Bringing Live Events to Games PG Connects Digital #2

I was going to talk to us about bringing live to games and hopefully you'll join us in a second [Music] say hey Oliver hey doing I'm good we owe you a question okay yeah no it's great I mean I I but it was a genuine question actually because I've been working also with some external parties and I do still feel that you know paid people that get paid to kind of assess the game they are still biased and it's kind of hard if you want to have like certain let's say benchmarks where you say okay this is going to green-light the game to kind of go into a further

stage you can do obviously these kind of tests also very very early on then it's like okay yeah how do I buy us a lot of this stuff with you know I've done these like user group research is your research processes will you pay people 30 quid to turn up whatever it is and then you observe them playing the key thing in those cases is that you'd introduce it as somebody else's game and you don't sit in the room with them you watch them through either a camera view or window and it's not something that most studios can afford that small studios anyway but if you can make it happen it's a really powerful you do get useful information anyway I'm taking up too much of your time go for it all over to you sir okay great yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna talk today well thank you first of all for having me I'm going to talk about something that has been actually popping in to kind of the the aura of games and

mobile games which are actual life events like real-world life events and how they have come into games and I you're probably aware of like because there was big PR splash around it a fortnight bringing some music into into their meter verse I know that minecraft is also working on bringing like a live music event into into their game and I think it's it's great to kind of do something there and we I'm working for Lockwood Publishing I'm chief commercial officer there and we've also had quite a bit of experience around this topic and I thought it would be interesting to kind of share our experience so maybe first of all a little bit about the company so Lockwood publishing has been running one single app which is a 3d virtual world called a

vacant life so we are also a kind of meta verse in that sense we have today about north of 1.4 million players every day coming into the app we have more than three million downloads every month and what is interesting our app is a very very social application and that kind of also kind of puts this into the context of like fortnight and some other games even though it's not a shooter at all and rather targets like a female audience we have like a high friend recommendation or a Net Promoter Score so 80% of our players actually recommend this app to their friends so it is very very as I said it's a 3d virtual world it's about creating an avatar that is yeah as unique as you with lots of

customization options lots of things that you can do with it and then basically you go into a virtual world and you kind of explore all sorts of different things and scenes and and you meet other people because that's a lot what what the game is about meeting other people are having conversations with them making friends in a virtual environment what is interesting is we're somewhere between a game and a social network and you can see that also in the time that people actually spend in our app so on average per user per day we reach and this is data from before coronavirus now we're actually past the one hour but obviously all of those applications have increased their times so we were kind of in in the in the region of an app like tick-tock in terms of the engagement that our users have

with the application and that is because it's it's it's a place to hang out it's a place to meet other people it's a place to have conversations now in with regards to life ops then you know we do a lot of life ops and as Oscar I mentioned earlier on this morning in one of the key ways there is certainly also a lot of kind of clinical things to to life ups in terms of monetization ways and and these kind of things and certainly we also do a lot around around that but one of the key things for us is also kind of to be really predictably unpredictable and that also means bringing like surprise events into the game or relatively surprise events and doing things you know that that were unexpected by our relatively large audience and one of the the things that

we've been doing is music events so we've we've been able to basically bring smaller and larger events into into into our app and yeah I'm going to share I hope the video doesn't stutter too much but I'm going to show a few things there to give you like an impression of what we've been doing [Music]

[Laughter] [Music] yeah so these are some examples of some of the concerts that we've that we've been able to produce and you know we're obviously not the size of a fortnight and we're only on mobile but you know those concerts have still reached quite a lot of people we've had like with one of the first bigger ones with an artist from Warner Music in the US Hayley kiyoko we had about 1.7 million concert visits each one of those was on average like nine minutes so lots of engagement

we had a concert that is more like EDM with with a duo called blasterjaxx earlier this year with about 2.5 million visits we have another concert coming up this weekend with an American DJ and social media starlet called there are Chantelle Jeffries so yeah we expect to have like similar if not bigger numbers yeah so that's what we've what we've been been doing now I wanted to share a little bit like you know why we've done that what are kind of key aspects to consider and you know where does it fit for which kind of game does it fit and and you know some some of our kind of insights and learnings so I want to kind of really talk about like why why we did this and you can obviously decide then for yourself why you should do this you

know is it easy to do I think is certainly an important factor and then you have to kind of understand especially when it comes to kind of music and the music industry you also have to understand like how do you create like a win-win scenario so when when we talk about like why should you do this I think one of the key things is you know is your audience interested as I was sharing you know people are already in our app at least spending a lot of time and for them to you know to have something have an appointment to go to is is certainly great and we've been doing music events now for quite a while we did do quite a I think beginning of last year we did do some research and it was clear I mean we kind of had the hypothesis anyway but it was clear our audience which is relatively young you know has a lot of attachment to music

and artists so that was you know there there is also the whole you can see that here on the on that screen there is also the whole layer of like TV properties and these kind of things but definitely music is is for the younger audience a big thing so for us to kind of bring music into the app was was definitely a great goal and then another important question is like is it easy to do and I think that's something that from from a company and product perspective you really really also have to kind of think carefully about we do a lot of life ups anyway all the time we publish constantly items spaces and and events into the game so for us it's more like business as usual

in a way right for sure it needs likely times and all these kind of things but you know to kind of create like a stage and have an avatar they're performing on the stage with some music is not something that we in parts at least don't do anyways so for us it was like just a natural extension the big difference is that you know you can't do it just in time you have like lots of approval processes and these kind of things and obviously if you work with with artists or with music labels then you know things definitely take a while now we were lucky enough that we have kind of a strong life of production pipeline anyway so for us it's then more about kind of scheduling that in like the first the Hayley kiyoko concert for example there the production took around like ten weeks from start to

finish I know that some other companies that do you like music events also in their games because it's not like naturally in in their product or production pipeline these things can then take even you know half a year or even longer but we're able to kind of do this relatively quickly we're at the moment we're roughly at a timeline of about six weeks from like start to finish meaning start when we have like a deal memo or like a contract and then kind of production because we also outsource a lot of things up to the actual concert that takes about six weeks but the goal ultimately is to get to even kind of shorter cycles because we see a lot of engagement of our users with with these kind of events it's a great opportunity for them also to create contact content like I was there

you know participating in the in the event etc so we do want to bring that down even further and that would allow us then to also do run even more concerts now the key challenge I think and that we faced was you know how do we create like a win-win scenario and I think it's really important to kind of understand that from from all the different aspects because it's there you have to kind of look at like okay what does the artist want what why why would they do and the same counsel suffer for the label like if you're if you're talking with the like a bigger music label why what is their interest what do they actually want to get out of it and then as important if you want to create a win-win scenarios like okay what do we as like a developer slash publisher what

do we actually want to get out of this so if I take an example here an artist like Jessie J I think she's also with Warner Music if I'm not mistaken because we've at least had some conversations with her you know she has 9.2 million followers on like social media so you know I would I would argue that you know reaching out to a game that has maybe I don't know a hundred thousand daily active users or something like that the question then is like okay does this make an impact if you are asking yourself okay what does the artist actually want to get out of that if it's like a totally unknown kind of band or a musician you know that has no social media following nobody listens to them on Spotify then obviously it's something completely different so you know you have to kind of look at

it okay what does the artist want the artist at the end of the day they want exposure of their music and their brand which is they themselves right and if you're if you're big enough then you can actually provide that but if you're very very small then that's not something that you can provide and then the artist will definitely say like okay we could still do this but then you have to pay me so at the moment I think you know there is obviously a lot of interest from artists to do something in in digital so that's why we have a lot of interest also from all the music labels but at the end of the day you need to be able to really contribute to that if if Jessie J can record something and put it on Instagram and reaches all our followers you know and your game is so small that it

wouldn't make any impact then you know it's it's it's very hard to kind of justify that for her all these all these artists or all the bigger artists at least are kind of somehow involved with some record label that still exists even though they can go direct to consumer with channels like Spotify but very often there is still very old-school a label involved and what they actually want is they want they see this more as a marketing thing and their biggest interest is like can we or they make money on on basically on the music that's itself right so they are interested in you know does this drive visibility for the artists does this drive you know listens in Spotify because that's where money is made even though

it may not be that much like three dollars per thousand streams or something like that you know it's still that's what the label wants for us as a developer yeah we also have to ask the question okay what do we want so for us at Lockwood it's kind of twofold on the one hand we do want to provide something interesting and exciting to our users well we you know we can in in theory also do this with a relatively unknown artist you know it's still going to be a nice and exciting event if we if we can draw like a slightly bigger artist we're not at like the top-tier yet but they are more interested these days you know then you want basically that they you know talk about it that they that they basically promote it as on social media as well so almost like an influencer in that sense for that they need to be

extremely excited about this as well so that means that the koala of any kind of production that you do needs to be really really good and people need to you know be very excited from the label from the artist and and the artists management to kind of say like okay yeah this is this is something that that we should be doing you know they need to obviously and that's what also takes a lot of time they need to approve all the assets every word that you kind of mentioned they need to yeah approve everything so that means that you know it they will only really kind of go above and beyond on social media if it's Instagram or YouTube or wherever if they're also really excited and we've had some examples of artists that were less excited so to say because there were maybe a little bit like not sure if this is so cool

but we had artists that were just so excited to be like an an avatar in a game and there basically were all over social media themselves well we didn't even ask for it our contracts because we are interested in exposure also through the artists definitely also foresee like some kind of a minimum in terms of what they are supposed to do in terms of social mentioning but it's always nicer if they were if they go above and beyond and don't do the absolute bare minimum one other thing that you know with a with a big artist you do have to kind of consider is they will want money they will want to kind of have some contribution the label will want that as well they want to basically bring an opportunity to the artist where the artist also feels that I can make some money right now a lot of their money has

been frozen in a way because all the concerts that they used to do are not happening and that's not going to happen for the foreseeable future so here in the Netherlands where I'm based you know we're talking that maybe even some of the early festivals next year are not going to happen so for artists you know big concerts that could still be like a year away or something like that and they're definitely looking at like okay how can I you know make money from my brand if if concerts are not happening so we've we've basically found a way where we basically sell memorabilia in the game so we basically create like a Stoke stage outfit for example for the artists and we then also sell that to our users so they can then buy that and on that purchase we basically then share revenues with the with the artists slash

label so that's that's was a good route for us to kind of also bring some money to the table it's it will obviously be harder if yeah for certain games it will for sure it'd be harder to kind of extract some some additional money or so to say from the users to then share with the labels but I would definitely always avoid like minimum guarantees or these kind of things because I think that's just not needed anymore to give you like a little bit of an outlook I do think like you know games have have become such an important media that you know the big games definitely can provide that platform for for artists for any kind of for various art forms it can also go go further than that in my

opinion like music is one one aspect but I do think like also some of the some of the bigger like TV IP rich IP that is out there definitely those companies are more and more looking at like ways to kind of you know take their IP further I think you know maybe five years ago or something it was like a game studio going to like a big I pee holder and saying like hey can we you know build a game and I don't think the deals were very favorable today I think that definitely has changed because as a games industry we we have so many eyeballs and are so ingrained globally in like pop culture and kind of what matters to users so I think I think we're in a much better position to to basically benefit from that and find

some interesting IPS we for example just partnered with world of dance like a popular TV show of TV format around the world because we have a lot of you know dance and animation and if you look for advocate life on YouTube you will see besides some of the ways to hack the game that you always have with big games you will also see a lot of content that users actually create where they you know re re-envision songs and do lots of choreographies in terms of animations etc so for us like world of dance was a natural extension but that's I think still one month away or something kind of starting there so that's yeah that's rounds off my talk I think I'm okay on time I'm not sure Oscar you're doing

fine but absolutely fine we've got five minutes left for questions and I mean for me the thing about going for kind of events like this bearing in mind we we did this in the old PlayStation days we had the singstar space and they had a number of big bands vaguely remember faithless I know we were talking about placebo who is my favorite band of all time they never actually did it sadly but we were literally having discussions with those that kind of scale of bands at the time and you know it's it's a tricky balance to get right because I think you've gotta have a mindset of a venue if you're going to do it because I think a one-off it fine but if you're gonna do it consistently it's got to fit with your audience and your audience you expect it and look forward to it and food must agree absolutely I think like you said you've got to have that kind of win-win mindset and realize what the bands want there are a ton of amazing bands out

there who are desperate for any awareness they're not the ones who've got the two-minute audience like you said exactly so you kind of have to have to find the right balance there but how do you find that balance I mean I mean is it a decision you make at the beginning about what you're gonna be are you gonna be they find the new band venue or are you gonna be a top venue or do you is it a journey it for us it's a journey we want to kind of just you know give our users a wide range of experiences because we also have such a wide range of you know interests in our game so then then it kind of makes sense to kind of really do different things there and I mean we have the ability because we're set up in terms of life ups production so well to kind of do these kind of things I mean we we did like within I think one or two weeks we kind of kicked off and and basically

produce like a single release in the game for a like an artist and these kind of things so we can do also smaller things pretty quickly because we're in that setup anyway but music has always been quite an important part for us and it's like an event to go to and for our users I kind of felt felt good and felt right yeah yeah I mean I've been talking to the universe lately and they're doing similar things to you obviously on PC and console and you know for them they're not the same scale as you guys but they've found this this movement of creating moments of enjoyment for people to come in and share and expose new talent to that audience has been really powerful and what something really interesting to them is looking for ways to create smart monetization models that can share revenue for those teams so that means that they're not looking for the big buck dies they're looking for people who have an audience yes but maybe an audience that is willing to

spend money on a digital t-shirt or you know that kind of thing and and it's in creating those engagement moments as well so you know do create a VIP area where people who buy the VIP ticket for the free concert can go and actually have a conversation with that band those sort of things the kinds of discussions that we've been having and I think I suppose appoint me saying that is really I think there's so much scope depending on the game yeah and whilst you guys and Adam are basically creating social spaces even for tonight is showing the the right audience the right space the right segmentation of that playing environment can create really powerful social moments absolutely and I think there will be much more of that coming you know I mean minecraft also announced that they're going to do like a music event and in the game and I just I find it like it's kind of an interesting thing if you have like an MMO esque kind

of game where people get together and can share that moment you know that's when it actually becomes really powerful and exciting and you know we see that also in our in-game chat then you know once they go in and it's like oh wow oh my god this is so cool etc right so kind of creating those those you know special moments as you said that's super important for us as well because then we also have then the users that then also kind of you know push it out on social media everywhere right and that's very important for us exactly I noticed okay I recently went for the oculus quest I think it's an amazing song step forward for VR and they do a number of concerts and performances and also you know interviews so some people sit on stage and they all talk and they will take questions I kind of looking forward to seeing how you can make comedy work in this type of environment I guess gonna be a bit more difficult well we're starting as a next step or one of the

things that we are doing is where we are going to kind of do work as we're working with will advance we do want to do something that is a bit more maybe like a dance that'll kind of thing in the game you know we're obviously not only a dance game so you know it will never be like a deep dance battle game but it will be at least like some kind of interactive thing that people can actually do I'm really looking forward to that and I think that's the key thing in these phases where you know games that yourself have emotes they have reactions something that's often missing from a mainstream game and it on you some if you've got a Cooking Mama kind of style game maybe it's gonna be more complicated to introduce this kind of thing that doesn't mean it's impossible it's just understanding how does your audience share and express with each other and is there a relevant crossover and it may be you know inserting a videos live video stream of somebody

doing recipes might be more relevant for that kind of game then something like you know having a live band you know having percy bow onstage I think it's important that you also really understand who your audience is and what they are looking for right you know a cooking mama might you know you might have more like a I don't know if it's strong in the US you might have more success with I don't know like country music or something like that for a kind of you know a middle-aged demographic in our game that would probably not work so well I mean we probably still have some people that would enjoy it but you know it's not like it's not what what our audience would really want to see so as always it seems to me it comes down to understanding your audience and give them something they love but equally understanding the artist and making sure that there's a good fit yeah I think that's very right yeah absolutely well I'm gonna say thank you very much it was

an amazing talk and I think you know anyone who's thinking about games as a medium needs to understand that we are the largest form of digital insane man on the planet one third of the population the world play games it is bigger than music and movies combined and I think during the crisis it could even be I haven't checked this it could even be bigger than music Moo and home entertainment combined it's getting close to that level so you know don't underestimate the power of games don't underestimate the power that we can bring to entertainment as a medium and thanks ollie for showing you sharing with us what you guys are can either do thank you you