The Grammy Award is one of the best and internationally recognized music awards in the world, and the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony was recently held, inaugurating a new music category dedicated to video games. The new award is called the “Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media,” which was presented during the ceremony.
The inaugural award went to Stephanie Economou, the composer for the soundtrack of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok. Economou had tough competition. The nominees included some of the best composers and their respective video game soundtracks, such as Austin Wintory for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Bear McCreary for Call of Duty: Vanguard, Richard Jacques for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Christopher Tin for the Old World.
“Thank you for acknowledging and validating the power of video game music,” Economou said.
While this was an inaugural award category at the Grammys, it is certainly not the first time a video game has been nominated for or won the best soundtrack award. In 2011, one of the current candidates, Christopher Tin, was nominated and won the Best Arrangement, Instruments, and Vocals award at the Grammy.
In the following year, in 2012, Austin Wintory was nominated for his work on Journey for the Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. However, Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s work on the film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo took the victory home.
