The Grammy Awards 2023 marked the arrival from the first ever dedicated award category for gaming soundtracks. While these albums was not excluded in the past – in 2023, a Kirby arrangement was nominated to have an award, along with a piece from Civilization IV previously won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement – the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games along with other Interactive Media Award was created celebrate the legacy and achievement of composers specifically working in the recording game scene.
This year, the award has gone to composer Stephanie Economou on her focus on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok, the epic DLC story bringing the world of Norse mythology alive.
In her speech, Economou thanked everyone who competitive the establishment of the video games category in the Grammys, and people who validated ‘the power of game music’.
As Economou noted, video game soundtracks have often been ignored during awards season, despite other media soundtracks, including film and tv scores, being highly considered. Finally celebrating video games within the long-running Grammy Awards is really a positive sign of change, and may lead to these scores being recognised on more global procedures in future.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla beat out several other games to win the first ever Grammy Award for video games. The nominations for the award included:
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Austin Wintory, composer
- Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok, Stephanie Economou, composer [WINNER]
- Call Of Duty: Vanguard, Bear McCreary, composer
- Marvel's Guardians from the Galaxy, Richard Jacques, composer
- Old World, Christopher Tin, composer
In early 2023, GamesHub spoke to Economou about her focus on Dawn of Ragnarok, and she had this to say about the creation of the tale’s sweeping, now award-winning soundtrack:
‘In early discussions with the creative team, they mentioned wanting the sound with this score to become somewhat of a departure from Valhalla. The sport developers were thinking about exploring influences of black metal for the score, which I thought was a really exciting and unexpected challenge, so I set out to design the noise of the Muspels, J
