Grammy Awards encourage video game submissions

The Recording Academy has officially added video games to the descriptors of four Grammy awards, making their eligibility for the awards more clearly defined, reports IndustryGamers. The four awards include Music for Visual Media, Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media, Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, and Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Each of the Visual Media awards pits video game music against movies and television, along with "other visual media," so this doesn't mean the academy is setting awards aside specifically for video games. A dedicated video game award may be on the way, though.

"I think this could be viewed as a first step in the direction of video games getting their own category," said Recording Academy Awards vice president Bill Freimuth. "Many people from the game community have been asking us to create a special category for games over the years, but the main reason we haven't is because we have received very few entries from game publishers."

On the other hand, this puts games on equal footing with other popular media forms, which is a large step in and of itself. "This acknowledges that film, TV and games can stand side by side and be independently recognized," said EA music executive Steve Schnur. "Hopefully this will create an even playing field when people vote next year. I expect there to be a tidal wave of submissions from the game industry."