,By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow
Delighted you’re here! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and earlier this month, I was honored to be interviewed for the BBC Radio 3 program Sound of Gaming, hosted by Louise Blain. BBC Radio 3 specializes in classical music, which means that the Sound of Gaming program is especially unique among that network’s program line-up. Focusing on exceptional musical compositions from the awesome world of video games, the Sound of Gaming show has been airing regularly since 2019, bringing classical music listeners into a whole new world of musical expression.
The show’s host Louise Blain is a top video game journalist, and the co-author of the popular book Guinness World Records 2014 Gamer’s Edition. In addition, she co-hosted the BBC Proms 2022 concert “Gaming Music at the Proms” from the famous Royal Albert Hall in London. In each of her Sound of Gaming programs, she also includes an interview segment called “The Cutscene,” during which she interviews a game music composer whose work fits into the overall theme of the program. Whether it’s a composer for moody stealth missions, or one who specializes in light-hearted mishaps, the conversation throws light on the musical style that’s explored in the rest of the program. In the June 3 2023 episode, the theme was “The Extraordinary,” and focused on games that ignite the fires of the imagination. During my interview for this program, I was delighted to discuss my music for three of my video game projects: Assassin’s Creed Liberation, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and Jurassic World Primal Ops.
Our conversation included lots of details about how best to work with expert development teams and find creative inspiration. However, due to time constraints, a lot of these details couldn’t be included in the final broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Since these sorts of discussions fit into the usual content in these articles, I thought I’d include a transcript of the whole interview here! I’ve also included the complete music tracks from my projects that were played during the broadcast. I hope you’ll find the interview interesting!
Louise Blain: The deadly toothy consequences of what happens when life finds a way. That’s Winifred Phillips’ brilliant score to Jurassic World Primal Ops. I’ll be talking to her about what happens when music theory meets chaos theory. We’ll also be breaking down her scores for Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Assassin’s Creed Liberation.
Composer Winifred Phillips has been working on video game soundtracks since 2005 when she wrote the music for the original God of War. Since then, she’s gone from strength to strength, and we’ll start with her soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed Liberation. This was a big change for the series, with the first female assassin and a new location – the cultural melting pot of 18th century New Orleans. I’ll let Winifred take it from here.
(Music begins to play: Assassin’s Creed Liberation Main Theme, by Winifred Phillips)
<iframe title="Embedded content" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/71766414&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" height="300px" width="100%" data-testid="iframe" loading="lazy" scrolling="auto" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_163="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_165="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-113="true"></iframe>Winifred Phillips · Assassin's Creed Liberation: Main Theme
Winifred Phillips: I’d been in contact with Ubisoft for a number of years. We’d been talking about the idea of working together on something, but nothing had kind of come together really. I think that being hired to do music for video games is very much about the right timing and the right project. So when the Assassin’s Creed Liberation project came along, it just felt like a good fit. Especially since I had done music before that was historically influenced. The Assassin’s Creed Liberation project is set in 18th century New Orleans, and it has that French Baroque quality running through everything in the game, from the fashion and the language, and the culture. So the music was meant to have that influence strongly running through all of the tracks. And that was something that I could bring to the project, because I had done projects before that had historical influences, and I like doing that kind of research and learning about the forms, the instrumental qualities, and the performance habits, and things like that. They just make composition a lot of fun for me. So that really was the impetus that pulls together and that’s kind of how I came on the project.
Winifred Phillips: (continued) It was tremendous fun! My focus of course is very much on the music, the musical components of any project, so I would always dig into music of the period and that would be where my focus remained. I don’t like to deviate too far from the inspirations that are driving the rest of the team, so I like to get my historical information from design documents that the team is preparing. They did some wonderful storyboards and art boards that showed all sorts of different visual influences and stylistic choices and a lot of history was running through all of those design documents. So I first started by reading those in depth and trying to get a sense of what was getting the team excited, what was sort of firing them up. Then that became what I focused on in my own research, in looking into the history of the time period, and also as it pertains to music, and how music fit in with the culture, so that really was a very important part of my work on the project. It had a lot to do with the cultural background of the main character, which really is the most important aspect of any narrative-driven game, anyway. The perspective character, the hero of the story, is the soul of the music and what gives it its character and its heart. So, for me, it was Aveline, the star of Assassin’s Creed Liberation.
Winifred Phillips: (continued) As the first female assassin in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, that was of course very exciting for me, to create music for that. But her background as a daughter of a French aristocrat and an African slave, that was very powerful to me. Two incredibly disparate and contrasting backgrounds with very rich cultural influences and history, and very specific musical styles and instrumentation. All of that was really fascinating to me, to explore as a composer. to be able to look into the rhythmic instrumentation that she would have responded to from her African background, and the Baroque French-inspired musical forms that would have been very much a part of her life as a member of high society in 18th century New Orleans.
Winifred Phillips: (continued) All of this was marvelously inspiring, to be able to bring together these sorts of musical forms and ideas that really don’t get combined and mashed up in this way. That was really the heart of what I did as the composer for this project.
(Music plays: “Poverty” from Assassin’s Creed Liberation, by composer Winifred Phillips)
Winifred Phillips: (continued) I think there’s something marvelous about the idea of a historical game that also has a modern component – because it gives the story a sense of perspective. And it puts it in context within our perspective as the player, as the audience to this story. So this science fiction idea of entering a sort of virtual reality Animus and being able to step into the shoes of a historical character and live their life, making choices that allow us to move through their journey – that was a lot of fun. And of course the franchise of Assassin’s Creed has established a sound palette that corresponded with the science fiction element of the Animus.
Winifred Phillips: (continued) There were a lot of synth-driven sounds and very dronish textures, a kind of surreal, almost elevated state of mind – an altered state of consciousness that was associated with being in the Animus. So I had a good time playing with that, but also combining it in a more floaty, organic way with some of the instruments that were associated with Aveline and her culture. There were a lot of solo violins floating through the Animus, as well as those warm and liquidy synthetic textures that wrap around it, and those little gritty elements of high tech that jitter their way through the mix and then float back down again, like it’s some sort of virtual sea. It was really interesting to explore that, and to try to bring something new to it, but also be true to the tradition.
(Music plays: “Animus” from Assassin’s Creed Liberation, composed by Winifred Phillips)
Winifred Phillips: (continued) One of the things that was amazing about this project – they really let me run with it, and they gave me a lot of room to bring my own ideas to the project. I think their only direction was that it needed to be true to the history. I mean, of course, the Assassin’s Creed franchise is very focused on history. Just as a rule, it’s driven by the idea of traveling through time and living history through the perspective of other people’s lives. So that really was the main concentration of the guidance I got from Ubisoft. But other than that, I was allowed to experiment with different instrumentation and really look at how these disparate cultural influences could be combined in ways that made sense to me as a composer and an artist. And bring my own voice into it, so that I could express Aveline’s feminine qualities in that way, which I thought was really interesting to do – as she was the first female assassin in the franchise. So I got a chance to really personally express my ideas about music from within this well-established franchise, and they gave me a lot of creative freedom in that way. So I really appreciated that.
Louise Blain: My guest today, Winifred Phillips. Winifred, we’re going to quickly free-run away from the rooftops of 18th century New Orleans and into a very different world, and that’s the hand-crafted universe of Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Louise Blain: This episode of Sound of Gaming, we’ve been talking about embracing the extraordinary, and the imagination of this game is just incredible. I couldn’t stop smiling when I played it. And you’re part of a team of composers on this project. You’d already worked in Sackboy’s world before, in LittleBigPlanet, but what was your approach this time around?
Winifred Phillips: Working on this franchise with Sackboy has always been amazing. The core philosophy of these games is all about creativity. You’re a hero in the Imagisphere! And the Imagisphere is created by human creativity – by all of the people in the world combining their dreams and hopes and imaginations into a fantastic world – a sort of whimsical universe that you get to run around as a little sackboy. And it’s just so much fun to create music in that world. But it very much influences the core philosophy of what the music needs to be.
Winifred Phillips: (continued) We’re challenged to create something new. It’s all about mashups and about being very eclectic and very experimental, combining musical genres that have not been combined before, and seeing what we can do with these sorts of unusual combinations. That’s really at the heart of the music for the Sackboy games. And that’s what makes it fun for me. I’ve always had a great time creating music for these projects.
Louise Blain: In this month’s Cutscene, I’m talking to Winifred Phillips about her joyous work on Sackboy: A Big Adventure. I’m possibly about to leave you with an almost indelible earworm!
(Excerpt plays of Winifred Phillips’ cover version of Madonna’s Material girl, from Sackboy: A Big Adventure)
<iframe title="Embedded content" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1146245347&color=6b4211" height="166px" width="100%" data-testid="iframe" loading="lazy" scrolling="auto" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_163="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_165="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-113="true"></iframe>Winifred Phillips · MATERIAL GIRL (from the Sackboy: A Big Adventure soundtrack)
Winifred Phillips: It was such an amazing opportunity to do this! I really was very grateful to the team at the Sackboy: A Big Adventure game for giving me the chance to create a cover version of this song that everybody knows. It’s a really iconic song in American culture – and in the world. The chance to do something that would fit into Sackboy’s universe and the idea of the Imagisphere was just amazing! And so much fun. The idea of fitting popular music into Sackboy universe isn’t a new one. There’s always been lots of interesting license
