NACVGM 2020 – Traditional Japanese Modes in Video Game Soundtracks
Game music composers in Japan are, like most other musicians in Japan, trained primarily in the use of Western tonality, just as musicians in the West are. But growing up in Japan does nevertheless...
NACVGM 2020 – Musical Form and Gameplay Context in the Japanese Role-Playing Game
The music of role-playing games (RPGs) has been a frequent site of exploration for scholars of video game music in recent years-especially Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtracks for the Final Fantasy series. ...
Brace Yourself Games’ Crypt of the Necrodancer (2015) merges rhythm game and roguelike mechanics in a dungeon crawler setting. Players coordinate their movements with the beat of Danny...
NACVGM 2020 – Surrender to the Flow: Psychedelia in Videogame Music
Although there are numerous examples of psychedelia-influenced imagery in video games(i.e, Earthbound, Katamari Damacy, LSD: Dream Emulator), the same consideration is seldom given to music, I would...
NACVGM 2020 – A Theory of Music as Distraction in Video Games
In his thesis from 2006, Jenova Chen describes a design philosophy for video games that applies Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s concept of "flow,” a state that promotes “optimal experience” for the...
