What are In-Game Concerts? A History of Ludomusical Performances

Abstract This article provides a historical overview of in-game concerts through a bibliographical review of literature surrounding online gaming worlds and semistructured interviews with players and developers involved in the production of these ludomusical performances. Although most of the literature uses the term “virtual worlds,” I will refer to these spaces throughout this article as “online gaming worlds,” as this description is more adequate to my understanding of virtuality, which follows Brian Massumi’s (2014, p. 55) view that “far from designating a sterile replica of the real, the virtual is the motor of its continued being.” This article identifies how ludomusical performances began to emerge, focusing on the first silent, text-based online gaming environments: Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs). It argues that ludomusical performances are an intrinsic part of gaming and have been a spontaneous aspect of player self-expression since the early origins of online computer games. This point has been previously argued in shorter form (Moritzen 2025a, 2025b) and is here considered in greater detail. These musical events attracted significant investment and media attention during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the restrictions on in-person gatherings that impacted the live music industry also expanded the concept of the in-game concert. This article includes excerpts from three interviews with people involved in producing in-game concerts, collected by the author through the Discord online communications platform between April 2023 and January 2024.