2024’s Grammy for video game music was awarded today, and it went to a name you may not know, but you have definitely ‘heard’ of her work.
Winifred Phillips grew up with an aptitude and interest in music, and she also happened to be a gamer. For the first decade of her career, she worked as a composer, voice actress, and producer for radio dramas.
However, in 2004, Phillips learned she could also join the video game industry by making music for games. And her first project was a big one: Santa Monica Studio’s first God of War for the PlayStation 2. Phillips would go on to be the main composer for the LittleBigPlanet franchise, as well as a scattering of various titles, as different as Clash of Kings to Assassins’ Creed III: Liberation.
Phillips already earned awards from as far back as her first work on God of War, but today she earned her first Grammy, for a game you may not even know came out.
But we did report on it. Digital Eclipse made a full 3D remake of 1981 PC title Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, and it released on all platforms last May 2024. As the first party based RPG video game ever made, it set a standard the other giants in RPGs would follow, from Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Baldur’s Gate 3, to South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Phillips did not have an easy job with this title. To harken to the origins of video game RPGs, and the tabletop games that they directly took inspiration from, she had to evoke the aural aesthetics and memories of Western fantasy itself. This was included in the description provided for the official album of its soundtrack:
“For Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, Winifred Phillips composed for medieval instruments from around the world, including gitterns, domras, talharpas and nyckelharpas, viola da gamba, dulcimers and psaltery, recorders, pipes and bone flutes, organs and an assortment of lutes, frame drums, and all manner of medieval percussion.”
If you care to look around for this soundtrack, we think you’ll be hard pressed to argue that Phillips deserved this win. Yes, over big budget and high profile games like Black Myth Wukong, Astro Bot, and the 2024 TGA Best Score winner, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
It’s admittedly also refreshing to see that the Recording Academy could see beyond big budgets and the influence of rabid fandoms to pick a soundtrack that could stand on its own merits. One would wish that video games’ award giving bodies could also hold themselves up to such standards.
You can watch Winifred Phillips’ acceptance speech for the Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord soundtrack below.
