Killzone 2 wins first gaming Ivor Novello

Killzone 2 took home the inaugural award for Best Original Video Game Score at the 2010 Ivor Novello awards yesterday. The awards, given out annually by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, have been running since 1955, but this is the first year games have been featured. This makes the Sony-published first-person shooter the first video game to be officially awarded by the UK composition community.

Speaking about the inclusion of games for the first time, Mark Fishlock, BASCA director and member of The Ivors Committee said, "Writing music for games also requires a number of specialist skills compared with conventional film scoring, such as nonlinear and multilayered composition. This is a very exciting development and one which hopefully will be fully embraced by the rapidly growing games world."

The Ivors, as they are known, are seen as particularly prestigious among musicians, as they are voted on by the 2,000 members of the academy and are not directly influenced by record labels, the music press, or the general public.

Killzone 2's composer, Joris de Man, fought off competition from Armin Elsaesser, who composed the music for Sony-published Fluffy Logic effort Savage Moon: Waldgeist, and Richard Beddow, Richard Birdsall, Walter Mair, Lorenzo Piggici, and Simon Ravn, who wrote the music for Sega-published strategy title Empire: Total War.

Talking to GameSpot after the event, a Creative Assembly representative said "We won a BAFTA this year and were nominated for an Ivor, so we feel games are starting to be understood as the massive and diverse art form they really are. It's a shame losing out, of course, but drinking champers with Lilly Allen and Dizze Rascal is an acceptable silver medal."

For more on the music of Killzone 2, check out the Start/Select interview with Joris de Man below.