Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the first video game to win a Grammy

Last night saw the annual Grammy celebrations and although it’s not usually an event catered to video games, this one saw Assassin’s Creed Valhalla grab an award. 

Although the Grammys are more for fans of music than video games, sometimes the two combine and that is what happened this year. Musical composer Stephanie Economou won an award for her work on Assassin Creed Valhalla’s Dawn of Ragnarok expansion.

She follows composer Austin Wintory who previously won an award for his work on 2015 game, Journey. Although the presenter, Randy Rainbow butchered Valhalla’s pronunciation, it’s still exciting to see video game composers get credit.

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The other nominations

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was nominated alongside Wintory again, this time for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, Bear McCreary (perhaps most known for his work on God of War) for Call of Duty: Vanguard, Christopher Tin for Old World and Richard Jacques for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

With only Marvel’s GOtG and CoD: Vanguard being released within the window of eligibility for the 2023 Grammys, it’s strange that we didn’t see nominations for more recent games.

Credit: Stephanie Economou

Stephanie Economou took to the stage to accept the award and thanked those who helped her bring life to Valhalla’s score. Economou also took the time to bring awareness to the people who rallied for video game music to have a place at the ceremony. “I just want to recognise all of the people who fought tirelessly to bring this category of video game music into existence,” she said. “Thank you for acknowledging and validating the power of video game music, this is truly such an honour.”

Although the nominations were considered to be strange by some, it’s still a big step forward to see video game scores have a place in the music industry. Hopefully this will set the stage for other composers in upcoming years.

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