The Grammy Awards has introduced its first ever category specifically honouring video game music. This year’s Grammys features a new category called Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media. However, the nominees are a bit of a bizarre and unexpected selection, which includes Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed and Aliens: Fireteam Elite.
The full list of 2023 Grammy nominations was announced yesterday, celebrating some of the best music (more or less) released over the last year. However, the new category awards video game music which is a first for the awards show. Video game soundtracks have been eligible for Grammys since 1999. Notably, Austin Wintory’s soundtrack for Journey was nominated in 2012.
Wintory is once again on the list of nominations this year for the category of Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media, alongside others. Here’s the full list pf nominees:
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Austin Wintory)
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn Of Ragnarok (Stephanie Economou)
- Call Of Duty: Vanguard (Bear McCreary)
- Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy (Richard Jacques)
- Old World (Christopher Tin)
This is in stark contrast to the nominees for Best Score/Music at The Game Awards this year, which nominates Bear McCreary for God of War Ragnarok, Olivier Deriviere for A Plague Tale: Requiem, Tsukasa Saitoh for Elden Ring, Two Feathers for Metal: Hellsinger, and Yasunori Mitsuda for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Check out the full list of nominations here.
Judging by the Grammys’ chosen nominees, it seems like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy might be the favourite to win. It’s still odd that the Grammy nominations don’t necessarily reflect the best video game scores of 2022, but rather one year behind, potentially due to stringent cut-off dates (the timeframe is very weird).
We’ll know who the first-ever winner of Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media will be soon enough, though it will be great to see Elden Ring or God of War Ragnarok receive Grammy nods in 2024, I guess.
Source: Grammys
