The opportunity to “embrace their inner nerds” is coming for TCU students and faculty in January, said William Gibbons, assistant professor of musicology.

Gibbons is the lead organizer for the second annual North American Conference on Video Game Music, which will be held in the Moudy building at TCU on Jan. 17 and 18.

The conference, which is open to all majors, will be free for TCU students and faculty.

Gibbons said there won’t be much video game playing at the conference, but there will be presentations from scholars, professors and graduate students who study the history and theories behind video game music.

“I think now maybe people don’t understand how complicated, how interesting and how innovative video game music is today,” he said. “For me, I think some of the most interesting things happening in contemporary music are happening in video games.”

The conference took place for the first time in January of this year at Youngstown State University in Ohio. TCU will be the event’s second venue.

Though junior applied geoscience major Matthew English was not familiar with the conference at first, he said he is excited a conference on video games is coming to TCU. English is the president of TCU’s Gamer’s Guild, a student organization that gets together to play video games and board games, as well as games of other types.

He said he will “most definitely” be telling the Guild about the conference.

“I think it’s actually really cool that they’re doing this,” English said, “because when you think about TCU, you don’t quite think ‘video games’ as the first thing, so I think it’s kind of a step forward.”

Music from the games “Bioshock,” “The Legend of Zelda” and “Journey” are among Gibbons’s favorites, he said.

He is currently playing “Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag” and enjoying its 18th century music, which he said he wants to bring to the video game music class he teaches for upper level music majors.

Gibbons said he has no problem being called a “nerd.”

“I am absolutely one hundred percent as geeky as it gets,” he said. “I am hundred percent a nerd—and proud of it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diLfEuNso_g&feature=youtu.be