What It Takes To Get Started And Succeed As A Game Composer – Insights From Winifred Phillips:

Want to make it as a game composer? In this interview, you'll hear what it takes to get started and succeed in composing for the game industry, from multi-award-winning composer Winifred Phillips, known for her scores on six of the biggest franchises in gaming: Sony Interactive Entertainment's LittleBigPlanet and God of War (2013), NCSOFT's Lineage, EA's The Sims, Ubisoft's Assassin’s Creed, and Creative Assembly's Total War. She's also known for her BAFTA nom'd score on SIE's Sackboy: A Big Adventure.

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By Jennifer Walden and Asbjoern Andersen, images courtesy of Winifred Phillips

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The Composer Success Series is dedicated to helping you succeed as a composer – offering inspiration, advice on getting started and advancing your career, creative tips and tricks, helpful resources and lessons learned, from some of the industry’s most successful composers for film, games and beyond.
 

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More interviews in the Composer Success Series:
Charlie Clouser • Sherri Chung • Cindy O’Connor • Inon Zur • Pinar Toprak • Nainita Desai • Jonathan Snipes • Gareth Coker • Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson • Daniel Kluger • Jason Graves • Peter McConnell • Ronit Kirchman • Zach Robinson • Alec Puro • Ariel Marx • Matthew Earl • Christopher Thomas

Winifred Phillips:

BAFTA nominated composer Winifred Phillips is one of the most successful and accomplished composers for video games. She is known for her compositional skill and stylistic diversity. Her dramatic large-scale works convey an “epic cinematic sound” (ScreenSounds) that “drives her music forward in grand orchestral fashion” (Film Score Monthly), while her more lighthearted scores are “captivating” (Washington Post).

Winifred has composed iconic music for titles from six of the biggest franchises in gaming: Lineage, Assassin’s Creed, LittleBigPlanet, Total War, God of War, and The Sims. She was recently nominated for a BAFTA award for music she composed for the smash-hit game Sackboy: A Big Adventure. To date, Phillips has composed music for over fifty video games.

Winifred’s scores have received numerous awards, including the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Award for Outstanding Music Composition, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and three Hollywood Music in Media Awards. Her work has also been nominated by the NAVGTR Awards and the International Film Music Critics Awards.

Her music has also been featured in trailers for such blockbuster movies as Avengers: Endgame and Disney’s The Jungle Book. Her television work includes PBS’ NOVA, Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown on CNN, the network sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia starring Danny Davito, and the long-running Nature series on PBS.

Winifred has released fifty-nine albums. Her soundtrack album for the Legend of the Guardians video game was the first video game soundtrack album released by WaterTower Music – the film music record label of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Winifred is the author of the bestselling book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press), which won a GMA Book Award Gold Medal from the Global Music Awards, a National Indie Excellence Book Award, a Nonfiction Book Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association, and an Annual Game Music Award from Game Music Online in the category of “Best Publication.” Singling out Winifred’s book for praise, film composer Harry Gregson-Williams said, “Winifred Phillips’ passion and understanding of this medium comes to life on the page and is a direct result of her vast experience and accomplishment in composing for video games.” Jon Burlingame, the film music reporter for Variety, hailed Winifred’s book as “a beautifully organized, intelligently written book about music for games,” and Film Score Monthly praised the book as “a touchstone academic achievement.”

As a recognized expert in the field of video game composition, Winifred has given lectures at the Library of Congress, the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Audio Engineering Society, the Game Developers Conference, and the Montreal International Game Summit, among many others. Her music has been performed in celebrated concert halls around the world as a part of the Assassin’s Creed Symphony World Tour.

Learn more about Winifred’s work and awards at winifredphillips.com

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• How did you get started in the composing industry? What was your first game score and what was that experience like for you?

When I decided that I wanted to pursue a career as a game composer, I spent a year composing music for a string of indie game projects that never got released. After that disappointing year, I knew I had to change my approach, so I started reaching out to the bigger developers and publishers. My chances of arresting the attention of a big game company were incredibly slim, but I felt like I’d been spinning my wheels in the indie-space for too long. It seemed like the time had come to try something different.

I felt like I’d been spinning my wheels in the indie-space for too long. It seemed like the time had come to try something different.

As they say, timing is everything. My info landed on the desk of a music supervisor at Sony Interactive, precisely when they were searching for composers to join the music team for God of War. I sent over some music samples from my previous projects (including a bunch of choral tracks I’d recorded for one of those unreleased indie games). After hearing those, the music supervisor hired me to join the God of War composer team.

 

• Any advice you’d share on how to land a composing job in the game industry?

I think that persistence has been incredibly important in my career. Obviously, music composition skill is crucial, but that doesn’t usually seem to be enough to help an aspiring composer breakthrough. Our creative gifts have to be supported by a sufficient level of obstinacy and endurance to get us past the lean times.

Our creative gifts have to be supported by a sufficient level of obstinacy and endurance to get us past the lean times.

There are, of course, go-to strategies. We can build professional websites for ourselves, post blogs about our work, and share videos showcasing our latest tracks. We can keep reaching out to development teams, we can attend conferences (virtual and actual), and we can grow our professional network.

With all these efforts, we’re essentially trying to get noticed while we’re waiting for a project to surface that might turn out to be our next gig. In the end, what we really need is some very good luck, some excellent timing, and a generous helping of fortitude that will enable us to keep on trying until the stars align in our favor.

 

• What were some essential lessons you’ve learned throughout your career?

Every game development team is very different. With that in mind, I’ve learned to be flexible and attentive. Does the team like lots of written communication? That’s great! In those circumstances, we as game composers get to read meticulous design documents, and share our progress with written reports that complement our music submissions.

Every game development team is very different. With that in mind, I’ve learned to be flexible and attentive.

On the other hand, maybe the team doesn’t like writing very much, and prefers teleconferences and phone calls? Awesome! We get to do regular face-to-face conversations in which all the details of the project are hammered out in moments of transient inspiration.

But maybe the team doesn’t like either of those approaches, and instead sends a succinct list of music asset requests without really wanting much feedback or communication from our end. And that’s great, too. We get to interpret their direction and internalize it at our own pace, from our own creative point of view.

If there’s any lesson I’ve learned, it’s to be constantly adaptable, and to never stop learning.

Whatever the team wants, we provide. If their needs change, we fluidly adapt. If there’s any lesson I’ve learned, it’s to be constantly adaptable, and to never stop learning. Just as the communication dynamics are highly changeable, so too are the creative and technical specifications that we’ll have to meet. Some development teams want their music to be traditionally linear. Some teams want highly adaptive music. The dynamic techniques may call for us to structure our music into a modest collection of segments and layers, or the strategy might have us preparing hundreds upon hundreds of music files. We have to be ready to enthusiastically embrace the music design and pour all our skill and creativity into it.

 

• Any favorite tricks and workflow tips that help when composing for games?

The milestone dates and deadlines are the most important factor in everything we do. How much time do we have to accomplish the task? Is it enough? How many hours a day will we need to put in to meet the deadlines? We must be as thoroughly professional and reliable as possible. Deadlines must always be met.

We must be as thoroughly professional and reliable as possible. Deadlines must always be met.

Apart from that requirement, the rest of the process can be fairly unpredictable. When I’m composing, I tend to shift my strategy from project to project. For some game scores, I lay down placeholder MIDI for an entire track using a simple piano instrument, and then jump into instrumental arrangement afterward.

When I’m composing, I tend to shift my strategy from project to project… I find it’s better to keep innovating new solutions, rather than relying on proven workflows.

Other times, I start with crucial solo instruments and write specifically for them, lacing the rest of the arrangement around them and working forward until the track is fleshed out.

On the other hand, in some projects I’ll focus exclusively on drums and rhythm first and let it drive all other composition choices. I think it’s important to be creatively limber because game music composition involves a lot of problem-solving. For instance, trying to make music emotionally satisfying from within an interactive framework is a complicated puzzle to solve. I find it’s better to keep innovating new solutions, rather than relying on proven workflows. Each game benefits from this sort of customized approach.

 

• What are your favorite sites and resources for composers?

Gamasutra (now known as Game Developer) is a great resource for understanding the needs and concerns of the game development community, and it helps us as game composers to keep abreast of news regarding industry events, important new releases, and thorny controversies within the industry. I also write a monthly blog there that focuses on issues pertaining to game music composition: Winifred Phillips’s Blog on Game Developer

The #gameaudio hashtag on Twitter can be a good resource, especially for those of us who would like to keep track of what other game composers are doing. Also, the Game Audio Network Guild maintains both a Facebook group and an annual awards program.

There are a number of books currently available about the art and craft of game music composition, including my own book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music (published by the MIT Press).

 

• What’s one special thing you did to become a successful composer?

In addition to my work as a composer, I’m also a classically-trained vocalist, and I use my voice often in my compositions. Adding my voice tends to imbue my recordings with unique personality, and I think this additional element has helped my music to attract notice.

… I’m also a classically-trained vocalist, and I use my voice often in my compositions.

I don’t use my voice in every project, and I don’t believe this element is the reason I became a successful composer. However, I’m certain that it has helped me at times to assert an individual style, as well as infuse my compositions with the sort of approachable warmth that a human voice can provide.

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More interviews in the Composer Success Series:

• Charlie Clouser – composer on the Saw franchise, Fox’s Wayward Pines, CBS’s Numb3rs, & NBC’s Las Vega
• Sherri Chung – composer on The CW’s Batwoman and Riverdale, NBC’s Blindspot, and CBS’s The Red Line
• Cindy O’Connor – composer on ABC’s Once Upon a Time
• Inon Zur – composer on Fallout, Dragon Age, Prince Of Persia, Outriders, and The Elder Scrolls.
• Pinar Toprak – composer on the Captain Marvel, The Wind Gods, and The Tides of Fate
• Nainita Desai – composer on The Reason I Jump, American Murder, and For Sama
• Jonathan Snipes – composer on A Glitch in the Matrix, The El Duce Tapes, and Murder Bury Win
• Gareth Coker – composer on the Ori franchise, Studio Wildcard’s ARK: Survival Evolved, & the upcoming Halo Infinite.
• Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson – composers on “The Book Thief,” “Between the Lines,” & Disney Animation’s Olaf’s Frozen Adventure
• Ronit Kirchman – composer on “Evil Eye”, and “Limetown”
• Zach Robinson – composer on “Cobra Kai”, “Impractical Jokers”, and “Artbound”
• Alec Puro – composer on “The Fosters”, “Black Summer”, and “Mall”
• Daniel Kluger – composer on the play “The Sound Inside,” “Oaklahoma!” (2019), & “Judgement Day”
• Jason Graves – composer on Dead Space, Tomb Raider , Moss , and more.
• Peter McConnell – composer on Hearthstone: The Boomsday Project, Broken Age Act 2 (2013), and Psychonauts 2.
• Ariel Marx – composer on American Horror Stories on FX, Children of the Underground mini-series on FX, and the Roku Original docu-series What Happens in Hollywood.
• Matthew Earl – composer on Virtual Reality games/experiences such as the Star Trek: Dark Remnant and Men in Black: Galactic Getaway VR simulation rides.
• Zach Robinson – composer for the Evermore Adventure Park, Knott’s Berry Farm, Queen Mary Chill, Dreamland (UK), Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, Dent Schoolhouse, and The Void 4D virtual reality games.