Soundtracks and Scholarship in Video Games
When Marina Gallagher was sitting in Professor Laura Gray’s Music and Landscapes class in 2013, she didn’t imagine that the connections she was making between pastoral music, landscapes, and Classical literature would lead her back to Grebel a decade later, teaching a special topics course on Video Game Music.
“I was completing my Joint Honours in Music and Classical Studies, and I started to realize that there were many resonances between the pastoral tradition in music and in Classics,” she shared. Marina built on the interest she first developed at the University of Waterloo and went on to earn a PhD in Musicology from the University of British Columbia in 2023. Her research explored the relationship between music and landscapes in Final Fantasy X, XII, XIII, and XV, and how music affects how players feel about different types of locations in video games. “My PhD dissertation examined the musical and visual features of pastoral areas – forests and fields - and what I call anti-pastoral locations,” she explained, “hellish underworld-type locations that draw on horror conventions like darkness, fog, and labyrinthine layouts to unsettle you. I found that there are certain features of pastoral and anti-pastoral music that are more prevalent in video game music and create a strong sense of peacefulness and apprehension, respectively, in players when they're used together in a piece of music.”
Marina has continued to investigate how music creates an emotional experience while playing video games and how it influences the way players interact with the game world. “For example, the music evokes different emotions in boss battles based on what type of enemy you’re facing, such as a regular opponent, versus a friend or an ally who's been turned against you, versus your own doppelgänger,” she described. Marina is now looking specifically at adaptive location and battle music in Final Fantasy XVI. The game transitions seamlessly between exploration and battle versions of the same piece rather than using a separate battle track within areas the developers call “stages,” which heightens the emotional peaks of the narrative. “For instance, you’ll be exploring some ruins,” Marina explained, “and the music will fade in extra instruments like drums or French horn for the battles, and then fade them back out when you return to exploring. So, I’m looking at how the music transitions between exploration and battle states and how that supports your immersion and makes you feel more unified in your purpose in these kinds of areas.” To lay the groundwork for her research, Marina must map out the exploration and battle themes, often transcribing them by ear before analysis.
Always on the lookout for video games that convey musical and emotional depth, Marina is also looking at Lies of P. This Korean game is based on the story of Pinocchio, in which, Marina describes, “music plays a defining role in the process of becoming human.” Listening to gramophone records that the player obtains during the game increases Pinocchio’s humanity and “he is able to play more and more beautiful and emotionally expressive pieces on the piano as his humanity increases.” When first playing this game, Marina was reminded of a course she took in grad school on 18th-century music, where they read a treatise called L'homme Machine that compares the workings of the human body to that of machines. “I’m looking at this game through the lens of 19th-century discourse on automata that could play keyboard instruments as well as existing research on music, gesture, and emotion, and how that act of playing actually contributes to the sense of being human in the game.”
While it’s not a common occurrence for video game composers to be spotlighted for their contributions, when Marina listens to an interview or speaks to one of the composers, she finds it helpful to understand some of the choices behind the music. “Scholarship is important in the game industry so we can have that exchange of ideas about video game music,” she reflected. Research in her field can help “inform the dialogue about how interactive media effects people and could help composers create even more impactful experiences for players.”
Music classes at UWaterloo and Grebel introduced Marina to many facets of music, including theory, piano literature, music history, and writing a thesis. “These courses gave me a foundation that I could come back to. The professors at Grebel encouraged me to conduct interdisciplinary research when I started to see resonances between Music and Classical Studies, and I was able to find my own path and build my own niche in my chosen career as a result,” she said. Her studies also prepared Marina for the expectations and rigour of graduate school, especially in terms of conducting music research and looking at source material. “It opened up many different possibilities,” she reflected.
Today, Marina is a part-time Instructor in Grebel’s Music program and has taught Video Game Music and is currently teaching Understanding Music. She has also been a resource to students in the Game Development Club and to students who are composing their own video game soundtracks. Off the UWaterloo campus, Marina teaches video game music appreciation classes for teenagers at the Laurier Academy of Music and Arts, and she teaches private piano lessons and music theory. She also enjoys creating digital resources for other music educators via her store, The Travelling Troubadour Music Resources, on TeachersPayTeachers.com and Boom Learning.
Through her teaching, research, and creative projects, Marina is uncovering new layers of emotional meaning in digital worlds, as she continues to explore how music shapes the video game landscape.
