[My latest piece on Motherboard tackles the significance of videogame music’s first encounter with the Grammys, and whether or not either side really understands what videogame music is, was or should be.]
Somewhere between Lady Gaga’s red carpet egg-cellence, a TV anchor epilepsy scare and everyone on Twitter asking who the F is The Arcade Fire, an unlikely group found cause for celebration at this year’s Grammy Awards: Gamers. “Baba Yetu,” a song composed by Christopher Tin for the half-decade old PC strategy game Civilization IV won for ‘Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists’ last Sunday, marking the first time a song from a videogame was recognized at the awards.
Before the evening was out, hordes of eager game bloggers had already turned the spotlight on Tin, touting the win as a triumph for videogame music in the mainstream; the planted flag in a collective assertion that game music had finally “made it.” The non-game press too began to speak of the newly “legitimate” field of game music, positing modern game composers as underdogs who had finally seen a glimpse of the big-time.
But in a period when hardware and budgets no longer limit game soundtracks in production quality or scale, does “videogame music,” as the Grammys would understand it, actually mean anything? Or is it simply a label that either interests or repels via association with popular entertainment?
The Grammys isn’t ready for videogame music, and videogame music isn’t ready for the Grammys either.
