PhD student Cerys Eckersley recently expanded on her research in the use of music in gaming to an audience of experts at a prestigious conference held in New York.

Cerys spoke at the 22nd Music and the Moving Image conference, held at NYU Steinhardt, to scholars and academic experts on the use of rhythm in the music of the long-running and globally popular Japanese Soulsborne franchise.

Her field of expertise is ludomusicology, the academic study of music in video games. Having been published in the university’s student research journal Fields in 2022 with an analysis of music and identity in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cerys’ invitation to New York came after she impressed an audience of leading lights in the gaming industry at GameSoundCon in California last year.

Having taken her degree and Master’s at Huddersfield, Cerys was encouraged by her tutor Catherine Haworth to develop her Master’s thesis on the musical portrayal of the gothic in video games into a PhD, which looks at how medieval concepts in games are represented through soundtrack.

Cerys was one of the last speakers at the NYU event, which she feels was a wholly different experience from being the first to present at the GameSoundCon in Burbank.

“The Burbank conference was both an industry and research event for the gaming industry, whereas the New York event was research only and mainly for people specialising in screen media research,” says Stockport-based Cerys.
 

“Engaging with people’s research from the gaming industry in ludomusicology and then from those across screen media is quite different, although there are many links between them, as ludomusicology borrows some research methodologies from film and TV musicology. 

“My PhD supervisor, Catherine Haworth, encouraged me to think about how to teach my paper rather than just deliver it, and to make it accessible to researchers, especially if they haven’t played the game, to help them understand my research concept.

“There were a lot of musicologists at the conference, so the technical side of music did not need explaining too much. I was keen to explain how music works within a game, and how we can look at defining rhythm in Soulsborne boss fights.

“Specifically in New York I talked about rhythm and flow in the Soulsborne franchise. I looked at the concept of flowing combat design across franchise more widely than at GameSoundCon, which had a narrower remit and focused solely on the Elden Ring instalment of the franchise. It was important to make this accessible and easy to digest, especially as I was speaking at the end of the event and I didn’t want people to switch off.”

The 20-minute presentation was followed by a 10-minute Q&A session, which helped Cerys focus her knowledge into a form that her audience responded well to.

UK conference in the offing
“One of my questioners was James Heazlewood-Dale, a well-known musicologist who has also played Soulsborne games and knows them well. The two presentations, in 2025 and this year, gave me the confidence to answer their questions well and also it was gratifying to know that what I’d said had gone over with the audience and have some useful pointers to how I can develop this work and write the research up for publication, now it’s been developed and had success at two conferences.

“The other talks at the conference have also given me some pointers for my research. For example, in my panel, the speaker before me looked at Beat Saber, a VR game where you have to ‘hit’ animated blocks in time to the music. It was fascinating to analyse rhythm in such a different way, and it’s given me something to think about in the rest of my research as I work towards completing my PhD in the next 18 months or so.

“I am also looking forward to presenting at MSMI/Sound on Screen V, a conference similar to MaMI, at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in July. This time, I am presenting different research to rhythm in Soulsbourne and on how we can define ‘Nordic horror’ in indie video game soundtracks. It features interviews I have participated in with Scandinavian-based game composers, and is more closely related to my PhD work.”

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