Overture 2005–2025

This article was originally published in French as the introduction to a journal issue of Sciences du jeu focused on video games and music. It paints a picture of the field of ludomusicology as it has developed since the late 2000s. A survey of the main monographs, collective works, conferences, and associations reveals that ludomusicology has developed as a sub-field of music studies, far removed from game studies. There is little interaction between these two fields, given the wealth of work in ludomusicology, though the reasons for this lack of intersection between game studies and ludomusicology are not obvious. The article also details ludomusicological publications in French, which are sparse and isolated. As a return to the origins of the word “ludomusicology” hints, there is a benefit to interlinguistic exchanges for the field, and the development of multilingual ludomusicology. This context lends a certain importance to the Sciences du jeu journal issue La portée musicale du jeu vidéo (“The Musical Range of Video Games”), since it brings together researchers active in the fields of game studies and ludomusicology, as well as francophone and anglophone scholars. The final part of the article presents and summarizes the key points of the seven articles published in the issue, so that non-French speakers may get a sense of their contents and turn to translation tools and resources to gain full access to these works.