Music, Sound and Identity in Video Games

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-031-87506-9
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 290 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 511 g

Reihe: Palgrave Games in Context

This book offers a comprehensive overview of how video game sound and music represent cultures, spaces and personal identifications. Focusing on the concept of identity, the volume brings together issues as diverse as belonging to an ethnic or cultural group, identifying with certain sexualities or being able to deduce the historical or geographical context of a game. This volume explores whether the musical and sound identities linked to video games are based on clichés and stereotyped arrangements that span cultures and times. It includes case studies that analyse the mechanisms used by game producers, composers and sound designers to “characterise” and represent different identities to broad audiences of potential players, as well as how the players perceive these sonic inputs. The book is organized into three main sections, covering topics as the representation of historical periods, musical stereotypes of cultures from different geographic locations, representations of identity in fictional spaces and sonic depictions gender.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

López Gómez, Lidia

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikgattungen Rock & Pop, Blues, Soul
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Music, Sound and Identity in Video Games.- 2. “A Few Billion Timelines Might Take a While”: Temporality, Disruption, Folklore and Fantasy in 3. Musical Representations of Tudor England in Video Games.- 4. Mixed identities: Picturing Spanish Music in World-travelling Games.- 5. Gaming the Lonely Road of Americana: Authenticity and Identity in 6. (Re)Packaging Japanese Musical Identity in , and  7. Immersive Environments in Video Games as a New Stage for Popular Music Performance.- 8. Spatializing Music in VR Experiences.- 9. Uncanny Landscapes and Cosy Dungeons: from Sonic Spaces to the Musical Narratives of and 10. Dehumanization through Sound: Musical Representations of Fantastic Cultures in 11. Queering Cloud: Music, Gender and Sexuality in Video Games.- 12. Music and Masculinities in Game Space.- 13. Voice of the Fembot: An Analysis of the Subservient and Sinister Vocal Depictions of the Gynoid in Sci-Fi Games.- 14. “I’ll Show You”: K/DA and the Role of the Virtual Popstar in the Games Industry.

Über Autor(innen)

Lidia LópezGómez is a musicologist and violinist. She is Associate Lecturer at the Musicology Department of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Her main fields of research and teaching are audiovisual analysis, film music and music in video games. She has published in journals such as andand and edited the book (Routledge, 2023).