DESCRIPTION:
Winifred Phillips, famous for her work as a game music composer and for her MIT Press book, A Composer's Guide to Game Music (purchase on Amazon here: http://amzn.com/0262026643), discusses the effects of music on the intellect and how this impacts gameplay in this video excerpt from her Keynote Speech at the North American Conference on Video Game Music, entitled "The Role of Music in Video Game Immersion." The keynote speech is introduced by Professor William Gibson of TCU.

About the North American Conference on Video Game Music: Video game music has come a long way from bleeps and bloops. Today’s game soundtracks often equal film scores in quality, and this music is consumed in large amounts by millions of players every day: studies suggest that 58% of US citizens—and 97% of young adults—play video games, with an average weekly play time of around 8 hours. Concerts of game music regularly play to sellout audiences across the globe, as orchestras and bands cater to audiences eager to hear live versions of their favorite tunes.

Game music has also emerged as a major topic of academic study, and on January 17–18 many leadings game-music scholars and composers from across the US and Canada will gather in Fort Worth, TX on the campus of TCU for the North American Conference on Video Game Music. This conference will feature two days of presentations and discussions on all aspects of music in games, including new composition techniques, approaches to the analysis of game music, and case studies of specific games.

About Keynote Speaker Winifred Phillips:

Winifred Phillips is an award-winning composer. Some of her video game credits include Assassin's Creed Liberation, Total War Battles: KINGDOM, God of War, The Da Vinci Code, Speed Racer, Shrek the Third, Spore Hero and six games in the LittleBigPlanet franchise, among many others. Phillips is also the author of the bestselling book, "A Composer's Guide to Game Music" (The MIT Press, 2014), which recently was awarded the 2014 Global Music Award Gold Medal for an exceptional book in the field of music, and was described by The Boston Globe as "the first book designed to help experienced musicians brave the transition to the world of game composing." Phillips has received an Interactive Achievement Award/D.I.C.E. Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, three Hollywood Music in Media Awards, five Game Audio Network Guild Awards, three Global Music Awards, an IGN Best Score Award, a GameSpot Best Music Award, a GameZone Score of the Year Award, a GameFocus Award, and three Gracie Awards from the Alliance of Women in Media. Winifred was the composer of the award-winning Radio Tales series, writing the musical scores for over one hundred music drama programs such as "War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine" and "The Tell-Tale Heart." The series first aired via National Public Radio and then received a ten-year weekly broadcast run on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Her credits in film and television include the NBC coverage of the London Olympic Games, America's Got Talent, Britain's Got Talent, Storm Stories, BBC's Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure, and Trek Nation, among many others.

Phillips will give two presentations at the upcoming Game Developers Conference 2015 in San Francisco. She has previously spoken at such events as the Society of Composers and Lyricists seminar in New York City, The Audio Engineers Society Convention, The Montreal International Game Summit, GameSoundCon, the Ludomusicology Conference in Chichester UK, the Berklee College of Music Seminar, and the Middle Tennessee State University game music lecture moderated by Rick Carnes, President of the Songwriters Guild of America.