Game Changers: Video Game Grammy Nominees

Photo depicting Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips in her music production studio. As the current Grammy Award winner in the video game category, Winifred Phillips will serve as the moderator of the upcoming GAME CHANGERS seminar, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hi!  I’m videogame composer Winifred Phillips, and in February of this year I was thrilled to win the GRAMMY® Award for my musical score for Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!  My Wizardry score won in the category of Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media.  Every year, the Society of Composers & Lyricists (in collaboration with Electronic Arts and White Bear PR) organizes an online seminar entitled GAME CHANGERS.  The seminar features all of the nominees in the video game category of the Grammys that year. Discussions during the seminar range from expert analysis of composition best-practices, to sources of inspiration that fuel the creation of the Grammy nominated scores.  I remember participating in the GAME CHANGERS seminar as a nominee for Wizardry.  It was one of the most awesome online seminars I’ve ever participated in, and I was really honored to be a part of it!

Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips, here shown in her official Grammy Award portrait. Winifred Phillips won the Grammy Award in February of 2025 for her soundtrack album to the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.Now, I’m thrilled to share that as the current Grammy winner in the video game category, I have been invited this year to serve as the official moderator for the seminar!  On December 16th, I’ll be interviewing all of the nominees for next year’s Grammy Awards, and I’m really looking forward to exploring their creative process in composing their Grammy-nominated video game scores.  It should be tremendously inspiring!  Only current members of the Society of Composers & Lyricists can attend this popular online seminar (more info here).  However, everyone can enjoy the Grammy-nominated scores composed by these celebrated video game composers!  With that in mind, I’m happy to share their work in this article.  I hope our readers will be inspired by the creativity and skill on display in these nominated soundtrack albums!

If you are a current voting member of the Recording Academy, you’ll find the following details helpful as you decide how you’ll vote in the video game category.  And if you’re not yet a member… why not consider joining the Recording Academy?  Any Recording Academy member can submit their soundtrack releases for Grammy Awards consideration.  Let’s get the video game composer community involved!  After all, the Grammys are famous for being ‘Music’s Biggest Night,’ so the video game music community should be a big part of it!  More information about joining the Recording Academy can be found here.

So now let’s explore these currently nominated soundtrack albums for the Grammy Awards!  I’ve listed them alphabetically by game title.  For each nominated score, I’ve provided a biography of the composer at the top, followed by a Spotify playlist of their nominated soundtrack, and a no-commentary gameplay video demonstrating the game for which the music was composed.  Enjoy!!

The official logo of the GAME CHANGERS seminar series, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. As included in the article by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora –
Secrets of the Spires

Photo of Grammy-nominated video game composer Pinar Toprak (photo credit: Sandrine Gomez). Pinar Toprak is a GRAMMY® and EMMY®-nominated composer, conductor, and performer. She’s nominated for a Grammy this year for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Secrets of the Spires. She made history as the first female composer to score a multi-billion-dollar video game (Fortnite). She also was the first female composer to score a billion-dollar film (Captain Marvel), and as a multidisciplinary composer, her credits include James Cameron’s Avatar universe and Disney theme park projects including the new Epcot theme. She’s a four-time winner of the International Film Music Critics Association Award for Best Original Score.

Spacer included in the article by Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

The official logo of the GAME CHANGERS seminar series, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. As included in the article by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

Helldivers 2

Photo of Grammy nominated video game composer Wilbert Roget, II.Wilbert Roget, II is a BAFTA® Award-winning and GRAMMY® nominated composer. He is nominated this year for two Grammy awardsone nomination for Helldivers 2, and one nomination alongside his co-composer Cody Matthew Johnson for Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card & A Pirate’s Fortune. His previous credits include the scores to Call of Duty: WWII, Mortal Kombat 1, Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, and Pacific Drive. His scores have earned nearly a dozen awards and nominations from the Game Audio Network Guild, Academy of Arts and Sciences (DICE Awards), ASCAP Composers Choice Awards, and others.

Spacer included in the article by Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

The official logo of the GAME CHANGERS seminar series, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. As included in the article by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Photo of Grammy nominated video game composer Gordy Haab.

Gordy Haab is a GRAMMY®-winning and BAFTA®-nominated composer. He’s nominated for a Grammy this year for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Gordy has scored major titles such as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Star Wars: Battlefront I and II, and Halo Wars 2, earning multiple G.A.N.G. Awards, a BAFTA nomination, and the inaugural SCL Award for Best Interactive Score. His collaborations span the London Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Nashville Symphony, and his additional credits include The Walking Dead, Kinect: Star Wars, and Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings.

Spacer included in the article by Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

The official logo of the GAME CHANGERS seminar series, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. As included in the article by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

Star Wars Outlaws:
Wild Card & A Pirate’s Fortune

Photo of Grammy nominated co-composers Wilbert Roget, II and Cody Matthew Johnson.

For this GRAMMY nominated soundtrack album, the aforementioned Wilbert Roget collaborated with Cody Matthew Johnson, so let’s introduce him!  Cody Matthew Johnson is a GRAMMY®, BAFTA® and DICE® Award nominated music producer, songwriter, and composer, nominated for a Grammy this year for his work on Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card & A Pirate’s Fortune. His other awards include a Hollywood Music in Media Award, a Global Music Award, and two Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including the Distinguished Service award). He’s also had his work featured on such game projects as Marvel Rivals, Trek to Yomi, Bayonetta 3, Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2, Arknights, PUB-G Mobile, Call of Duty: Mobile, Honor of Kings, Quantar, Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, and more.

The official soundtrack for Star Wars Outlaws: Wild Card & A Pirate’s Fortune consists of the music from two separate DLC story packs, so I’ve included the no-commentary gameplay videos for both here:

Spacer included in the article by Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

The official logo of the GAME CHANGERS seminar series, hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. As included in the article by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

Sword of the Sea

Photo of Grammy nominated video game composer Austin Wintory (photo credit: Lisa Margolis)Four‑time GRAMMY®‑nominated and two‑time BAFTA®‑winning composer Austin Wintory has earned a Grammy nomination this year for Sword of the Sea. He was previously nominated for Journey, Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, and Aliens: Fireteam Elite. Austin has scored more than 60 video games, including Assassin’s Creed and Towerborne. His music has been performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms Gaming concert. His other awards include a DICE Award, three International Film Music Critics Awards, a Hollywood Music in Media Award, and three Game Audio Network Guild Awards.

Spacer included in the article by Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

 

Conclusion

So those are the current nominees for the video game category of the Grammy Awards!  Recording Academy members – voting is currently underway, so don’t forget to vote!  The final day to cast your vote is January 5th, 2026!

For those of us who aren’t members yet, why not join?  By joining the Recording Academy and submitting our work, we can make sure that video games continue to be a strong presence in the Grammys each year!

Thanks for reading this overview of the Grammy nominees in the video game category.  My next article will be coming in January – I’ll be providing a big curated list of resources for game audio folks, gathered together for easy reference!  Until then, you can learn more about breaking into the video game industry in my book, A Composer’s Guide the Game Music.  In the meantime, I wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a fantastic New Year!

 

Image of the book cover for the book A COMPOSER'S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, written by game music composer Winifred Phillips and published by The MIT Press.

 


Headshot of Grammy winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.Winifred Phillips’ accomplishments as a video game composer include her Grammy® Award-Winning original musical score for the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (listen to the official soundtrack on Spotify).  Her Wizardry soundtrack has also won a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award.  Phillips is known for composing music for games in many of the most famous and popular franchises in gaming: Assassin’s Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, LittleBigPlanet, Lineage, Jurassic World, and Wizardry.  Her music for Sackboy: A Big Adventure garnered a BAFTA Award nomination.  Phillips’ other awards include the D.I.C.E. Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She is the author of the award-winning bestseller A COMPOSER’S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, published by the MIT Press. An interview with her has been published as a part of the Routledge text, Women’s Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound, which collects the viewpoints of the most esteemed female composers in film, television, and games.  Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Getting your big break – 2026 edition (for the video game music composer)

Grammy Award-winning game composer Winifred Phillips at work in her studio at Generations Productions. This photo is included in Phillips' article about breaking into the industry as a video game composer.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Delighted you’re here! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips.  In previous articles, I’ve shared the story of how I broke into the video game industry with my first project – the original God of War.  This year, Sony Santa Monica is celebrating its beloved franchise with a special release of the God of War 20th Anniversary Vinyl Collection.  The 13-disc limited edition vinyl set includes the music from the game that started it all – including my career as a video game composer.  Sony Santa Monica has also released a special limited edition double vinyl that includes just the music from the original God of War.  It’s all made me very nostalgic, and I’ve thought about my early days in the game industry a lot lately.

Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips celebrates the release of music from her first game in the God of War 20th Anniversary Vinyl Collection.

I’m amazed that this boxed set with my music from my very first game has released in the same year that I won the Grammy Award for Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!  2025 has been an important year for me.  I certainly know that my “big break” experience is not the typical career path for a game composer, but I thought it might be useful for those who haven’t heard it.  I told my “big break” story during a Society of Composers & Lyricists seminar, and this video captured that portion of the event.  My “big break” story starts 4 minutes and 20 seconds into the video:

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GDC 2025 A Score For Wizardry: Motifs for Wizards

Photograph of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips, showing at work in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

So happy you’ve joined us! I’m game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my latest projects is my Grammy Award-winning music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: the 3d remake of the classic 1981 RPG that remains one of the top dungeon-crawlers of all time! (Listen and download the soundtrack). I’d like to welcome you to the sixth and final installment of my article series based on the lecture I gave at the popular Game Developers Conference of 2025! In my lecture, “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music,” I explored my composition process for this Grammy Award-winning score. Since most of us would not be able to attend GDC, I was happy to arrange the content of my 2025 GDC lecture into this six-part series. In these articles you’ll find the entire substance of my GDC lecture, along with all the audio and video examples and a large assortment of the images I used during my presentation. If you’d like to catch up with the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:

GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval World-Building
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval Style
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: The Underworld
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Music of Sanctuary

In part five of this series, we discussed the use of recurring themes in areas of sanctuary, and how those themes lent unified musical identity to the perilous Underworld maze.  Now, moving on from exploring the maze, let’s talk about fighting the awesome monsters in Wizardry.

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GDC 2025 A Score For Wizardry: Music of Sanctuary

Grammy Award-winning game composer Winifred Phillips, shown here working in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hey there! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and in March 2025 I presented a lecture at the Game Developers Conference about my Grammy Award-winning score to Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music” explored both the historical research and creative process that went into the composition of this medieval and Renaissance-style score.  The Game Developers Conference is a very popular event each year, but since not all of us would be able to travel to San Francisco to attend, I’ve gone ahead now and included the entire content of my GDC presentation in this article series! These articles also include videos, audio files and images that I used during my talk. In case you haven’t read the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:

GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval World-Building
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval Style
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: The Underworld

In part four of this series, we were exploring how to musically intensify trepidation while players explore the perilous Underworld maze beneath the Wizardry castle.  The dungeon labyrinth is a treacherous place!  But there are a couple of bastions of safety here.

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GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: The Underworld

Photo of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips, at work in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Welcome back! I’m game composer Winifred Phillips – my most recent game release is the Grammy Award-winning original music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!  Wizardry is the smash-hit 3D remake of the awesome 1981 dungeon-crawler (listen and download the soundtrack). This is part four of my series of articles based on the content of the lecture I gave at the Game Developers Conference 2025. My lecture (entitled “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music”) explored how music can help flesh out the world of a game by virtue of historical research and thematic construction. In order to make sure everyone can access this lecture (including those of us who couldn’t attend GDC 2025), I’m very pleased to share the content of this GDC lecture in an article series that includes the entire discussion, along with videos and some of the best supporting images.

In case you haven’t read the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:

GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval World-Building
GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval Style

In part three of this series, we heard a cross-section of the music I composed for the Wizardry Overworld, representing many facets of ordinary medieval life. Now, we’re about to move from the Overworld to the Underworld, and there’s nothing ordinary down there.

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GDC 2025 A Score For Wizardry: Medieval Style

Photo of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips at work in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

So happy you’ve joined us! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my most recent releases is the Grammy Award-winning musical score for Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.  Wizardry is the awesome smash-hit 3D remake of the classic 1981 dungeon-crawler (listen and download the soundtrack). In March of 2025, I gave a presentation at the Game Developers Conference entitled “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music.”  This is part three of my series of articles presenting the content of that lecture.  In order to best make my GDC discussions as widely accessible as possible, I share the content of my GDC presentations every year, including the full lectures, videos and illustrations from my GDC talk.

If you haven’t read the previous installments from my Wizardry lecture, you’ll find them here:

  1. GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music
  2. GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: Medieval World-Building

In part two of this series, we explored how medieval and Renaissance musical structure and instrumentation were used for the music of the Wizardry Training Grounds.  So let’s check out another example: the Adventurer’s Inn, where party members get rest and manage their equipment. For this composition, I wanted to evoke the idea that other adventurers might be gathered around the hearth, swapping stories. So I decided to model the instrumentation and style around those popular troubadours of 13th century France, who were famous for setting gallant adventures into song. You’ll notice the bowed lyres and keyed fiddles providing an underlying structure for this composition:

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GDC 2025 A Score For Wizardry: Medieval World-Building

Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips, shown at work in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Welcome back! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my latest game projects is the Grammy award-winning music for the smash-hit 3D remake of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! (Listen and download the soundtrack.)

In this article, I’m presenting the second part of my article series containing the substance of my lecture, “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music,” from the Game Developers Conference 2025 (a top industry conference for game developers). Many of us in the game audio community can’t attend GDC, so I post the content of my GDC lectures every year in an article series that presents the full discussions, supported by many of the videos and illustrations from my lectures. Last month I posted part one of this series, in which we considered the history of the Wizardry video game and the factors that led to medieval and Renaissance musical choices for the structure of the Wizardry score.

An animated gif depicting the wizard Werdna from the Wizardry video game franchise. Included in the article by Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips.

Speaking of structure, let’s now take a moment to talk about the premise of the Wizardry game. The world of Wizardry centers on a medieval castle in an unnamed feudal kingdom led by a cruel and insane ruler.

As the game progresses, we learn that a powerful arcane amulet, once owned by this mad overlord, was stolen five years ago by a Wizard of great power and malice.

Tapping into the magic of the amulet, the Wizard crafted an elaborate dungeon directly beneath the castle, filled it with terrifying monsters, then hid at the very bottom of the maze.

The overlord, in his madness, decided that this subterranean deathtrap would be the perfect proving grounds in which to test prospective members of his elite guard.

That’s the premise of the game. You assemble expert adventurers willing to slice their way through this underground meatgrinder. If they aren’t all killed, they can return to the surface to rest, resupply, recruit new members, grab some training, and then head back into the maze.

Animated gif showing the underworld maze from the Wizardry video game franchise, as included in the article written by Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips.

So Wizardry is built around two worlds – the Overworld and the Underworld. The Overworld is a charming slice of medieval life, and the Underworld is a bloodsoaked murder tomb. But here’s the thing – the underlying gameplay mechanic from 1981 is still at play here. When you visit a shop in the Overworld, you’re looking at a series of menus. When you wander through the ominous passages of the Underworld maze, you’re seeing walls and doors, with some occasional skeletons on the floor. If these places were going to feel like living, breathing environments, the music would have to help them get there. So let’s start first with the music of the Overworld. This is where the fun begins.

The medieval period lasted from the late 400s A.D. to the mid 14th Century. It’s best known for the famous Golden Age of Chivalry, the Crusades, feudalism, and the construction of huge Gothic cathedrals. This is the period of history that I turned to when I started researching musical styles for the Wizardry Overworld.

Animated gif illustrating the characteristics of the medieval period, as included in the article by Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips.

Medieval music is an embarrassment of riches. It’s sophisticated enough to be entertaining to our modern ears (particularly as you move into the late medieval period) but it’s also got this alien vibe that makes it intriguing. Part of that weirdness rises from the emphasis on two intervals: the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth.

Image illustrating the use of perfect fourths and perfect fifths in medieval music, as included in the article by Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips.

In modern music, we lean on triads. We think they’re beautiful. But medieval musicians thought triads were ugly. You could use them as passing tones, but if you’re coming to rest, it’s on a lovely, consonant 4th or 5th. Let’s listen to how that principle applied to my music for Wizardry.

Here’s some of the music I composed for the Training Grounds, where you prepare your adventurers for combat. Since the Training Grounds would have been pretty physically active, I employed some late medieval dance rhythms. This one is inspired by the popular Estampie – literally the “stamp.” I also used consistent 4ths and 5ths in the musical construction here, with thirds appearing only in passing:

Aside from this fundamental difference of harmonic opinion, medieval musicians had a ton of awesome instruments to choose from – so let’s take a look at a couple of instruments from the previous example. As a salute to the Viking conversations we had at the beginning of the project, I investigated Nordic instruments and settled on two nice Viking-style choices that wouldn’t have been out of place in the medieval period:

The nyckleharpa (a keyed fiddle, pictured right)
The talharpa (a bowed lyre, pictured left)

Image depicting the talharpa and nyckelharpa, as used in the music composed by Grammy Award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips.

You just heard those two instruments prominently in the music of the Training Grounds. They worked exceedingly well together for drone-based compositions. Paired with the viola da gamba, these instruments firmly situated the score in an early historical period.

So that wraps up part two of this six-part article series on the music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!  We’ll be continuing the discussion of the Overworld music in the next installment.  In the meantime, here’s a behind-the-scenes commentary video I narrated, discussing the Training Grounds music in more detail:

If you’d like to learn more about composing music for video games, you can read my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music (published by the MIT Press).

Image of the book cover for the book A COMPOSER'S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, written by game music composer Winifred Phillips and published by The MIT Press.

 


Headshot photo of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips.Winifred Phillips is a video game composer whose latest project is her Grammy® Award-Winning original musical score for the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (listen to the official soundtrack on Spotify).  Her Wizardry soundtrack has also won a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award.  Phillips is known for composing music for games in many of the most famous and popular franchises in gaming: Assassin’s Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, LittleBigPlanet, Lineage, Jurassic World, and Wizardry.  Her music for Sackboy: A Big Adventure garnered a BAFTA Award nomination.  Phillips’ other awards include the D.I.C.E. Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She is the author of the award-winning bestseller A COMPOSER’S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, published by the MIT Press. An interview with her has been published as a part of the Routledge text, Women’s Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound, which collects the viewpoints of the most esteemed female composers in film, television, and games.  Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

GDC 2025 A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music

Photograph of Grammy Award-winning composer Winifred Phillips in her music production studio.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hey everybody! I’m game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my latest projects is the Grammy Award-winning musical score for the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! (Listen and download the soundtrack.)

Last March I was honored to be a presenter at the Game Developers Conference 2025 — a top industry event where experts and leaders in game development present tutorials and strategies to their peers. My lecture was titled “A Score for Wizardry: World Building Through Music.” Each year, after I present my lecture at GDC, I transcribe the lecture into an article series (so that those who couldn’t attend the conference can still read the content). This article kicks off my six-part series based on my 2025 GDC presentation! In these articles you’ll find all of the discussion from my GDC lecture, accompanied by many of the videos and illustrations that I used to support the ideas explored in my talk. So let’s get started!

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GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: The Human Soundscape

Photograph of Winifred Phillips (award-winning composer whose latest project is the original music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord).

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

So happy you’ve joined us! I’m game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my latest projects is the music of the bestselling game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: the 3d remake of the classic 1981 dungeon-crawler! (listen and download the award-winning soundtrack for free). I’d like to welcome you to the sixth and final installment of my article series based on the lecture I gave at the Game Developers Conference 2024!  In my lecture, “Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Effects,” I explored how the audio assets and techniques of expert sound designers can be applied to our work as game composers.  Considering that not all of us would be able to attend GDC that year, I arranged the content of my 2024 GDC lecture into this six-part article series.  These articles have shared the entire substance of my lecture, along with all the audio and video examples and a large assortment of the images I used during my GDC talk.  In case you haven’t read the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:

  1. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Effects
  2. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Sounds of Nature
  3. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: The Animal Kingdom
  4. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Science and Technology
  5. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Industry and Mechanics

In part five of this series, we examined the sounds of machines and technology, exploring some of the best ways these sound design assets can be put to use within our music.  So now let’s return to the top of our full list of audio assets that we’ve been considering over the course of this article series:

Illustration depicting the bullet list used in the GDC 2024 presentation of video game composer Winifred Phillips.

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GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Industry and Mechanics

Photograph of award-winning video game composer Winifred Phillips in her music production studio, composing the original music of one of her latest projects, Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Hey there! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and I’m excited to announce that I’ll be presenting a lecture this March at the Game Developers Conference 2025 about my Grammy Award-winning score to Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!  “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music” will explore both the historical research and creative process that went into the composition of this Medieval and Renaissance-style score. So excited to share what I learned composing the score for the game Kotaku named one of the Best RPGs of the Year!

In the meantime, let’s now turn our attention to my continuing series of articles presenting the lecture I delivered at last year’s Game Developer’s Conference.  In my 2024 GDC presentation,“Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Effects,” I discussed how game composers can adopt the tools and strategies of expert sound designers when composing evocative music for games.  Since not all of us would be able to travel to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference, I’ve gone ahead now and included the entire content of my GDC presentation in this article series.  This article series also includes all of the videos, audio files and images that I used during my talk. In case you haven’t read the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:

  1. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Musical Sound Effects
  2. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Sounds of Nature
  3. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: The Animal Kingdom
  4. GDC 2024 Dial Up the Diegetics: Science and Technology

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