Austin Wintory’s Ground-Breaking Influence

Some may know him as Nick Pittsinger, others as Varien, and others still as honeybear (oh wait, that’s just me). Either way, he’s our go-to guy for all things composition, production and definitely video game music. To celebrate the one year anniversary of Journey’s release, he’s contributed this article on Austin Wintory and his influence on the evolution of video game music. 

Warm and crisp cellos, blazing percussion, soaring violins, and a sense of endless
possibilities. That’s the feeling one gets when listening to the beautiful compositions of
Austin Wintory, an American video game composer whose credits include
thatgamecompany’s flOw and the critically aclaimed Journey. But what seperates
Wintory from the rest of the composers in the video game world, is that this time, The
Academy took notice – Journey was the first video game soundtrack to be nominated for
a Grammy.

Now, to really lay out just how important this is in validating and legitimizing
video game music in the mainstream eye, let’s take a little journey (see what I did there?)
back in time. It’s 1979, and somewhere in California, a small-time company is making
video games for the Atari 2600. With what little memory they have to work with, they
decide to add some music and get Bill from accounting to write up a little diddy that
they can loop ad infinitum while the game is being played. Bill writes up a few simple
melodies and the progammers fire away at making this archaic chipset produce actual
notes.

Now skip 20 years.

It’s 1999, and Final Fantasy VIII is released for the Playstation. The graphics are
no longer just pixelated blocks, they are full-blown animations with a fantastic amount
of detail (for the time). The game is no longer about the high score, but the story. And
with all of this development, you better believe that the music has evolved tremendously
too. Nobuo Uematsu calls up a full orchestra and live-recorded choirs to drive the player
right into the story in the first 5 seconds of the opening cinematic with the revered
“Liberi Fatali” cue. Although he had used orchestral “soundfonts” – sort of a precursor
to sample libraries – in earlier Nintendo and Super Nintendo titles, the Playstation was
able to handle a lot more data and therefore can allow for a much more dynamic and
extensive soundtrack.

Throughout the past ten years however, we have seen more and more video games
using live-recorded orchestras to drive soundtracks and sometimes fully replacing
sample libraries. It’s completely commonplace not only for big name corporate
companies to hire full orchestras and choirs, but it’s also now common for independent
companies to do the same. So now that we have video game scores at the same quality
as film and TV scores, it was only a matter of time before they were nominated like film
and TV are. Let’s tie all of this back into Austin Wintory and get to the point of this post.

Yes, Christopher Tin won a Grammy in 2011 for his song “Baba Yetu”, the theme
to the popular turn-based strategy game Civilization IV. But the award was given on the
fact that the song was also a single; it won the award for Best Instrumental Arrangement
Accompanying Vocalists. Now let’s look at Austin Wintory’s case, whose soundtrack to

Journey was nominated for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, a category much
more relevant and frankly, much more prestigious. Wintory was up against legends like
John Williams, Trent Reznor, Hans Zimmer, and Howard Shore – an honor worthy of
praise in itself, and it only added to the validation of video game music, a category that
only 30 years ago was nothing more than bleeps and bloops coming off of a computer
chip. And that’s exactly my point in this post.

30 years is a blip in time in the history of music, and the fact that computer-
generated music would one day evolve into the same quality and depth as film music, is
nothing short of impressive. Yes, the melodies and arrangements were always there –
anyone under the age of 50 would recognize the theme to Super Mario on the NES. The
beautifully dynamic soundtracks that brought tears to our eyes and tingles to our spines
were present in all consoles, but now that it is being brought into the same light as film
and commercial music, the mainstream ears can now hear what gamers have always
heard. True emotion, captivating stories, interactive adventures, and a real sense of
connection with the lore and characters of the game, something that opera and musical
theater productions have sought to do for centuries.

The future of video game music is looking great, thanks to this pioneering
accomplishment by Wintory. Now that a video game has been nominated for a Grammy,
it’s only a matter of time before two video games are nominated for a Grammy, and one
of them wins. This spells endless opportunities for video game composers to grow and
be highlighted in the world of music, whereas not too long ago, they would just be
appreciated by a cult following. And that to me, is evolution.