2025’s videogame Grammy nominations are the normal AAA fare and one surprising indie entry

The 2025 Grammy awards nominations for videogame soundtracks are now out, with a slate of big-money games joined by one scrappy upstart for the prize. The award might go to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Star Wars Outlaws, or—and you didn’t see this coming at all, I swear: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, the remake of RPG classic Wizardry.

That might be because it’s a soundtrack composed by Winifred Philips, a veteran game composer whose works over the years have included an extremely diverse range from the first God of War and Assassin’s Creed 3 to work on the Total War series. Philips has already gotten some second-string awards for the soundtrack, two NYX Game Awards and a Telly Award.

The other composers nominated are no joke, though: Most of them are heavyweight videogame and movie composers, including perennial sci-fi and fantasy favorite composer Bear McCreary’s work on God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla. Wizardry’s soundtrack is the underdog, for sure. You can listen to it on Philips’ Bandcamp or on Spotify.

As reported by Eurogamer, the official announcement of 2025’s awards show includes the category for composers of an original score for interactive media. These are for the awards that’ll be presented on Sunday, February 2, 2025 and are voted on by the Recording Academy’s voting members which is a body “composed of music creators, including artists, producers, songwriters, and engineers,” per the Grammys themselves.

Here’s how the Grammys officially lay it out: The Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media award is an “Award to Composer(s) for an original score created specifically for, or as a companion to, video games and other interactive media.”

Which means you end up with exactly this list of nominees:

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — Pinar Toprak, composer
• God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla — Bear McCreary, composer
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 — John Paesano, composer
• Star Wars Outlaws — Wilbert Roget, II, composer
• Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord — Winifred Phillips, composer

You can see the full text of the 2025 Grammy nominations on the grammy website.