By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow
Hey everybody! I’m video game music composer Winifred Phillips, author of the book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music. Since the publication of my book by the MIT Press, I’ve maintained a monthly series of articles designed to expand upon the content of that book and enable further exploration of related topics. Inspired by my more recent video game projects in popular franchises such as Jurassic World, Lineage, and Sackboy, these articles have delved into subjects ranging from interactivity, to music theory, to business and networking.
The sheer number of articles has necessitated the inclusion of a navigation tool, so I now include an annual “Big Index” that can assist us in finding our way through the content that’s accumulated over the years. What follows is that index, organized by general subject matter. New to the index are articles from the past year that have engaged in more detailed and technical discussions of music theory-related topics, with deep dives into non-diatonic construction that included atonal and polytonal composition. I’ve also included the transcripts of my interviews with National Public Radio and the BBC that took place in 2023.
showing how a comparison between these two projects can shed some light on the utility of the top interactive techniques and strategies. While comparing this list of interactive music techniques provided me with a lot of material for my GDC lecture, there were other ways in which the two projects were similar. I thought I’d share some brief thoughts on one of the other common threads I found between these two Sumo Digital games.
the GDC Vault: a repository of lecture videos from the long history of the conference. During Showcase week, GDC curated a selection of lectures from their illustrious history and spotlighted those talks in live-streams accompanied by enthusiastic text discussions in an accompanying chat box. One of my lectures from a previous GDC event was featured during this GDC Showcase, and I was happy to participate in the chat discussion, answering questions and providing additional resources. My lecture was entitled, “Homefront to God of War: Using Music to Build Suspense,” and 
and I was able to land the gig because an example of my work landed on the desk of a music supervisor for the project at exactly the right time. What are the chances of that? It’s akin to being struck by lightning, and I certainly can’t advise young composers to depend on that kind of lightning to strike. But I don’t want to leave hopeful young composers in the lurch either.
