Aliens: Fireteam Elite is up for Best Soundtrack at this year’s Grammys along with scores for games like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed.
The full list of 2023 Grammy nominations was announced earlier today, with Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media including some surprising names, including:
- Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Austin Wintory)
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn Of Ragnarok (Stephanie Economou)
- Call Of Duty: Vanguard (Bear McCreary)
- Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy (Richard Jacques)
- Old World (Christopher Tin)
Of course, 2023 marks the first-ever Grammy for Video Game music, meaning one of these games will head home with a historic award.
Best Soundtrack for #VideoGame Soundtracks is WAY overdue.
That’s certainly a change I am very glad to see added this year. #GRAMMYs
— Kira Grunenberg (@shadowmelody1) November 15, 2022
Music from video games has been eligible for Grammy nominations since 1999, with Civilization theme Baba Yetu winning the award for Best Instrumental Arrangement in 2011 and the Journey soundtrack earning a nomination in 2012.
“Overlooked and underappreciated” explained EA president of music, Steve Schnur in an interview with Variety. “Not just for the level of quality, but also the magnitude of success, how relevant it is to the next generation of music lovers. We needed to convince the powers-that-be that this music stands on its own and deserves to be judged against each other.”
Now, after years of lobbying from game studios, the Grammys gets its own video game category, with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy looking like a strong favorite.
Although judging from some of the other nominations, it’s not exactly been a bumper year.
IGN’s review of Aliens: Fireteam Elite gave it 7/10 and said: “Aliens: Fireteam Elite does enough right to be plenty worthwhile for a trio of co-op shooter fans who’d rather battle hordes of xenomorphs than the usual zombies. Between the excellent weapons, classes, and enemy types and some wonderful nostalgic hat-tips toward what came before, it’s a must-play if you hold any fondness for this series. The caveats, of course, are having to put up with repetitive scenarios and some excruciatingly drawn-out missions. Aliens: Fireteam Elite may not be a triumphant win, but it’s far from a game over, man.”
Which of these will take home the first-ever Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media? For now, we’ll have to wait and see… but it feels like this category is off to a very strange start.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.