List of Academic and Professional Resources

[BardicKnowledge]

I'm going to maintain this list of resources for game audio for everyone's use.  In order to prevent the thread from becoming de-railed over time, please don't respond here.  Instead, if you know of a resource that I should add, please PM me and I will add it to this post.

 

Qualifications for being listed here:

 

-Books (including edited collections) must be dedicated to game audio specifically (generic game studies don't qualify, as there are so many that we would lose focus on our specialty).  They should be written by either a scholar with a degree in some field of music or an industry professional with credits on multiple video games.  

 

-Conferences must have a reasonable percentage of papers dedicated to game audio.  Just because there happens to be a game audio panel at AMS this year doesn't mean that the AMS writ large is focused on game audio, for example.  On the flip side, NYU's Music and the Moving Image features a significant number of game papers every year -- certainly enough that attending would be worth your while if all you care about is games.

 

With that aside, here's the list!  Again, PM me to have something added.

 

Books (In order of publication)

 

The Complete Guide to Game Audio by Aaron Marks, published 2001.

 

The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness by George Alistair Sanger, published 2004.

 

Game Sound by Karen Collins, published 2008.

 

From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media.  Edited by Karen Collins, published 2008.

 

Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance by Kiri Miller, published 2012.

 

Playing With Sound: A Theory of Interacting with Sound and Music in Video Games by Karen Collins, published 2013.

 

Sound Play by William Cheng, published 2014.

 

Music in Video Games: Studying Play.  Edited by K.J. Donnelly, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, published 2014.

 

A Composer's Guide to Game Music by Winifred Phillips, published 2014.

 

Composing Music for Games: The Art, Technology and Business of Video Game Scoring by Chance Thomas, published 2015.

 

Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack (33 1/3) by Andrew Schartmann, published 2015.

 

Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music.  Edited by Michiel Kemp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney, published 2016

 

Understanding Video Game Music. Tim Summers, published 2016.

 

 

Conferences

 

Ludomusicology, held annually at a travelling location in Europe.

 

North American Conference on Video Game Music, held annually at a travelling location in the United States.

 

Music and the Moving Image, held annually at New York University.