The video game industry has ballooned into a $180+ billion global market — bigger than the film and music industries combined. And it's still growing. Within this digital universe, music can hardly be described as background noise. It will make you feel happy, it will make you cry, it will give you goosebumps. And for some, it might become a career path with real legs.
Want proof? Look no further than the Grammy Awards, which finally added a dedicated category for video game scores in 2023. Five game composers made the inaugural lineup, including Austin Wintory, whose work on "Journey" had already earned a historic nomination back in 2012.
The industry's rockstars are household names among gamers — artists like Jesper Kyd (Assassin's Creed series), who transformed orchestral music into an adrenaline rush for digital assassins. Or Lena Raine, whose work on Celeste and Minecraft created soundscapes that players can't get out of their heads. These composers are creating emotional anchors for interactive worlds. And in my humble opinion, they are doing way better than overhyped music industry creatives pushing their dumbing-down tunes (with rare exceptions).
Academia has caught on too. Berklee College of Music launched a Bachelor's degree in Game and Interactive Media Scoring in 2022. Universities like USC and Leeds Beckett (UK) now offer specialized programs focused on interactive audio, with full master's degrees dedicated to game music.
But how does game music compare to its film cousin? For this piece, we picked up the brain of Andrew Karboski, Music Designer and Composer at Sony Interactive Entertainment who previously worked on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and the absolutely epic soundtrack for Star Citizen. And he offered some perspective:
"In game music, there's a large amount of financial investment, but it's actually a lot lower than in film as a percentage. In a big-budget film in the $100-200 million range, about 10% of the money will be spent on music. Whereas in games for a similar budget, about 2% will be spent on music. But because game budgets are getting so much bigger, there's more appetite to spread that around."
Despite the budget differences, game soundtracks are taking on lives beyond their digital worlds. Karboski points to recent successes: "Like a recent game, Baldur's Gate 3—if you look at how many listens that soundtrack has on Spotify, it doesn't need to even be in the game to be appreciated as its own art form."
The career trajectory for game composers has been expanding, with bigger projects bringing more recognition and funding. But Karboski sounds a cautionary note: "We're at a stage right now with all the layoffs where, I'm afraid, it's going to contract a little bit. There seem to be fewer games being made, and they want to do them on smaller budgets."
Still, the medium itself is earning new respect. "I think games as an industry is gaining a reputation for its potential as an artistic medium of expression," Karboski says. "It's not just about shooting things and getting points—you can have a transformative experience. The stigma is wearing off a little bit, but it has felt like games are operating in their own little circle, especially in game music."
That circle might be small, but it's getting more crowded — and more prestigious — by the day. For aspiring composers with both musical chops and love for games, this field offers a chance to score adventures that millions will experience. Pretty good deal, if you ask me. But how do you get in?
Routes Into the Industry
Breaking into game music means choosing between different paths. You could compose the iconic melodies players will hum for years. Or you might become the person who makes sure those themes play at exactly the right moment when the dragon appears.
Game audio splits into a few core roles. Composers create the music. Sound designers handle effects and atmosphere. And somewhere in the middle sits the music designer — a hybrid role that's becoming the industry's secret weapon. Music designers bridge worlds. They talk to composers, implement their work in game engines, and sometimes write additional music themselves. Job listings want people who know music theory and technical tools like Audiokinetic Wwise. The lines between these jobs blur, especially at smaller studios — a recent industry survey found over 60% of sound designers at indie studios also compose music, while at AAA studios, it drops to under 15%.
Andrew Karboski's path shows how winding the road can be. Now a Music Designer at Sony Interactive Entertainment his journey began in jazz: "I got a jazz composition degree from Manhattan School of Music and then a masters degree from Eastman School of Music for composition in film and media. Then I graduated right into coronavirus. My classes were in person and then I got out in the real world right when the industry collapsed because I wanted to go into film mainly. I was 50/50 on my love for film and video games. I just knew more people in film, but that's a really challenging sphere. I knew some people in games who were my age who were doing a lot better, were having more fun, seemed like everything was more fulfilling. So I made a hard pivot onto that and then that worked out really well."
This pivot proved smart: "I started working with Respawn Entertainment doing music design three years ago and then 18 months ago moved to the UK to do music design for Cloud Imperium. Now I've been working for Sony."
Some start in adjacent roles and move sideways. Composer Lena Raine was a level designer before scoring the indie hit Celeste. Others begin in QA (testing) and transition when audio opportunities open up. Education remains important — about 90% of recently hired game audio pros have at least a bachelor's degree. Schools like Berklee, DigiPen, and USC function as talent pipelines. Major companies like Microsoft, Nintendo, and Blizzard now offer paid internships specifically for game audio.
What should aspiring game composers focus on? Karboski channels John Williams: "There's a great piece of advice that John Williams gave—if you want to be a great film composer, first be a great composer. That's the first place: focus on the music. It's much more valuable to have a talented musician working on a music team than a talented game technician if you're going to be doing music design, because it's much harder to teach music to people."
Technical skills matter too: "Being able to make those transitions and to think about things in different perspectives is very difficult to teach. That's why a lot of music teams prefer to value people that have very good music skills, and that should involve music technology skills as well. It's not just being able to play guitar really well, but do you know how to use digital audio workstations? There are different ones—Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Nuendo, Reaper. I've had to use all of those professionally, and having high proficiency in at least one of those is an absolute must to work in media audio."
His bottom line? "So focus on the music, learn the music, study the music, get to know many different genres, and put it into play in your own right as well. And then learn the tech behind games—just knowing a little bit can help you get your foot in the door. But music first."
Everyone says networking is key. But Karboski points out a frustrating catch-22: "Networking is absolutely the best way to get a job, but people won't network with you unless you have a job or a proven talent. I got my first games job at Respawn and I didn't know anyone there—I just cold applied. They liked my demo reel, and the interviews went well."
Getting that first job often requires luck: "At a certain point, you just have to get very lucky. If you have a lot of talent and a great demo reel, that will make it easier. But everyone wants you to be proven first. When I got my gig at Respawn, suddenly more people wanted to work with me because someone else had taken that risk and signed off on me. That's the cruelty of the system—you need a job to get the job."
Still, don't skip those mixers and conferences: "Networking is vitally important, and it's a great thing to do whether or not you get a job from it, because it's practicing how to communicate with people, which is 100% a necessary skill for music design. I have to be able to communicate with composers and game directors, and those are two very different types of people that speak very different languages."
The community itself offers rewards beyond job leads: "The game audio community is one of the great strengths of the industry. It's filled with so many wonderful, generous, funny, and knowledgeable people. When I first started attending networking events, my mindset quickly shifted from 'how can I get a job?' to enjoying shared interests and making new friends. I'd recommend walking into meetups hoping to enjoy the experience, rather than hoping for a job offer."
So there's your roadmap. Master your musical craft. Learn the tech. Make connections without expecting an immediate payoff. And be ready for a bit of luck when opportunity knocks — which, in this growing industry, happens more often than you might think.
The Working Process
What does a day look like when you're making music for games? It depends on whether you're at a tiny indie studio or a huge company. And your role makes a difference too.
Andrew Karboski has seen both sides: "I've always been part of big game companies working on big games, and so there's a lot more specialists. By contrast, in an indie game, if it's a team of six or a team of 30, they might only have one person working in audio as a whole. They'll do all the sound design, all the composition, and integrate everything into the game, so they have a very broad knowledge base."
The division of labor at major studios keeps composers and music designers in separate lanes. "On triple-A games, the size of the projects that I've been fortunate enough to work on, we will have independent contractor composers. That'll be one person or two people full-time just writing the music, and they'll usually be outside of the company. Then as a music designer, I've been inside the company the entire time. The reason why you see it more in-house is that you have to get to know the game engine really well and you have to build relationships with a much broader set of people who are specialized."
Daily routines vary based on where a game is in development. "What I will do in a day depends on the company and where they are in the process of finishing the game. There'll always be meetings, integrating with the larger audio department. We usually have a stand-up where we talk about what we're working on, which can be great because I might be coordinating my work with a dialogue designer. And then they may have learned something that I don't, they will share and now I don’t need to waste time figuring out myself."
Game music creation is way more collaborative than film scoring, according to Karboski. "I interact with many more people than in film. Most days, I would have some meetings with game designers trying to figure out what they've made. It could be technical—I need their help making music play in this one specific instance if this set of variables happens. Or it could be that they're designing an experience that will come to players in 12 months, and I need to start planning how much work it's going to take, when we can schedule this, and if we need recording sessions."
The hands-on work between meetings involves a lot of music manipulation. "For the actual hands-on work outside of meetings, it could be what I'm doing a lot of right now, which is music editing—taking existing music that has already been written and repurposing it, covering a moment that we don't want to have the composer write music specifically for. Or maybe they have written it, but it needs to be cut up and rearranged in a way that can translate music, which is linear, into games, which are nonlinear."
That technical implementation is where game music differs most from traditional composition. Music designers spend hours in audio middleware like Wwise and FMOD, which appear in job descriptions far more frequently now than in past years. These tools bridge the gap between static audio files and dynamic gameplay, allowing the music to respond to what the player is doing.
Audio pros also use game engines like Unreal or Unity to program how the music behaves. Karboski explains the technical challenge: "And then there's also sitting down inside the game engine, rooting around, seeing how things work, and then hooking up the music so that if the player walks through the grand entrance to a cathedral, we can have the music play appropriately at the right time. Part of the fun and challenge of that, which makes it unique from working in film, is that we don't know when the player is going to walk through that entrance. They could stand outside for five hours and then move an inch forward and suddenly they're inside. So we have to design systems that are reactive for that."
When working with composers, the music designer's job begins with understanding the game's emotional needs. "I'll talk with the game director or creative director to understand their vision. Hopefully, they communicate in emotions rather than music terms because it gets more complicated and confusing when they use music terms. We prefer to interact with people on emotional levels because that's what the music will be fulfilling."
After digesting that vision, Karboski forms his own perspective. "I'll take a look at it myself and walk through it. What are my own impressions? What are the things they didn't mention? Then I'll come up with ideas for the composer and assign work: we need this type of music, it needs to be this long, here are the technical requirements."
The initial compositions are usually draft versions. "Then the composer will do their work and send something in. The asset that comes in most of the time is not the final asset—it'll sound 80% the same, but more fake because it's not efficient to make it sound perfect before everyone is happy with it."
For Karboski, nothing beats the recording sessions where demo tracks become the real thing. "Recording sessions are my favorite part of the whole process. It's all fun if the game comes out and people like it, but when you're in the room with the musicians and it's all coming together for the first time, that's the best."
These sessions require extensive planning. "We'll collect a bunch of music in a big pile of demo assets, and if it requires an orchestra, we'll have already started the conversation with orchestras and budgeted all of that out before we even assign the music. Booking a place like Abbey Road in London or Air Studios—the lead time on booking is really long, so you need to know that far in advance."
The weeks before recording involve finalizing everything. "Then in the month and weeks right before the recording session, that's when we lock everything down. Recording, especially a large orchestra at a major studio, can be very expensive, so we want to make sure we're recording all the notes we want and nothing more. After the first day of recording, we have a mixer who comes in and gets the raw recorded assets sent to them so they can start mixing immediately."
The final product — what players hear when they hit start — is the result of this complex dance between creativity and technical constraints. Game music has to adapt to player choices while trying to retain all its emotional power. Music designers are the people who make sure the dragon's theme hits perfectly, whatever the dragon is doing.
Game Music as a Career: Things You Need to Know
Before you quit your day job in an attempt to pursue a career in game music, there are a few business and lifestyle realities to understand.
First up: who owns the music you create? In the AAA world, it's almost never you. Over 91% of major game soundtracks are work-for-hire, meaning the studio gets all the rights. You get paid once, they own it forever. The indie scene is a bit better — only about 44% of small game projects use work-for-hire contracts.
This matters because it affects whether you get royalties when your music appears in concerts, soundtrack albums, or streaming services. Smart composers register with Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) like ASCAP or BMI anyway. When game music gets performed in concerts, you can still collect performance royalties via your PRO.
The job stability question is another big one. Do you go in-house or freelance? In-house means steady paychecks and deeper collaboration with a single team. Freelance means freedom but uncertainty. The money currently leans in-house — North American studio employees in audio earn around $128,500 annually, while freelancers average about $81,000. But the gap shrinks outside North America, where the figures are closer to $71,000 and $48,000 respectively.
Andrew Karboski has also strong feelings about the composer versus music designer career paths:
"I really like music design. I'm really enjoying it. I do have a question in the back of my mind whether or not I would like to write music for video games. But I don't like to assume those types of things before I've experienced them."
For Karboski, the work-life balance as a music designer beats the composer lifestyle: "Being a composer on the projects that I've worked on—they go through a lot of stuff. It's a difficult gig, and I'm not quite sure if I'm compatible with that. I do like the nine-to-six office job type hours, and when I'm not working, I'm not working. We don't afford composers that same flexibility."
The pressure on composers can be intense: "When I ask composers to do work, I try to make it so that they have more than enough time to do it. But that is not necessarily the case for all of the work that composers get. They may have to score a two-hour film in three weeks or something like that. The industry cares more if I work overtime and they're trying to avoid it, but they don't care if composers work overtime."
Deliverables and deadlines rule the composer's world: "The most important thing for composers is to deliver on time. It doesn't matter if you write an amazing piece of music but the film's already come out."
The freelance composer life is particularly unstable: "Composers that contract themselves out—like most of them do, like every composer in film—can't turn down a project because they don't know if the one they're working on is going to get canceled or not. I think maybe a third of the jobs that people have told me they want me to do have actually happened. And it's the same for composers as well—someone will sell you a dream, but maybe the funding doesn't come, or they find someone else."
This leads to some brutal workloads: "So you could have overlapping projects at that point. I've met composers that haven't slept for three days. When I work with composers, I try very hard to avoid that because I think that's an unnecessary step of the process, but it is a reality that they have to contend with."
When asked if aspiring composers should simply pursue other audio roles, Karboski offers nuanced advice: "Well, I would say never give up on composition and keep doing it and don't shy away from it, but also explore the rest of the industry to see what is available. There's nothing wrong with starting out in a QA department. You might not even be working on audio, but that is a very common way into the games industry. There are people who worked in QA who are now running large game studios."
Music design itself can be a pathway to composition: "Music design could be a similar path for someone. I've learned a lot about composition, doing music design, and working with other people's music. I've been fortunate to work with amazing composers, and you get that rolling around in your head every day for eight hours. Hopefully, you're going to learn something from it."
But sometimes wanting to be one or another too eagerly might shoot you in the foot, according to Karboski: "I heard a story from a composer who was interviewing at the beginning of their career to become a music designer. They got the job and asked the people who hired them why they were picked. The hiring team said that the person they rejected asked them when they could start writing music for the games. Most companies make it very clear in music design interviews that this is not a composition role—you're not going to be writing any music for us. They don't really even want you to show any ambition to do that. But at the same time, every company I've worked for has asked me to write music. It's a weird barrier because people with composition skills are very well suited for this job. And if they have composition skills, that's probably because they like composing. So you have to understand how to interact with that in an interview setting."
The market is so flooded with composers that it affects hiring in adjacent roles: "There are stigmas against composers, especially if someone's applying for a tangentially related role. If a composer's applying for a sound design role, whether or not they have skills in sound design, they should just not mention that they do music. Don't put that on the resume or at the forefront, because composers are everywhere—as a friend once said, you could throw a boomerang down the street and hit five composers. A lot of audio teams just get flooded with composers who want to work for them."
The best strategy for long-term success seems to be diversification. Learn multiple audio skills. Network constantly. Deliver quality work on time. Build a reputation for reliability and creativity. The industry is growing, but it's still a small community where word travels fast. And if you succeed, the music you create might become the soundtrack to someone's most cherished memories, becoming a part of their lives in ways that traditional music rarely achieves. Is that worth the unstable hours, the complex rights negotiations, and the technical headaches? Only you can answer that.
