Roger Moseley

Associate Professor of Music

Roger Moseley, is an associate professor of music at Cornell University who teaches a course on Music and Digital Gameplay.

Moseley says:

“Some of Nintendo's music, such as the themes from Mario and Zelda by famed composer Koji Kondo, has attained classic status, and in general, this new app offers a powerful dose of nostalgia for anyone who grew up playing a Nintendo system. But the app’s success also shows that for millions of people, music from video games is not restricted to the experience of gameplay.

“Nintendo’s catalog of music now rivals the scope of major record labels. It includes music from almost 40 years of gaming history, and it’s organized in a way that allows listeners to cue up playlists based on gaming systems, game franchises, individual characters, mood, and even function (ranging from title-screen music, which is often understated, to boss battles, where composers pull out all the stops).

“It’s unfortunate that the app fails to credit the composers of each track, and I hope that Nintendo adds these acknowledgments to a future version of the app. With a few conspicuous exceptions, composers of game music have struggled to receive the recognition that their work deserves.”

Walker M. White

Director of the Game Design Initiative at Cornell

Walker M. White, director of the Game Design Initiative at Cornell (GDIAC) says game composers have been working for a long time to bring attention to their work.

White says:

“Video Games Live (started by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall) is a concert dedicated to video game music that has been running since 2002. These days big-named movie soundtrack composers have started to work on video games, such as Hanz Zimmer's score to the recently released Dragon Age: Veilguard.”