Resonant Worlds: Sound, Matter, and Environmental Design in Games is an edited collection that examines how video games render environments through sound, with particular attention to the sonic expression of materiality. While game studies has long emphasized visual worldbuilding and environmental storytelling, this volume foregrounds how sound communicates the textures, behaviors, and affordances of virtual matter, including water, ice, stone, wind, vegetation, and more, as dynamic, interactive systems.

The collection takes inspiration from prismatic and elemental frameworks to organize chapters around environmental-material categories rather than genres, platforms, or franchises. Each section focuses on a specific ecological or material domain, such as aquatic, forest, subterranean, atmospheric, or frozen environments, examining how sound design produces meaning, embodiment, situatedness, ecological relations, and affect within these spaces.

By shifting attention from “green” ecologies toward a broader spectrum of elemental and material conditions, the volume contributes to interdisciplinary conversations across sound studies, game studies, media ecology, and environmental humanities. It asks: how do players hear matter and how is the immaterial sonified? How do game sounds render environmental processes, resistance, and transformation? And how do these sonic cues shape player perception, action, and identity within virtual worlds?

We invite contributions that explore (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Environmental and material sonification in games
Sonic representations of elemental ecologies (water, fire, air, earth, ice, etc.)
Sound and environmental storytelling beyond music and voice
The relationship between sound, physics, and material simulation
Acoustic affordances and player interaction with virtual environments
Sound design and immersion in ecological or environmental gameplay
Sonic atmospheres and affective environmental design
Media materiality and the auditory communication of virtual and immaterial objects
Sound, embodiment, and sensory knowledge in gameplay
Experimental, indie, or non-traditional approaches to environmental sound
Historical or comparative perspectives on environmental audio in games
Intersections of sound, environment, and identity or player experience

We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches and methods, including but not limited to ethno/musicology, music theory and analysis, sound studies, media studies, environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and game design analysis.

Submission Guidelines

Please send abstracts and inquiries to: kate.a.galloway@gmail.com and submit with the email subject heading “Resonant Worlds Collection”:

An abstract of 250–300 words
A brief bio of 100–150 words

Selected contributors will be invited to submit full chapters of approximately 5,000–7,000 words.

Timeline

Abstract submission deadline: August 15, 2026
Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2026
Chapter submission for editorial feedback: March 15, 2027