PhD research yields success for Cerys at GameSoundCon in California
PhD student Cerys Eckersley has taken her fascination with the fundamentals of music, sound and gaming to an international stage after presenting at a prestigious convention held in Burbank, California, the heart of one of the gaming industry’s key hubs.
About to enter the final year of her PhD at the university, Cerys specialises in 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 game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cerys made a successful application to speak at the recent GameSoundCon, an industry and research event that took place near Hollywood.
Encouraged by her tutor Catherine Haworth to develop her Master’s thesis on the musical portrayal of the gothic in video games, Cerys’ PhD looks at how medieval concepts in games are represented through soundtrack .
By extension to her PhD research, Cerys’ talk on rhythm, music, and combat design in the game Elden Ring at GameSoundCon was such a success that the positive feedback from some leading lights in ludomusicology has given Cerys inspiration for the next steps in her PhD that could lead to more vital industry experience.
“Matthew Thompson and Dana Plank are two big names in ludomusicology, and it was a real privilege to meet them,” says Stockport-based Cerys. “I have read a lot of their work, and I wrote a review of Dana’s book last year, ’The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music ’ - jointly edited with Lisa Scoggin - for the Journal of Sound and Music in Games, so it was great to meet them in person.
“Dana expressed an interest in me writing up my work into a longer piece for the journal, which she edits, which would help me extend my work.
“The American approach from the presentations I saw were music theory-based, whereas mine was a lot more visual and textual, reading reviews of games and picking apart what people think of games, as the fanbase for the game is a very rich research source.”
Cerys’ presentation focused on the medieval fantasy role-playing game Elden Ring, but she began to marry her love of gaming to her passion for music after earning her first-class BMus from Huddersfield in 2021.
“My interest in game sound really started in the last year of my bachelor’s at Huddersfield. After COVID-19 hit, I was studying remotely at home in Stockport and I had a Nintendo Switch to help pass the time over the lockdowns. Thinking about how some of the games I played actually worked sparked something off in me.
“My tutor Catherine Haworth was very encouraging, as the field of game sound had not been covered so much academically. For my GameSoundCon talk, I looked at a lot of gamers and YouTube channels have picked up on how rhythms are used in what are known as ‘boss fights’ in Elden Ring, and I unpicked that.
“It is not rhythm in the sense that you are in a bar of four, for example, and an enemy’s hits are on beats two and four, it is more that you are in a combat flow with the enemy and that crafts its own rhythm. I wanted to analyse these fan responses and ask how we can define rhythm in this context.”
Matthew Thompson encouraged Cerys at GameSoundCon to put in a further proposal for the North American Video Game Music Conference, which takes place in May 2026, to explore this concept further.
“Video games are different to film, where the music is set to a scene, while in games the music accompanies the players’ actions. Gaming blurs that boundary, because the player assumes an avatar within a game. You’re not just a passive listener and the experience is a lot more interactive.”
Despite the daunting prospect of being one of the first speakers at GamesSoundCon and in the area where a number of major gaming companies are based, Cerys was delighted with the reception to her presentation and the positive response from both the research and industry attendees.
“I’m pleased to have got my name out there, and it was really encouraging to see how open people were to new research within ludomusicology. It was an amazing experience and I was very happy to represent the University of Huddersfield in such an important location within the gaming industry.
“I would also like to thank the university for the thank the School of Arts and Humanities Postgraduate Support Fund for supporting my trip. It was an allowance to help contribute to aid in the development of a PGR’s access to sources, or their ability to share their research in presentation or publication.
“The funding enabled me to travel overseas to present my research to an international audience, which is an amazing opportunity, especially as I am studying full-time and considering the economic limitations, with GameSoundCon being an in-person only opportunity.”
Dr Catherine Haworth, from the university’s Centre for Research in Music and its Technologies, adds, “It is great to see Cerys’ game music research having an impact on a global stage, especially at an event with such a range of leading industry and academic speakers .
“She’s a great example of a Huddersfield graduate who has taken the skills and interests developed during her undergraduate degree and continued to progress those and excel. We’re all really proud of her.”