Ludomusicology 2020 - Conference on Video Game Music and Sound - ONLINE

Announcement: Ludomusicology 2020, scheduled to be held this April in Valletta, Malta has been moved to a Virtual Format. The dates are April 25th, May 2nd, May 9th. We hope you can join us!

We're excited to announce that Ludomusicology 2020 is back in business! The conference will happen online and sessions have been revised to happen weekly, allowing more flexibility for everyone to participate. We have cancelled the local event, due to Covid-19, but it has been moved to a virtual event over multiple weeks to take into account schedules and timezones.

There is a silver lining and now the sessions will be free! Just register at this link and you'll be able to join, starting Saturday April 25th.

For delegates who have registered to the orginal physical conference, the University will reach out to you directly with full refunds. You don’t need to do anything.

We are exploring alternative options including a digital conference and will announce further details in due course, so keep an eye on: https://www.ludomusicology.org/ for news.

A Focus on the Importance of Music in Video Games

The musicological approach of the Ludomusicology organisers up sets them apart from others that are more focused on non-performative visual arts, non-interactive film, or those that focus on sound in general, instead of music. Their aim is to promote academic collaboration, establish game music as a significant research area alongside academic musicology, act as a hub or point-of-contact to advertise the research of the group members (and of other academics working in the field) and serve as a general attempt to create a coherent direction and body of knowledge for this sub-discipline.

Researching How Music Affects Video Games and Viceversa

Game music deserves its own research area and the Ludomuscology group has made headway in this area with the conference as well as their publications such as Approaches to Video Game Music, which contains a wide range of approaches and showcases research that has an impact on the way game music is studied. Music in games has particular features including but not limited to modularity (or it can even be procedurally generated), functioning to provide immersion into the game, and interactivity, leading to this year's theme: ‘Participation, Performance, and the Body’ covering topics such as:

• Representations of the body through sound and music in games
• Performance of gender/sexuality and game sound
• Physical interactivity with music and games
• Dance and drama as lenses for conceptualizing game audio
• Voice and game sound
• Game music and accessibility

Paper proposals are accepted until January 6th 2020, see the Call for Papers for more information on howand we to submit. We also welcome proposals from practitioners and composers showcasing practice as research.

The first keynote speaker will be Prof. Hillegonda Rietveld, Professor of Sonic Culture at London South Bank University, musician and electronic music specialist, co-editor of the special issue ‘Hear the Music, Play the Game’ for GAME. More keynotes will be announced as we near the date!

Interested in Music and Video Games? Join us!

The importance of music in video games is undeniable. And there is a great scope for exploration of music's role in digital games, in certain types of video games great expense and effort is spent on attainment of the feeling of presence (see for example Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption series), but does research support that realism in video game music and soundscapes required for this feeling of presence? Ludo2020 is the place for you to explore and learn more about video game research, either through submitting your own work or joining us to learn from, discuss with, and interact with the leading researchers in the field ranging from the academic to the practical.

Registration fees :

Student early bird @ 70E until 24 January

Student late fee @ 90E

Regular registration fee @ 100E until 24 January

Regular late fee @ 120E

Registrations on hold while organisers plan contingency.

See you on the sunny spring shores of beautiful Malta and let us dive into music and video games.

Ludomusicology 2020 is hosted by Costantino Oliva, Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta and organized by Melanie Fritsch, Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers & Mark Sweeney.