This book looks at the uses of popular music in the newly-redefined category of the nostalgia game, exploring the relationship between video games, popular music, nostalgia, and socio-cultural contexts. History, gender, race, and media all make significant appearances in this interdisciplinary work, as it explores what some of the most critically acclaimed games of the past two decades (including both AAA titles like Fallout and BioShock, and more cult releases like Gone Home and Evoland) tell us about our relationship to our past and our future. Appropriated music is the common thread throughout these chapters, engaging these broader discourses in heterogeneous ways. This volume offers new perspectives on how the intersection between popular music, nostalgia, and video games, can be examined, revealing much about our relationship to the past and our hopes for the future.
This book looks at the uses of popular music in the newly-redefined category of the nostalgia game, exploring the relationship between video games, popular music, nostalgia, and socio-cultural contexts. History, gender, race, and media all make significant appearances in this interdisciplinary work, as it explores what some of the most critically acclaimed games of the past two decades (including both AAA titles like Fallout and BioShock, and more cult releases like Gone Home and Evoland) tell us about our relationship to our past and our future. Appropriated music is the common thread throughout these chapters, engaging these broader discourses in heterogeneous ways. This volume offers new perspectives on how the intersection between popular music, nostalgia, and video games, can be examined, revealing much about our relationship to the past and our hopes for the future.
Andra Ivănescu
ludomusicology retro musical appropriation media gender race society nostalgia history past future
“Popular Music in the Nostalgia Video Game supplies an interesting discourse into a region where one would not expect popular music and its heritage to be forcefully present. … offers some insights on how variations of ‘authenticity,’ ‘memory,’ and ‘reproduction’ work in this genre.” (A. Ebert, popcultureshelf.com, May 24, 2019)
“To illuminate how postmillennial video games use popular music to construct nostalgia, Ivănescu persuasively guides the reader through a wealth of examples, from indie titles like Gone Home to the blockbuster BioShock and Fallout franchises. This welcome and readable book skillfully draws together approaches from cultural studies, film studies, and ludomusicology, and represents a major contribution to the study of video games and their music.” (William Gibbons, Texas Christian University, USA)