Ivor Novello music awards to include gaming music category
Very interesting article saying that the Ivor Novello music awards, the pinnacle of songwriting achievement, have added a new category this year called “Best Original Video Game Score”.
After my previous blog post the other day on video game demographics changing this was further proof that video gaming is becoming a lot more “acceptable” in society. The nominations for this award are generally the elite songwriters, and it will be good to see game scores get recognised, as they can be sometimes very epic.
Over the years game music has been much revered, to the point where Video Games Live have managed to pretty much sell out tours of USA in 2007 and 2009, with another big tour in 2010. They offer the chance to see video game music spanning the history of video games played live by an orchestra.
Over the years video game music has become almost as iconic as the games themselves in gaming circles. Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario music are very well known.
Personally I am a massive fan of Sonic the Hedgehog music from the days of the Sega Megadrive, however much it just sounded like a series of bleeps to most people! I personally think the obsession with video gaming music is down to memories. I associate Sonic music with being a child, carefree just playing on the Mega Drive. The music soothes me, I even used it as my relaxation music in uni when I had stress to do with coursework and exams. Its the sort of music that blends into the background, and brings back good memories.
Nowadays the music is a lot more epic- they are sweeping orchestral scores, created as if they are soundtracking a film. The games now are more like films anyway, with complex storylines and sprawling worlds. It is these scores such as the forthcoming new Final Fantasy game that will be nominated for the Ivor Novello next year, this series was one of the purveyors of orchestral game music and is very likely to be in the running.
This is yet more proof of video games becoming more widespread in society.