LudoScience

History of videogames (focused book)

Author(s) : Damien Mecheri
Editor : Editions Pix'n Love
Publication date : 04-17-2014
Language : french

Over 300 full-color pages, this book focuses on one particular aspect of video games: music. Seven thematic chapters details the impact of the technological evolution on video game music, the similarities and differences between game music and movie music, the various ways music is actually used in video games, the wave of rhythm games, and the rise of rearranged OST and concerts. Each chapter is concluded with a short biography of the main compositors cited as examples, and the last book chapter gathers very interesting interviews with several famous musicians: Jesper Kyd, Christophe Héral, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Olivier Derivière, etc. While we can find a bit regrettable that the book picks most of its examples from Japanese video games, and more specifically from J-RPG games, it still manages to offer very interesting thoughts over the video game music in general. The author is clearly passionated about music, and he successfully shares a bit of his knowledge over the topic while allowing us to discover many talented artists. A very interesting book about a rarely discussed topic.