial ‘discursivization’ of Islam and Muslims? How are ‘we’ – our imagined scholarly community – to navigate in a field that over the past decades has moved from a fairly select and exclusive island to an increasingly deceitful and contested archipelago? Surely the first thing to do must be critical self-reflection, asking ourselves questions about our trade’s ideological and political implications and about the truths we hold selfevident. The second thing to do is also rather ‘self-centred’, albeit in a less meta-wise way, and that is to try to decide and spell out and commit oneself to some kind of research agenda.

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