'I cannot believe this': Composer Winifred Phillips was 'blown away' after winning a Grammy for a remake of a 44-year-old RPG

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We did not expect Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord to prevail over much bigger games at the 2025 Grammy Awards, and we were wrong.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 02: (FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY) Winifred Phillips accepts the Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media award for "Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" onstage during the 67th GRAMMY Awards Premiere Ceremony at Peacock Theater on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord debuted in 1981 for the Apple II and very quickly became a hit, launching an acclaimed and influential series of RPGs that would persist throughout the 1980s and '90s. A remake of that game dropped in 2024, and to our great surprise it was nominated for a Grammy Award in the "Best Score Soundtrack for Videogames and Other Interactive Media" category. And last night, to our even greater surprise, it won.

"We're overjoyed for @winphillips on her well-deserved Grammy win for her soundtrack to Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord!" developer Digital Eclipse posted on Bluesky. "The album is downloadable for free from her Bandcamp page—congratulations, Winifred!"

  • 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

But while Wizardry doesn't have nearly the cachet of those other games, Phillips is a videogame composer of note, with credits across 33 games including God of War, LittleBigPlanet, Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and numerous others. Still, speaking after winning the award, Phillips said she didn't expect to win (and seemed genuinely surprised she did).

"I really didn't expect it. The category was populated with so much brilliance this year, and I have so much deep respect for the other nominees in this category, so to have been recognized, it's just a highlight of my career," she said in an interview after collecting her trophy.

"We're very supportive of each other and we do a very unique thing—we're creating music that needs to accompany people who are having an experience and who are making choices and having adventures and living a grand story, and we're kind of creating the music for that story. It's such a wonderful privilege, because you feel like you're collaborating with the players—like you know them and they know you, and it's really very special."

WINIFRED PHILLIPS Checks In At The CNB "First Look" Cam | 2025 GRAMMYs - YouTube WINIFRED PHILLIPS Checks In At The CNB
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The Grammy Awards only added a category dedicated to videogames in 2022, and as we said at the time, some marks were maybe missed because of the way the nominating and voting process works. Submissions for consideration must be made by record companies or Recording Academy members, and any developer or publisher who doesn't fall into one of those two categories is effectively out of luck.

That, as we noted in '23, may have been part of why the best soundtrack nominations at the Grammys were so different from those of The Game Awards. The only crossover was composer Bear McCreary, and he was nominated for two entirely different games: Call of Duty: Vanguard at the Grammys, and God of War: Ragnarok at The Game Awards. (He lost the Grammy—the first winner was Stephanie Economou, for Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok—but won The Game Award.)

But procedural issues notwithstanding, I'm genuinely really pleased that Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord won. It looks like it might be my kind of game, but more important than that, sometimes it's just nice to see the underdog come out on top.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.