Tag Archives: assassins creed

BBC Sound of Gaming Interview: Winifred Phillips Discusses Game Music Composition

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Winifred Phillips, pictured in her recording studio at Generations Productions during an interview with the Sound of Gaming radio show on BBC Radio 3.

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Delighted you’re here!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and earlier this month, I was honored to be interviewed for the BBC Radio 3 program Sound of Gaming, hosted by Louise Blain.  BBC Radio 3 specializes in classical music, which means that the Sound of Gaming program is especially unique among that network’s program line-up.  Focusing on exceptional musical compositions from the awesome world of video games, the Sound of Gaming show has been airing regularly since 2019, bringing classical music listeners into a whole new world of musical expression.

Photo of journalist Louise Blain, host of the radio show Sound of Gaming on BBC Radio 3, as included in the article by award-winning video game music composer Winifred Phillips.

The show’s host Louise Blain is a top video game journalist, and the co-author of the popular book Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer’s Edition.  In addition, she co-hosted the BBC Proms 2022 concert “Gaming Music at the Proms” from the famous Royal Albert Hall in London.  In each of her Sound of Gaming programs, she also includes an interview segment called “The Cutscene,” during which she interviews a game music composer whose work fits into the overall theme of the program.  Whether it’s a composer for moody stealth missions, or one who specializes in light-hearted mishaps, the conversation throws light on the musical style that’s explored in the rest of the program.  In the June 3 2023 episode, the theme was “The Extraordinary,” and focused on games that ignite the fires of the imagination.  During my interview for this program, I was delighted to discuss my music for three of my video game projects: Assassin’s Creed Liberation, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Jurassic World Primal Ops.

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Video Game Composers: Thematic Approaches to Game Music (GDC)

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Pictured working in her music studio at Generations Productions, Winifred Phillips is a BAFTA-nominated video game composer of music for games in the franchises God of War, Assassin's Creed, Total War, Lineage, LittleBigPlanet, and The Sims.

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Hey everyone!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and I’m excited to share that I’ll be giving a talk at the upcoming Game Developers Conference!  My talk is entitled, “Composing for Lineage M: Modular Construction in Game Music,” and it’s taking place on Wednesday March 23rd at 10:30 am PT (1:30pm ET).  In my presentation, I’ll be focusing on my experience composing music for a game in one of the most successful video game franchises of all time – the Lineage MMORPG franchise from NCSoft.  During my talk, I’ll be sharing details of the music composition process for this awesome project, including how thematic content was incorporated into the matrix of musical components that formed the structure of the Lineage M musical score.

I won’t be getting into much detail about the substance of my upcoming GDC presentation in this article.  However, it occurred to me that musical themes are a popular discussion topic that has come up in many of my past GDC presentations.  With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a short review of the subject, including some content from a few of my previous GDC talks.  I’ve confined this discussion to my GDC sessions that are now available to view for free in their entirety via the videos list in the Game Developers Conference Official YouTube channel.  You’ll see that I’ve embedded the full-length YouTube videos of those talks below, in case you’d like to see the lectures in their entirety.  For each of these presentation videos, I’ve also included a few short lecture extracts that touch upon the relevant subject matter.  So let’s get started!

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Game Composers and the Importance of Themes: Interactivity in Game Music (Pt. 5)

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This photo includes video game composer Winifred Phillips working in the Generations Productions music studio. Phillips' credits feature entries in such popular and famous game franchises as Assassin's Creed Liberation, God of War, LittleBigPlanet, The Sims, and Total War.

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Hey everybody!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and welcome to the fifth and final installment of my article series based on the presentation I gave at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.  My talk was entitled “From Assassin’s Creed to The Dark Eye: The Importance of Themes” (I’ve included the official description of my talk at this end of this article).  In my presentation, I discussed the music I composed for several video game projects, including Assassin’s Creed Liberation (Ubisoft), God of War (Sony Interactive America), LittleBigPlanet (Sony Interactive Europe), Homefront: The Revolution (Deep Silver), Speed Racer (Warner Bros Interactive), Spore Hero (Electronic Arts), and The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (Wild River).

If you missed any of the previous articles in this series, you can find them here:

In the previous installments of this series, we discussed the importance of repeating musical themes, using the variation technique and fragmentation to support different gameplay types.  So now, let’s explore what happens when musical themes are employed within more complex interactive music systems.

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Game Composers and the Importance of Themes: Recurrence and Rationale in Game Music (Pt. 4)

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Photo of composer Winifred Phillips at work in her music production studio at Generations Productions. Phillips' work includes several famous and popular games and game franchises, including God of War, Total War, LittleBigPlanet, Assassin's Creed, and The Sims.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Glad you’re here!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and welcome to the fourth installment of my five article series based on the presentation I gave this past March at the first-ever completely online Game Developers Conference!  My talk was titled “From Assassin’s Creed to The Dark Eye: The Importance of Themes” (you’ll find the official description of my talk at the end of this article).  In my presentation, I explored the thematic content in music I composed for several top video game projects, including Assassin’s Creed Liberation (Ubisoft), God of War (Sony Interactive America), LittleBigPlanet (Sony Interactive Europe), Homefront: The Revolution (Deep Silver), Speed Racer (Warner Bros Interactive), Spore Hero (Electronic Arts), and The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (Wild River).

If you missed any of the previous articles in this series, you can find them here:

In the last article, we discussed theme fragmentation and variation.  So now let’s consider how themes can best enhance different types of gameplay.

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Game Composers and the Importance of Themes: Repetition in Game Music (Pt. 2)

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Pictured: video game music composer Winifred Phillips in her music production studio. Phillips is the game music composer for The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes game, developed by Random Potion for Wild River Games. Her credits include titles from 5 of the most well-known game franchises, and she is one of the foremost authorities on video game music, having presented lectures at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the Library of Congress in Washington DC, and the Society of Composers and Lyricists in NYC.

By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Delighted you’re here!  I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and this is the second installment of my five article series based on the presentation I gave at the first-ever digital edition of the Game Developers Conference that took place this past March.  My talk was entitled “From Assassin’s Creed to The Dark Eye: The Importance of Themes” (I’ve included the official description of my talk at this end of this article).  In my GDC 2020 presentation, I discussed the music I composed for several video game projects, including Assassin’s Creed Liberation (Ubisoft), God of War (Sony Interactive America), LittleBigPlanet (Sony Interactive Europe), Homefront: The Revolution (Deep Silver), Speed Racer (Warner Bros Interactive), Spore Hero (Electronic Arts), and The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (Wild River).

In the last article, we discussed the concept of the “hook” as it relates to thematic composition, and we explored how an awesome hook can function best from within a main theme track.  In our discussion, we used both a famous example from the Star Wars franchise, as well as the main theme from one of my own recently-released game projects – The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes.  Both examples included a fairly dynamic foreground melody, which made it a great example for our discussion of the role of the hook in thematic construction.  So let’s now consider what happens when we eschew such an attention-drawing melodic element and instead take a more subtle approach.

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Composer Winifred Phillips answers Reddit’s questions in viral Ask-Me-Anything about video game music

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Photo of popular video game composer Winifred Phillips, taken as 'proof photo' for her recent viral Reddit Ask-Me-Anything that hit the Reddit front page, receiving 14.8 thousand upvotes and garnering Reddit's gold and platinum awards.

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Glad you’re here!  I’m video game music composer Winifred Phillips, and I’m the author of the book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music.  Recently my publisher The MIT Press requested that I host a question and answer session on Reddit’s famous Ask Me Anything forum, to share my knowledge about game music and spread the word about my book on that topic.  I’d be answering questions from a community consisting of thousands of gamers, developers and aspiring composers.  It sounded like fun, so last Thursday and Friday I logged onto Reddit and answered as many questions as I possibly could.  It was an awesome experience!  Over the course of those two days, my Reddit AMA went viral.  It ascended to the Reddit front page, receiving 14.8 thousand upvotes and garnering Reddit’s gold and platinum awards.  My AMA has now become one of the most engaged and popular Reddit gaming AMAs ever hosted on the Ask-Me-Anything subreddit.  I’m so grateful to the Reddit community for their amazing support and enthusiasm!!  During the course of those two days, the community posed some wonderful questions, and I thought it would be great to gather together some of those questions and answers that might interest us here.  Below you’ll find a discussion focused on the art and craft of game music composition.  The discussion covered the gamut of subjects, from elementary to expert, and I’ve arranged the discussion below under topic headings for the sake of convenience.  I hope you enjoy this excerpted Q&A from my Reddit Ask-Me-Anything!  If you’d like to read the entire AMA (which also includes lots of discussion of my past video game music projects), you’ll find the whole Reddit AMA here.

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From Total War to Assassin’s Creed: Music from my GDC Talk

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From Total War to Assassin's Creed: Music from my GDC Talk (article by Winifred Phillips, video game composer)Last week, it was my honor and pleasure to give a presentation at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. My talk was entitled “From Total War to Assassin’s Creed: Music for Mobile Games.” The talk focused on the best and most effective methods for composition and implementation of music in portable gaming.  The talk was structured for the benefit of video game composers and game audio pros, and as a part of the presentation, I played short excerpts of music that I composed for several of my top mobile and handheld video game projects. Now that GDC is over, I thought I’d provide streaming links to some of the complete music tracks that I featured during my presentation, in case attendees were curious about the complete pieces of music. So, without further ado, here are tracks from my GDC 2016 talk!

Assassin’s Creed Liberation

The Assassin’s Creed Liberation game was released by Ubisoft for the PlayStation Vita, and delivered an immersive experience from the popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. The game was designed specifically for a portable system, and as such, all aspects of the design were adjusted to cater specifically to a portable gaming experience, including the music.

Game composer Winifred Phillips speaking about the music of Assassin's Creed Liberation at GDC 2016

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From Total War to Assassin’s Creed: Music for Mobile Games (GDC 2016)

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Winifred Phillips speaking about interactive music systems at GDC 2015

I’m so pleased to announce that I’ve been selected as a speaker for the Game Developers Conference 2016, which will take place from March 14th to the 18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  Very happy to be speaking again at GDC!  Last year I gave the #3 top-rated talk in the audio track, which is the collection of presentations focused on audio during the conference.  Last year’s slate of audio talks was thoroughly awesome, so I was really excited to be voted the #3 talk that year, and it’s a tremendous honor to have been invited back to give another game audio presentation. This time my talk at GDC will focus on composing effective music for mobile games!

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Interview about Game Music on The Note Show!

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I’m excited to share that I’ve been interviewed about my career as a game music composer and my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music, for the newest episode of The Note Show!

The Note Show is a terrific podcast that focuses on interviews with professionals in creative fields.  I’m very proud to have been included! Famous guests on The Note Show have included Hugo and Nebula award-winning sci-fi author David Brin, actress Kristina Anapau of the HBO series True Blood, video game designer Al Lowe (Leisure Suit Larry), actress Lisa Jakub (Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day), and Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle, creators of the NBC series The Pretender.

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This is my second time being interviewed on The Note Show, and I’m so glad to have been invited back!

In this interview, I talk about my work on the LittleBigPlanet and Assassin’s Creed franchises, my latest project (Total War Battles: Kingdom), how composing music for a mobile game differs from composing for consoles or PC, and how my life has changed with the publication of my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music.

In the podcast, we also talk about the National Indie Excellence Book Award that my book recently won, as well as the importance of optimism for an aspiring game composer.

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You can listen to the entire interview here:

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Here’s some official info from the creators of The Note Show:

The Creative Professional Podcast – Music & Arts Interviews

The Note Show is a creative journey where host Joshua Note returns to chat life and art with creative people across the world. We interview musicians, artists, comic book creators, novelists, directors, actors and anyone creative and bring you new people and experiences every week!  The Note Show is a Podcast for and featuring Creative Professionals from all walks of life. As long as it’s creative, it’s here on The Note Show.

The show’s host, Joshua Note, is a terrific interviewer who is also the author of a children’s book due for release in 2015.  In addition, Joshua studied classical composition and orchestration at Leeds College of Music and Leeds University, and in 2012 he produced a for-television animated series and worked on several projects for television and cinema.

Joshua Note, host of The Note Show

Joshua Note, host of The Note Show

In his role as the host of The Note Show, Joshua asks intelligent questions about what it means to be a creative person in modern times, and his interviews are always fascinating!  My thanks to Joshua and the staff of The Note Show – I had a great time!

Assassin’s Creed III Liberation Makes 1st Round Grammy Ballot

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Some good news that I’d like to quickly share with you — I recently found out that my soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation made the first-round balloting for this year’s Grammy Awards.

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If you (or any of your friends) are members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), please consider voting for my soundtrack in these three categories: Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, Best Instrumental Composition, Best Instrumental Arrangement.

Here’s an Assassin’s Creed III Liberation trailer that features the main theme I composed for the game. This music has already won a Hollywood Music in Media Award, a Global Music Award, a Game Audio Network Guild Award and a GameFocus Award:

Also, here’s a trailer for the high-definition re-release of the Assassin’s Creed Liberation video game, coming in early 2014. This trailer also features my music from the soundtrack to the game:

I’m very pleased that my music for Assassin’s Creed III Liberation has made the first-round voting ballot for this year’s Grammy Awards!