If you want to know how I would categorise a great gaming x music partnership in Roblox, read this article.
As much as I was uncertain about a major-label made gaming experience, especially when it is coined as being ‘groundbreaking’, the experience has actually got some important and notable features. This sets it up to be a pretty good step in the right direction for music partnerships with Roblox…But I reckon we can make it even better.
Beat Galaxy - I played it. Multiple times. So there.
Setting the scene for brands building worlds in Roblox.
Be first, or the best.
Longevity = Progression + Narrative.
1. Beat Galaxy - I played it. Multiple times. So there.
Let’s see what Beat Galaxy is all about first.
The mechanics are as follows: anywhere in the map you can suddenly press this big green button on your screen that lets you choose a track. You get teleported to this running game, where you have to collect the notes and avoid bombs while listening to the track. When you enter the running game, you leave a ‘portal’ where your avatar was in Beat Galaxy, and anyone can interact with the ‘portal’ to watch your running game performance. The area is well designed and similar to Fortnite Festival’s Jam Stage. However, everywhere has been reasonably fleshed out and nowhere feels quiet because they have NPC characters filling up space and queueing.
There are key features to be noted here - your high scores put you in a world ranking, which is important for social hierarchy because we are all blobs of biology at the end of the day. You need to collect ‘fans’ while playing tracks in order to unlock more songs and limited user-generated content. I don’t think it valued a track differently depending on when you unlock it, but compared to Fortnite Festival it means that you have an incentive to explore every track to earn points. This is progression which is as close to a narrative as you can make.
There are a number of features any player can interact with, such as jumping puzzles, areas to wanter around and cosmetics to collect. (Cosmetics are in-game items you can buy that change your avatar’s appearance but do not affect your gameplay).
On my first play session, there was a huge focus on Yungblud and you earned extra points if you played his track, which is a smart way to direct attention to certain artists. I noticed many users logging into Beat Galaxy, playing to acquire the free user-generated items and then not interacting much with the group or community challenges. For example, there was a 10 player mode where the highest win streak for any player was 2.
I came back to this a number of weeks later after a Kid Cudi update, and this time there were more features added to Beat Galaxy. I also saw that instruments were added that any avatar could interact with - this felt familiar to the way that Fortnite Festival’s Jam Stage works. It seems like Supersocial and Universal have been working on feedback, focus groups and providing new content that the audience have been sharing. Updates like this can show that Beat Galaxy can hold up be a versatile, interactive advert for a selection of tracks, with free cosmetics to further market the tracks. Is that right?
2. Setting the scene for brand’s building worlds in Roblox.
There’s more than a handful of games to play on Roblox. In fact, there are likely over 40 million. New experiences contest with old heritage experiences, just like releasing new music when you have 100,000 other tracks per day to contest with. New experiences have a limit of replayability, so going into a new experience, acquiring everything you can that’s free or achievable, and then bolting out, is common practice. So this poses the same issues as Fortnite Festival - how can you keep people consistently interacting in this mode?
There is an unanswered question of making a world that is not-exhausting, indefinite and worth investing into beyond a high score. From a music side, how do you move a Roblox player over to be a fan of an artist? …Is that the goal? Would Roblox players go see a Yungblud show now after Beat Galaxy? Or listen to the track outside of the game? Or buy a t-shirt? Or invest in any of the other ways that the music industry could commercially benefit from this kind of venture, outside of Roblox? Or is this just a fun game that celebrates artists?
I think there are a few impending and potential hurdles for the upcoming corporate influx of 3rd party developed modules into games. One of which is choice paralysis. Every brand and their dog are going to have a little room in their own gaming metaverse, and just like opening a club on an already busy street - how do you fill it every night? When it comes to steaming into a busy market, I think brands (in particular music entities) have to choose what to focus on:
3. Be first, or the best.
My first category I’d like to discuss is how Beat Galaxy contests with the other 40 million experience - ‘Be first, or the best’.
I think that choosing how to exist in this intemediary metaverse is a little like starting a new business all over again. I was recently reading ‘Zero to One’ by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel.
One of the theories in this book (Chapter 4) suggests that competition leads to conformity, which limits innovation. It can be said that being the first one to do something is innovation, right? Because no one else has done it yet. You’ll be known for having had that idea first. But expect people to come along, take this idea, refine it, and make it more appealing or more successful than your original idea. These second-entries choose to excel at the craft by taking an original idea and make it the best in show.
So what about everything else? Well, that’s exactly my point. How many of those other experiences can you name that were not first in a category, or best in a category? Probably only either whatever was innovative or excellent. Doing something just to occupy space, I am guessing, is not going to be so successful.
I’m going to take this phrase and explain my thoughts on Beat Galaxy in context.
How does Beat Galaxy do in terms of innovation? (‘Be first…’)
Beat Galaxy as a unique, custom-built track-runner game is indeed the first of its kind. But engaging music experiences have existed before that are similar. There have previously been artist events and even listening parties that have arrived on the platform, supported by Roblox. Some of these gamified music-focused worlds have had a lot more exposure, with some on this list going up to 329 million visits. Thats 328 million more than Beat Galaxy.
Is Beat Galaxy one of the better experiences? (‘…Or the best’)
Yes, Beat Galaxy does a great job in being one of the more refined experiences out there. Given the engaging game, cosmetics available and the consistent updates, it has set a strong benchmark. It’s had positive reviews proportionately and the updates will keep people engaging long term.
I’d say providing continued exposure to new updated worlds would be a long-term strategy for Universal to own their own ‘stage’ directly in Roblox.
4. Longevity = Progression + Narrative.
Going back to my Fortnite - Jam Stage analysis a few posts ago, I still think that this sets an incredible foundation for what could be the ‘best’ version of the Harmonix-style music game in Fortnite. To summarise, I think great gaming experiences have progression & narrative.
Progression by itself is already there in most cases - offer rewards when people do stuff, and better rewards for harder stuff. So why is progression important here? Well, otherwise what draws you back? You gain your cosmetics, and as soon as you’ve beaten whatever you want to beat, you can leave and take those cosmetics with you onwards and out of the game mode. There must be something more than that to keep you there, and I don’t see so many 3rd party branded-experiences offering that.
The glue is narrative. But, why narrative? Single player games take the player with no knowledge of the game through brand new game mechanics, the characters and a new story. That progression is the purpose of the game’s very existence. There are compilation videos of streamer’s reactions to pivotal moments in single player games (Spoilers if you click on this link). Even with multiplayer games - every time someone plays Fornite Battle Royale, each game is a story because they share the struggles and memories with others online, so their involvement IS the story. There will be so many memories of people playing with friends and against others, stories of team work, fails, overcoming odds, wins and loss streaks to share in and out of the game. When it is all over, you don’t just have something to show in the form of badges, achievements and cosmetics - you have something to say, or even better something you felt along the way that you’re sharing with others too.
Perhaps this a bit steep for a Roblox game, yeah I understand. I’m drawing from the extreme examples here! Go and play ‘To The Moon’ and then tell me my thoughts on narrative are wrong.
Let’s review Beat Galaxy in this context too:
Does Beat Galaxy have good progression?
Yes, there are leaderboards and ranking systems. Some songs are level-locked which gives players incentives to work towards the free cosmetics.
Does Beat Galaxy have a rich narrative?
Aside from the updates, this is largely an instant-experience where what you see is what you get. There is no running narrative linking the updates together. There isn’t an element of influence your character has other than the acquisition of free cosmetics. This is a real opportunity for Beat Galaxy to have a longer, deeper narrative running through this experience. It can offer the player the chance to be part of a story, rather than just a changing leaderboard and some free items.
What if the track-runner points for that day contribute towards a bigger story that you and your peers work towards? What if there are genre-battles, where the winning genre gets a track focus for the next week? Or what if your choice of tracks or genres in one season determines what your character can or cannot do in the next? Like a Tamagotchi where, when you forgot about it, it always evolved into the one you didn’t want?
(Source)
To wrap this all up, there are some key areas to consider that would make a fantastic partnered game in a saturated market. Firstly, choose if you are going to be first with an innovative and groundbreaking idea, or if you are going to be the best at an already existing idea, perhaps with a twist or a cleaner function. Regardless of your above choice, I think there are 2 things to consider when thinking about how you should pitch music-related content to Roblox. Progression with your cosmetic gifts has already been nailed so, as the music industry, let’s pat ourselves (namely Universal…and Supersocial too of course) on the back. If you want people to stick around for more than the cosmetics, sprinkle a little narrative in there to give everyone something to feel.
TLDR:
Roblox and Fortnite are rather busy. You, your brand or your idea need to stand out. With music partnership ideas: be first, or the best. Have progression and narrative to get people coming back. Oh, and make sure you play the game too because if you enjoy it, that’s probably a good sign.