By Nazer Lagrimas Jr.
VGMC President

VGMC Vice President Javier Zuniga speaks at the Video Game Music Implementation Techniques forum at the Berklee Learning Center

Video Games.  Some eat, sleep, and breathe them, while others see them as our generation’s flashy waste of time.  But no matter what your opinion may be, one simply cannot deny the fact that video games have become a staple in our every day culture, just as much as film, television, and books. Here at Berklee, hundreds of students spend hours playing video games, and for some of us, we spend an extra hour each week discussing them.

The Berklee Video Game Music Club (VGMC) was started about two years ago by three students who really wanted to push the awareness of this revolutionary field at Berklee.  Filippo Beck Peccoz, Shota Nakama, and Alex Kovacs proposed their ideas to the Film Scoring Department, and shortly after started this student organization which quickly gained a ton of popularity.

Two years later, with the help of faculty advisor Jeanine Cowen, the VGMC has over 250 registered members, and is one of the most active clubs on campus.  The school now offers courses specifically catered to video game music and sound, taught by professor Michael Sweet. Many of the club’s members are fans of the sounds and songs they heard while playing video games in their childhood.  Some are more into the creation of games, diving head first into the challenges of scoring for an interactive, nonlinear medium.  But the one thing that brings us together is the simple fact that we love music, and that we love video games, so why not combine the two?

In our meetings thus far, we’ve discussed various topics. I gave a presentation on the music of Martin O’Donnell, the head composer at Bungie, the team behind the Halo series. Club member Akash Thakkar gave a presentation on obscure games and the soundtracks behind them, showing us footage from games that we never even knew existed.  This week, club secretary Julia Seeholzer will give a presentation on the classic Monkey Island games.

We have a lot planned for the future as well.  At the Berklee Learning Center, we’ll have two forums this fall, one on video game music techniques, and another by video game composer Duncan Watt (Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway), who will present an audio postmortem on the highly anticipated release by Riot Games, League of Legends.  If any of this sounds like fun to you, come join us, every Thursday from 1-2 in the Film Scoring Department, room 268.  Looking forward to seeing you there. Now go play some games!

You can join the VGMC Mailing list for weekly updates by going contacting vgmc@berklee.net.

Nazer Lagrimas, Jr. a 7th semester film scoring major from San Diego Berklee Video Game Music Club President, as well as the Student Government Association Film Scoring Ambassador