BAFTA Games in Concert – Opening Night in Review

Nic Bunce 06/02/26 Comments Closed

What is your favourite piece of video game music? If we started humming the opening theme to Halo, how many of you would join in? What about if it was Tifa’s Theme or the theme to Assassin’s Creed? All of these live rent-free in our heads, and no doubt yours too.

This is something that the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA as we all know it, is keenly aware of, and it is to their immense credit that they realised this more than 20 years ago when they held the inaugural British Academy Games Award for Music in 2002, celebrating “excellence in composition for a game music score, through original music and/or creative use of licensed track”.

To put that in perspective, composer Jeremy Soule won for his work on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, beating the other nominees: Command & Conquer: Generals, Primal, Republic: The Revolution, TimeSplitters 2 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. If, like us, you remember playing these games at launch, we can recommend good deals on walking sticks.

Austin Wintory conducting at BAFTA Games in Concert 2026 – Image Credit: Andy Paradise

It’s with this rich catalogue of exceptional music in mind that BAFTA Games in Concert was produced. Its world premiere at the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 31 January certainly felt celebratory. Conducted by BAFTA-winning composer Austin Wintory, and backed up by the 65-piece BBC Concert Orchestra and London Voices, attendees were met with iconic video game soundtracks from over the past two decades.

As the ensemble did what they do best, starting with Baldur’s Gate 3, a screen behind them played excerpts from the games they were celebrating. The thing that differentiates this from your average performance, however, is the game footage being cut with real-life singers, placed into a setting that reflects the game — in this case, a red-head in a green dress with Celtic jewellery singing opera.

What followed was a night of fantastic music. Wintory introduced Jessica Curry’s Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture before ploughing straight into Inon Zur’s Fallout 4, followed by Jesper Kyd’s Assassin’s Creed.

BAFTA Games in Concert features Helldivers 2 – Image Credit: Andy Paradise

As excellent as these pieces are — and they are truly excellent, the choir singing the theme to Assassin’s Creed gave me goosebumps — this is where the issues with this performance came to the fore. It could be opening night tech issues, but the human performer intercut with the footage on the screen was playing a wooden flute-like instrument. However, despite seeing his fingers moving, I couldn’t hear him playing over what was in the room. Perhaps the AV team knocked the slider by mistake, but it felt a little off.

The other thing that was obviously missing after Wintory introduced Curry’s phenomenal score was any sort of intro or anecdote about what was to come. This is where real value could have been given to the paying audience — small insights into what each composer thought, liked or was inspired by as they crafted the melodies that have stayed with us for decades. They were in the room, it wouldn’t have been hard to pick their brains.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Composer Borislav Slavov & Performers Mariya Anastasova and Andrew Wincott – Image Credit: Andy Paradise

The best video game music concerts I’ve seen all have insights and trivia from the composer or lead musician to hang the performances on. It’s never for every piece, and it doesn’t have to be, but it provides not only a structure for the performance, but also a frame of reference for those who haven’t played every game that’s being showcased that evening.

Absent such a narrative, the BAFTA Games in Concert felt a lot more like a greatest hits compilation than a celebration, especially in the second half. Hopefully this was just the opening-night settling into a format and future audiences will get to hear why Disco Elysium has the tone they’re hearing, which instrument you see played on the screens during Far Cry 4 and what inspired the music behind Returnal.

Still, it was a night of phenomenal music, played beautifully by some truly expert musicians. You really can’t beat live music, especially when a full orchestra is on stage.

If you’re keen to reminisce about how far video game music has come and celebrate it as an art form in its own right, check out the tour dates below: