The Des Moines Gamer Symphony Orchestra is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. It's one of a handful of video game orchestras that have popped up across the country over the years, bringing together gamers and musicians alike to perform scores that evoke excitement, thrill and grand heroism — as well as nostalgia.⁠ ⁠ As the 2024-2025 season begins for many of Iowa's orchestras, some of the state's largest, like Orchestra Iowa, the Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra and the Des Moines Symphony, are leaning into the video game “super-genre” (as the gamer symphony calls it) for the first time, in hopes of attracting new, and potentially younger, audiences as overall attendance to classical music events continues to decline.⁠ ⁠ Some see it as the next step, after orchestras across the country have embraced other types of media for some of their concerts. The most well-known of these efforts are film screenings with live accompaniment, where the symphony plays the scores of beloved mov...