- Winifred Phillips wins a Grammy for Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
- She triumphed over top composers from Spider-Man 2 and God of War
- Phillips highlights the impact of video game music on player experiences
The year’s Grammy Awards were quite special for video game music, the composer Winifred Phillips won the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media award for making the music for the game: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.
Winifred Phillips Triumphs at the Grammys
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a remake of the original Wizardry (1981), a game that is considered a pioneer of Role-playing games. This remake developed by Digital Eclipse offers players enhanced gameplay while keeping the game’s essence the same as the original.
Now as for Phillips , winning the Grammy wasn’t an easy task, she triumphed over some of the biggest names in video game music. The nominees for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media included:
- Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Pinar Toprak
- God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla – Bear McCreary
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – John Paesano
- Star Wars Outlaws – Wilbert Roget II
Phillips thanked the audience and developers, in the follow-up interview she stated :
” It was such a wonderful experience. Digital Eclipse developed Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, and it’s a fantastic role-playing game. It embodies medieval fantasy in the best tradition of Dungeons & Dragons and classic fantasy storytelling. It was so inspiring to create the music for it, and the team at Digital Eclipse was an absolute joy to work with.”
She expressed her happiness and excitement,
” I am totally blown away. I cannot believe this—it’s just amazing! It’s like a bright light just exploded in my head, and I am just overwhelmed. ”
The Growing Recognition of Game Soundtracks
This Grammy award is a major milestone for Phillips, highlighting that her work is getting more recognition. Although she has received several awards and nominations in the past this marks her first Grammy victory. Her notable works include.
- God of War
- LittleBigPlanet 2 & 3
- Sackboy: A Big Adventure
Phillips also shed light on the significance of video game music and how it develops the connection between players. Undoubtedly music plays an essential role not only in movies but in the gaming world as well.
When players get to hear the music associated with their favorite title, they instantly start to reminisce about the memories and experiences attached to it. She mentioned,
“We have to do a very unique thing we’re creating music that needs to accompany people who are having an experience and who are making choices and having adventures and living a grand story and we’re kind of creating the music for that story so it’s such a wonderful privilege cuz you feel like you’re sort of collaborating with the players you like you know them and they know you and and yeah it’s really very special.”
Phillips’s victory gives hope to the other composers as well that there is a space for recognition of their work. Video game music and soundtracks are also evolving amazingly and this category may become the main category at Grammys Awards show in the coming years.
