Huge amounts of incorrect information in this thread, so allow me to try and help explain some things.
First off, it's worth noting that NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) is a body of professionals in the *record* industry. That is to say, they are the people who make, produce, package, market etc ALBUMS. This distinction is important from, say, the Motion Picture Academy (who present Oscars) because that celebrates exclusively the work of films. As such, "Best Original Score" (and "Best Original Song") are being honored as sub-disciplines within the overall film industry (much like the other categories: acting, directing, editing, makeup, costume design, etc)
So first off, an Oscar category for games (which I see advocated for periodically) makes zero sense. Wrong industry.
Second, the Grammy's have approximately 80 categories creative achievement in virtually every genre of music you can imagine, plus the huge aggregate categories like "Song of the Year," "Artist of the Year," etc.
AS SUCH, one those categories is "Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media." That is to say, an *album* whose music was not originally written for the sake of being an album, but which is instead a re-purposing of music whose original purpose was as underscore in a visual medium (such as film, TV or games).
THEREFORE, and this is why I vehemently disagree that the Grammy's should have a videogame category, what NARAS is voting on each year in this category are "albums that contain music originally written as underscore." In that sense, there is no meaningful distinction between film soundtracks, game soundtracks or TV soundtracks. (As a side note, they DO make a distinction from Broadway cast albums, but I think that's justified because we're really talking about something totally different there)
That is a huge difference from the Oscars honoring Best Score. The Oscars are watching a film and saying "IN THE CONTEXT OF THIS FILM, this score is the top pick of the year." They are *not* evaluating a soundtrack album. In fact, to make it maximally clear we should say "Score" when referring to awards honoring music for its merits *as* underscore (like "how well does this music support this film/game/TV show?") and "soundtrack album" when referring to awards honoring music (originally written as "Score") for its enjoyability as an album
The Grammy's however, ARE. It's as if they were saying "Here are 5 albums we loved and the only thing they all have in common is that the music was originally meant to be underscore in this entirely other non-album medium (ie a film, game or TV show)."
Last point: my dear friend Christopher Tin's nominations / wins were for his album "Calling all Dawns" which featured his Civ 4 theme "Baba Yetu." He won in two categories:
1) Best Classical Crossover Album (for "Calling All Dawns" in general, because it was a hybrid 'world music' album combined with large classical orchestra. Trivia: they eliminated that category after that year, thus he won the last EVER Crossover Grammy)
and 2) "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocals" for "Baba Yetu" specifically. This is obviously a more technical category, but it was nonetheless hugely significant since "Baba Yetu" was originally written for Civ 4, thus making it the first *EVER* Grammy-nominated /-winning piece of videogame music. It's key to remember though that it won for its high caliber orchestrations in accompanying the Soweto Gospel Choir's singing, and not *as videogame music.*
When JOURNEY was nominated in 2012, it was in the "Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media" category (alongside scores like John Williams' TIN TIN, Zimmer's DARK KNIGHT RISES, and the winning score of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).
Because JOURNEY was actually nominated in the Visual Media category, it was the first game soundtrack to ever be nominated *as videogame music.* It would be accurate to call it the second-ever videogame music nominated in some general sense though.
I hope that makes sense. Sorry for the wall of text but I see common mistakes all the time here and I thought I'd try and clear some of it up.
