The ludomusicological community now organizes conferences, runs subgroups within the musicological societies, and engages in discourse with scholarly colleagues in a wide range of related fields.
[citation needed] Academic research on video game music began in the late 1990s,[3] and developed through the mid 2000s.
[10] In 2014 the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music was held at Youngstown State University.
[4] Furthermore, as video games frequently feature non-linear or multi-linear timelines, their music can be similarly multi-threaded in both its form and its experience.
Technological limitations of audio chips in early consoles and computer systems were, in many ways, instrumental in shaping the development of both the functions and aesthetics of game music.
[8]: 21–23 Similarly, Melanie Fritsch observes the relative freedoms afforded to game composers by CD audio (higher quality, though limited to 79.8 minutes) and later MP3 (similar quality to CD audio but with compression minimising length restrictions), while also noting the challenges presented by writing increasingly detailed music to accompany hundreds of hours of gameplay.
For example, scholarly attention is turning to chiptune, which is the creation of music using old video game or sound chip hardware (a definition which is sometimes broadened to include the imitation of the resulting aesthetic).
[23] However, it is also well noted within ludomusicological discourse that video games are very different media to film and television due to the player's interaction.
Consequently, the application of concepts like diegesis does require a nuanced approach that takes the peculiarities of the video game medium into account.
In the next section an introduction to the theorization about "Music as Performance", as conducted by researchers such as Nicholas Cook,[27] Carolyn Abbate,[28] Philip Auslander[29] and Christopher Small, is provided.
[31][32] They also edited a double special issue of The Soundtrack and initiated a new book series called Studies in Game Sound and Music in 2017.
In September 2016, Tim Summers' book Understanding Video Game Music was published by Cambridge University Press.
She had edited the 2nd issue of the online journal ACT - Zeitschrift für Musik und Performance, published in July 2011 that included ludomusicological contributions written by Tim Summers, Steven Reale and Jason Brame.
[11] The SSSMG has the aim of bringing together both practitioners and researchers from across the globe in order to develop the field's understanding of sound and video game music and audio.
While the core audience is game music scholars, the interdisciplinary nature of the field means that the journal encourages submissions from authors who identify primarily with other fields (such as game studies, computer science, educational science, performance studies etc.
[citation needed][needs update] The Ludomusicology Study Group of the American Musicological Society was founded in 2015 and "is dedicated to facilitating academic research on music interactive media", including holding a panel on video game music as part of the annual meetings of the Society.
[37] The Ludomusicology Society of Australia was launched in April 2017, during the Ludo2017 conference in Bath, UK; it aims to "offer a centralised and local professional body nurturing game music studies for academics, people in industry and game music fans alike in the Australasian region.