By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow
Welcome! I’m videogame composer Winifred Phillips. As most of us are no-doubt aware, the Game Developers Conference 2020 has been postponed. This means that the yearly conference’s rich and diverse schedule of lectures will not be performed live next week during GDC 2020 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I was really looking forward to presenting my lecture, entitled “The Importance of Themes: Creating Musical Signatures for your Games.” Having given GDC presentations every year since 2015, I consider the Game Developers Conference to be an indispensable event for both my career and my personal enrichment as a game music composer. While the postponement is a set-back for the entire game development community, I’m glad to share some awesome news! A portion of the GDC 2020 lecture schedule will still take place as planned – albeit from a much different venue. Instead of in-person presentations, GDC plans to stream many of their previously scheduled GDC talks during GDC week as part of a “virtual conference.” This means that I can share my lecture as a GDC Virtual Talk. Best of all, all of the GDC Virtual Talks will be available for free!
My virtual talk will focus on the best ways to create memorable thematic material. Catchy melodies can help to enhance a game’s distinctive character and originality, which can subsequently lead to a more memorable gameplay experience. In preparing my presentation, I conducted quite a bit of research. Because of time constraints, not all of that scholarly research made it into my final presentation. I was sorry to have to cut those materials – I thought it was pretty interesting stuff! So let’s now discuss some of that extra info in this article. We won’t be delving into the actual subject matter of my lecture, since I’ll be saving that material for my actual presentation that will be included in the slate of GDC 2020 Virtual Talks. But the general relationship between music and memory is a fascinating area of study. If our music can help games to stick in the minds of players, then it should be useful for us to understand some expert scholarly viewpoints on the relationship between music and memory.