Top 10 Video Game Composers

A native of Keokuk, Iowa, Jeremy Soule began life as a passionate composer of symphonic music at a very early age. Since the age of five, Soule took an intense interest in the symphony orchestra. "The Orchestra is the ultimate instrument. I find that it has the ability to define nearly every human emotion in existence" stated Soule from his Cascadian studio in the Great Northwest of America.

Mastering the art of orchestration, melodic composition and emotional context was no easy task for the British Academy Award winning composer.

That video games could be considered "Art" was unthinkable over 30 years ago during the debut of the first game machines such as the Magnavox Odyssey. The sights and sounds of the mid-eighties machines also did little to hint at the coming revolution. Today, video games feature development budgets in the tens of millions of dollars and often command some of the top talent in an ever-growing $20 billion industry.

For over a decade, Soule has provided music for some of the most successful and admired games of all time. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Harry Potter, Total Annihilation, SOCOM: The Navy Seals and the Elder Scrolls series can all attribute music to him. His versatility as a composer has also been demonstrated from his critically acclaimed traditional Asian score for Guild Wars Factions to his work with children's properties such as Rugrats and Lemony Snicket and the Series of Unfortunate Events.

The year 2006 witnessed one of the best years yet for Soule with such critical and commercial success coming from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Guild Wars: Factions/Nightfall, Prey and the World War II epic Company of Heroes. Soule won the inaugural MTV Video Music Award in August for "Best Score" and was honored with his third career British Academy Award nomination in October. In November, Soule won another "Best Score" award from Spike TV and was the recipient of numerous press awards such as Game Daily's "most iPod-worthy score".

In feature films, Soule's Walden Logo was used at the start of the $744 million earning film: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. His work with Narnia also continued with director Norman Stone's critically acclaimed film C.S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia.

In concerts, Soule's music was a component of the successful "Play Symphony" tour that featured prominently Elder Scrolls as well as Prey as part of their concert program. Performances were conducted with symphony orchestras in Vienna, Stockholm, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and Toronto. Future performances are scheduled in Stockholm, Sydney and Singapore.

Darren Korb is known for Transistor (2014), Bastion (2011) and Hades (2018).

Koji Kondo was born on 13 August 1961 in Nagoya, Japan. He is a composer, known for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023).

Austin Wintory is a Grammy-nominated and two-time BAFTA-winning composer. His career has straddled the worlds of concert music, film, and video games. Austin grew up in Denver and from the age of 10 was utterly addicted to film music. After teaching himself to compose, orchestrate and conduct in high school, he went on to study classically at NYU and USC. Following a whirlwind education in which he scored well over 150 student and small independent productions, he graduated and began working full-time in Los Angeles.

In 2012, Austin's soundtrack for the hit PlayStation3 game Journey became the first-ever Grammy-nominated videogame score, also winning two British Academy Awards, a DICE Award, a Spike TV VGA, and IGN's "Overall Music of the Year," along with five Game Audio Network Guild awards, and a host of others. Excerpts from the score have been performed all over the world since its release, including by such as ensembles as the National Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Colorado Symphony and Pacific Symphony.

Austin's score for the earlier game flOw made him the youngest composer ever to receive a British Academy Award nomination and also won him a wide variety of other game industry accolades, including the Game Audio Network Guild's "Rookie of the Year." An orchestral version of this music has been performed at the Smithsonian Museum as a part of their "Art of Games" exhibit; flOw is currently on display at MoMA in New York City.

Austin's film work including the Sundance-winning films Captain Abu Raed and Grace, along with over 40 other indie features such as A Little Help (starring Jenna Fischer), The River Why (starring Zach Gilford and William Hurt) and Dark Summer.

Michiru Yamane is known for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (2008), Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (2005).

Woody Jackson is an Award winning composer for the Video Games Red Dead Redemption I & II, La Noire and Grand Theft Auto V. He also has been a Los Angeles session musician for the last 20 years collaborating and performing on movies such as Ocean's 12/13, The Devil Wears Prada and co-composing the television series Nashville with T-bone Burnett and Keefus Ciancia including working on all three seasons of the show Killing Eve. Woody Jackson owns the recording studio Electro-Vox which has recorded Multi-Platinum and Grammy winning records for artists Adele, Vampire Weekend,Lady Gaga,Artic Monkeys and Kanye West.

Jackson began working with Rockstar Games in 2008, to compose the music of Red Dead Redemption. He returned to compose the score for the downloadable content campaign Undead Nightmare in 2010, and Jackson provided the in-game music for L.A. Noire in 2011which won a BAFTA for the score. For the music of Grand Theft Auto V, he was the lead composer with The Alchemist, Oh No, and Tangerine Dream. Jackson continued working with Rockstar for the music of Red Dead Redemption 2, composing 40+ hours of music over five years. His work on Rockstar's games has been praised, and he has received awards from the Game Audio Network, Guild Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, BAFTA, Spike Video Game Awards, and The Game Awards.

Yasunori Mitsuda was born on 21 January 1972 in Tokuyama, Yamaguchi, Japan. He is a composer, known for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022), Valkyria Revolution (2017) and Xenogears (1998).

David Wise was born in 1967 in Coalville, Leicestershire, England, UK. He is a composer, known for Dark Dice (2018), Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (2014) and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018).

Composer Garry Schyman's award-winning music can be heard in nearly every audio-visual media, including feature films, prime-time television, and video games. His haunting orchestral scores for the globally acclaimed video games BioShock, BioShock 2, and BioShock Infinite have earned him multiple awards, including top honors for Best Original Score from the British Academy of Film & Television (BAFTA) and the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

As one of the world's most celebrated composers of video game music, Schyman is notable for his versatility of style and unique ability to fluidly draw from multiple eclectic sources of inspiration. He captured the fantasy world of Tolkien for the adventure game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (nominated for a BAFTA award) and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and paid playful homage to '50s sci-fi with his score for the 2005 game Destroy All Humans! (followed by two sequels). He accelerated heartbeats with his thunderous orchestral scores in action games like Resistance: Retribution and Dante's Inferno and gave a nod to the hypnotic style of Bernard Herrmann in the mystery game Voyeur. Schyman's score for the virtual reality game Torn was released in Aug. 2018 as a soundtrack on Varèse Sarabande Records.

Jack Wall is an ASCAP award-winning and BAFTA nominated composer best known for his rich, cinematic scores found within popular video game franchises such as Call of Duty: Black Ops II, III, & IV, Mass Effect I & II, the Myst series, Jade Empire and several other franchises winning multiple awards for his work. Most recently Wall scored the supernatural drama television series Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments airing on Disney's Freeform TV as well as the latest record-breaking entry in the blockbuster Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. He has also written additional music score for numerous other TV series including the fantasy drama series Reign on the CW and Emerald City on NBC as well as scoring the hi-octane action film Hard Target 2 available on Netflix.

Wall is celebrated among a Hollywood elite of composers invited to score the world's biggest interactive entertainment property, Call of Duty. For Black Ops II he crafted an adrenaline-fueled, deeply emotional and adventurous musical palette that took the blockbuster series in new sonic directions. Black Ops II received the Best Video Game Score Award at the ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards. Reuniting with Treyarch Studios and Activision for Black Ops III, his follow-up score displays the hallmarks of an epic, sophisticated narrative, combining futuristic hybrid sounds, homages to classic WWII orchestral music and even big band and swing numbers created specifically for the popular Zombies campaign. Featuring highlight solo performances from contemporary jazz vocalist Antonia Bennett, daughter of legendary singer Tony Bennett, Black Ops III was nominated GameTrailers' Soundtrack of the Year. Wall's unique approach for Black Ops IV once again breaks from traditional video game scores with an array of brand new swinging jazz numbers, an ethereal new arrangement of the fan-favorite Zombies mode song, "Where Are We Going?" (featuring a children's choir with the Los Angeles Singers and Malukah), as well as an original cinematic score including the heroic orchestral anthem "Alister's Theme," described by Forbes as "One of the series' best yet."

Collaborating with the world's leading game studios, Wall is widely recognized for composing some of the most iconic scores for the medium. Wall created the distinctive musical signature for BioWare's sci-if epic Mass Effect, combining '80s electronica, synthetic instrumentation and futuristic atmospheres. The soundtrack won numerous accolades, while achieving cult status with fans. Wall received British Academy (BAFTA) and Spike TV nominations for his work on Mass Effect 2.

Composing for and conducting a full symphony orchestra and master chorale, Wall first garnered attention with his dramatic score for Ubisoft's Myst III: Exile, receiving universal critical acclaim including several Soundtrack of the Year honors. For the climactic sequel, Myst IV: Revelation, Wall was awarded Music of the Year at the Game Developers Conference.

With Jade Empire, Wall crafted a Chinese and Asian instrumental palette incorporating an "East meets West" approach. Working with authentic Pan-Asian instruments Wall crafted an exotic, percussion-driven score to enhance the mythological Chinese setting. The score was voted Best Original Soundtrack Album by the Game Audio Network Guild.

In addition to his composing achievements, Wall served as Music Director and co-producer for composer/librettist Cindy Shapiro's Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera, an innovative modern retelling of the ancient Greek. He also co-created Video Games Live and served as its Music Director/Conductor from 2005 through 2010 performing with more than sixty of the world's finest orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra and London Philharmonia Orchestra.

Wall was co-founder of The Game Audio Network Guild and is a frequent speaker/instructor at various educational institutions such as Columbia College, USC, UCLA, Expressions Center for New Media, The Los Angeles Recording School and Berklee College in Boston.

Continuing to raise the bar for emotional, performance-driven scores at the highest level, Wall's repertoire encompasses a diverse range of musical styles and influences: from ethereal ambience, choral crescendos and heavy tribal orchestra to traditional Asian, Middle-Eastern, Eastern European instrumentation, futuristic electronic soundscapes and big band jazz recorded with the world's top musicians. For more information, visit http://jackwall.net. To listen to his work, visit http://jackwall.net/online-music-reel