Tobias, E. S., & O’Leary, J. (2017). Video games. In The Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education (pp. 263-272). Taylor and Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9781315686431
Video Games (in the context of music learning and teaching)
In 2017, Jared O’Leary and I had our chapter, Video Games, published in the Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education [affiliate link]. The chapter provides an overview of video games in relation to music learning and teaching. Here’s how we begin the chapter:
When considering the potential of technology for musical engagement, teaching, and learning, music educators can acknowledge a range of contexts and ways of being musical to inform their practice. Video games offer a compelling locus for musical experience and engagement. Video games are digital, interactive, and immersive multimedia or intermedia that people play, and often in a social context. Characteristics of play, interactivity, immersion, and social engagement are critical to understanding the popularity of video games in contemporary society and their potential in music education. Video games are not simply media objects, but designed experiences with rules and mechanics which create systems that often invite problem solving, creative and critical thinking, and meaning making (Squire, 2006). p. 263
Throughout the chapter we address three overarching themes:
- Video games and music education
- Game-based learning and learning theories
- Music and musical engagement within video games – including:
- music and immersion
- interactive music within video games
- creating and performing music within game environments
Music education research on video games is still at a fairly early stage. At the time we wrote the chapter the majority of published studies in music education addressing video games focus mostly on rhythm action games. Our chapter on video games in the Routledge Companion to Music, Technology, and Education along with our chapter on video games and sonic participatory cultures in the Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure provide some additional directions for people interested in addressing video games in music learning settings or research contexts.
Works cited in this post:
O’Leary, J., & Tobias, E. S. (2017). Sonic participatory cultures within, through, and around video games. In R. Mantie & G. D. Smith (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of music making and leisure (pp. 541-564). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Squire, K. (2006). From content to context: videogames as designed experience. Educational Researcher, 35(8), 19-29.