Music and Sonic Environments in Video Games

Kate Galloway is Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA. Her research addresses how and why contemporary artists remix and recycle sounds, music, and texts encoded with environmental knowledge and the creative and social phenomena of internet music communities and practices of listening to the internet. With Paula Harper and Christa Bentley, she co-edited the collection Taylor Swift: The Star, The Songs, The Fans.Elizabeth Hambleton is a librarian and an instructor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA, where she teaches audio for video games. Her research in video games focuses on virtual world soundscapes and sound design.

• List of Figures, Tables, and Musical ExamplesSeries ForewordPrologue: Listening to, Performing, and Playing Game SoundscapesKate Galloway and Elizabeth HambletonPart 1Worldbuilding and Representing SoundscapesChapter 1: Soundscape, Narrative, and Gameplay in the Assassin’s Creed SeriesStephanie LindChapter 2: The Sonic Environments of Medieval(ist) GamesKaren M. CookChapter 3: Quiet and Lonely but Proud: Narrative Sound Design and Composition in the Banner Saga TrilogyEric SegerstromChapter 4: Radiation Acoustics and the Nuclear Soundscape in the Fallout FranchiseReba A. WissnerPart 2Sonic Environments, Performance, and Analytic PlayChapter 5: Currencies and Values of Game SoundsPeter SmuckerChapter 6: Virtuosic Play in Super Mario Maker 2William AyersChapter 7: Sound Affects and Musical Disorientations in Exploration Horror Video GamesSara BowdenPart 3Meaning, Sound, and PlaceChapter 8: Strutting with Streets of Rage: When Dance Music Enters the FightHillegonda Rietveld and Andrew LemonChapter 9: I MUST BE BEAUTIFUL!”: Becoming Human Through Adaptive Vocal SoundscapesJennifer SmithChapter 10: Racialized Fantasy: Authenticity, Appropriation and Stereotype in Super Mario OdysseyThomas YeeChapter 11: Music in/as the Time-Space Continuum in The Outer WildsElizabeth HambletonPart 4Acoustic Ecologies of GamesChapter 12: Ecological Precarity and Techno-Utopianism in the Soundscapes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WildJordan Carmalt StokesChapter 13: Sounds of Extraction and Collection and Listening to the Pixelated Resources of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New HorizonsKate GallowayChapter 14: Sound, Semiosis, and the Selenitic Age of MystStephen ArmstrongChapter 15: Atmosphere as a Concept in Video Game Music DiscourseMichiel KampNotes on ContributorsIndex