Call for Proposals: “Ludomusicology and Value” (Journal of Sound and Music in Games) Call for Submissions Publications

Call for Proposals: “Ludomusicology and Value” for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games

This Special Issue seeks to bring together contributors from ludomusicology scholarship and beyond to contribute articles on video game music’s place, particularly in terms of how game music’s cultural value is constructed and promoted. We seek to examine issues of societal appreciation, value, aesthetics, education and scholarship and its reception history and current treatment more widely.

Game music has historically struggled with its identity and perceptions around whether it can be positioned as high-, low- or as Tim Summers terms it, ‘middle-brow’ music.[1] Those whose lives have revolved around Classical music-making have seen video game music encroach on perceptible ‘high art’ boundaries (its appearance in UK radio playlists on both Scala Radio and the normally traditionalist BBC Radio 3 attest to this). Meanwhile, those within video game music spaces seek to, perhaps paradoxically, position game music as both unique from and/or aligned with the value of other art forms. That is to say, arguments for game music as unique and separate from Classical music spaces and ideas of canon coexist alongside attempts to fight poor public perceptions of this music and align video game soundtracks with Classical Music in terms of value and aesthetic worth (as in live concert performances; attempts to have video game music more of a presence in Higher Education syllabi and issues around diversity and representation in video game music spaces). Game music thus, from a perception standpoint, seems to encroach on ‘high art’ spaces whilst angling for cultural prestige paradoxically allied with and against classical and wider popular musics.

Game sound and music has long occupied this disputed space and both its practitioners and researchers continue to make inroads (with perhaps perceptible trepidation) into the live performance space, HE course-design, industry standard practice and standardisations of scholarship to name a few. With the scholarship in a place of interdisciplinary growth and early consolidation and the practitioner field in a state of fluctuating proliferation, a special issue on video game music’s place, societally, culturally and aesthetically particularly in terms of value, is a timely one.

Article contributions could include, but would not be limited to:

• Video Game Music and the Canon: where might intersections between the Classical ‘canon’ and video game music be helpful to understand video game music (see the ‘Colloquy: Canons of Game Music and Sound’ from JSMG 1/1 where a timely reappraisal of this scholarship is vital given the growth of ludomusicology and related interdisciplinary studies).[2]
• Game Music’s musical content and aspects of analysis: how we can (and whether we should) place video game music alongside other art forms in using analytical techniques borrowed from Classical music analysis, popular music studies and interdisciplinary approaches.
• ‘Eclectic Listeners’ and the role of game as both listeners and active participants: games that involve music making and player interaction on an audio level would be welcome as well as an appreciation of players as ‘eclectic listeners’ with their ability to listen beyond usual genre preferences outside of game sound.
• Articles which highlight an intersection between games and other strands of music beyond traditional soundtracking e.g. classical music use in games and music from outside traditional Western/Canonic styles (see William Gibbons’ work particularly in JSMG 1/1 and the Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound).[3]
• Articles which consider games as uniquely positioned, or intrinsically informed by, other art forms e.g. multimedia forms such as film and television or classical music structures and forms such as opera.
• Music Performance and Video Game Music: Game music’s perceived aesthetic worth and the space it could/should occupy in programming and performance compared with related art forms.
• Game music’s societal value and its place within the wider ‘collective consciousness.’
• Video Game Music and Higher Education: boundaries, roadblocks and educational concerns regarding Higher Education provision of music in video games. Could include aspects on video game analysis, game audio and producing music for games without prior musical knowledge.
• Interdisciplinary approaches to video game music studies, such as game audio design, inclusion in game music performance and aspects around diversity and representation in game audio spaces.

The submission process will be two-part: interested participants are asked to submit a 500-word abstract summarizing their potential article. Successful applicants will be invited to submit a full article for consideration, which will be blind peer reviewed.

Abstracts should be sent as a Microsoft Word or PDF document and should be submitted by November 28th, 2025. Please submit abstracts or any questions about the application process by email to valuesspecialissue@gmail.com. Informal enquiries can be directed to the co-editors James Ellis (james.ellis.2016@live.rhul.ac.uk) and Milly Gunn (millicentrosegunn@gmail.com). Contributors will be contacted by January 23rd, 2026, and full paper submissions will be due June 5th, 2026.

Authors are encouraged to review the Journal of Sound and Music in Games’s author guidelines, available here, while preparing their submissions. Please note that the journal does not provide any open access publishing options at this time.
[1] Summers, Tim, “Middlebrow Monsters: Game Music, Italian Opera and Cultural Value” in Ben Walton and Emanuele Senici (eds), Cambridge History of Italian Opera Since 1800 (Cambridge, forthcoming).
[2] Journal of Sound and Music in Games, Vol. 1(1), (University of California Press, 2020).
[3] Gibbons, William, and Mark Grimshaw (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Video Game Music and Sound (Oxford University Press, 2024).