Music and Remediated Storytelling: The Convergence and Divergence of Music in Video Games and Film

As video games and film often incorporate narrative and ludic techniques from one another, music in contemporary media is inevitably subjected to the same types of borrowing and reimagining. This book offers a collection of essays dedicated to understanding music’s role in this endless cycle of remediation.

As video games and film often incorporate narrative and ludic techniques from one another, music in contemporary media is inevitably subjected to the same types of borrowing and reimagining. Music and Remediated Storytelling: The Convergence and Divergence of Music in Video Games and Film offers a collection of essays dedicated to understanding music’s role in this endless cycle of remediation. This collection addresses music in popular franchises caught between the nexus of video games and traditional story-driven screen media including Star Wars, Batman, How to Train Your Dragon, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Silent Hill, Disney Princess films, and others. The contributors apply many theoretical and musicological methodologies, exploring topics like leitmotivic design, immersion, psychological analysis, nostalgia, gender studies, and intertextuality. Readers will gain an understanding and appreciation of how music’s relationship with ludic and narrative qualities of story-driven video games, as well as films and television shows that incorporate elements of gameplay. Music and Remediated Storytelling contributes to the growing fields of both ludomusicology and film musicology and is among the first dedicated collections that addresses the intersection of both areas. This collection will be of interest to students and scholars of music, video games, screen media studies.