GameSound is a prototype database that reveals the music and sound effects present within video games in an effort to facilitate academic study.
Using an interdisciplinary approach for categorization and display, GameSound allows online access to a meaningful dataset of technical and musicological data using dynamic search capabilities. Through iterative design and consultation with the game studies community, we hope to develop GameSound into an indispensable resource for game scholars, ludomusicologists, and independent researchers.
Built using Sydney University’s data management system HEURIST, our current data-set includes over two thousand audio entries extracted from the 2005 computer game Civilization IV.
What Is Ludomusicology?
Ludomusicology is an emerging sub-discipline of musicology that focuses on the academic study of the audio experienced in video games. Ludomusicology is interdisciplinary: fostering collaborations with musicology, computer science, film, media studies, and communications. As the field of study has only come to the attention of academic publications, journals, and research groups in recent years, our goal is to foster further growth through the creation of an online database. GameSound includes both technical and musicological data, and utilizes the IEZA framework developed by Sander Huiberts and Richard van Tol for classifying the conceptual design of sound in digital games.
GameSound is a collaboration between TAG student member Michael Iantorno and Australian composer and educator Melissa Mony.