Game Music Digest | Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Music and PUBG's aespa Collaboration
Plus: Blackpink's Lisa is the new face of PlayStation
Game Music Digest is a weekly wrap-up of the most interesting stories at the intersection of video games and music, brought to you by the music and gaming newsletter, MusicEXP.
Want more music and gaming news? Listen to the GXM Podcast I co-host with Thomas Quillfeldt. In our latest episode, me and Tom explore whether there’s such a thing as ‘too many’ video game concerts.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: Why is the Music so Important?
In Brief: Activision’s revamped version of the third and fourth Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, is out now. The soundtrack features more than 60 songs, only ten of which have been re-licensed from the original games. The decision to focus on new songs rather than past songs has been highly contested by fans of the series, but Activision’s VP of production Christopher Wilson said in a blog post it’s “an opportunity to showcase music that falls outside of the mainstream.”
EXP: Forget Grand Theft Auto, Wipeout, or FIFA – the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks are the most important video game soundtracks ever created. In the run-up to the launch of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, there were more conversations about the music in the game than the actual skaters themselves. The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series is responsible for introducing millions of young players to alternative music and in later games, rap, hip-hop and hard rock.
The series also had a life-changing effect on the bands that had their music featured in the games. Goldfinger’s ‘Superman’ – which featured in the first two games but is largely celebrated by fans as being the anthem for the series. Vocalist John Feldman told Kerrang in 2022:
“Superman was kind of just a song that we had lying around. Obviously now it’s the biggest song we’ve written but I didn’t have any idea what that song would become. It was never a radio single; its popularity is testament to how powerful and how important that game was for the culture of our scene.”
Alongside Goldfinger, there are plenty of other bands who have spoken about the phenomenal impact those syncs had on their careers. I recently wrote a piece for VGC where I asked bands who have their music in the original 3+4 games and the latest remake to talk about the impact it’s had on them and what the games mean to them.
Some of my favourite quotes from that piece speak volumes to the impact of the music in these games.
“Tons of our fans discovered us for the first time through the games,” Chad Ginsburg from CKY
“I’ve discovered a lot of hardcore, punk, and hip hop thanks to the THPS games, and honestly feel it has shaped my taste in music,” Chris Gonzales from End It
“THPS has been a gateway for my generation to discover incredible alternative music. Its influence on skaters’ music taste can’t be overstated,” Niko Butler from T.C.M.F.
“I first discovered punk, ska, hip-hop, and pretty much anything that wasn’t classic rock or country through the original Tony Hawks Pro Skater,” Seth Carolina from Starcrawler
“At the time, I didn’t realize how it would help introduce AFI to a new generation of gamers, skaters and punks… Over the years, countless fans have told me that THPS3 was their first time hearing us. I met Tony recently and thanked him for including us on the game,” Hunter Burgan from AFI
It’s important to remember there was no YouTube or Spotify when the first game released in 1999, and p2p filesharing sites such as LimeWire didn’t take off until a couple of years later. If you’re a ‘90s kid like me, you grew up discovering music through the radio and what was playing in your household. And unless you had very cool parents, you probably weren’t listening to Primus, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and The Vandals.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater changed all of that. Suddenly, millions of kids all over the world were listening to ska, hardcore, punk, metal, rock, hip-hop and rap music and hearing the same, limited selection of songs over and over again.
The release of a new Tony Hawk game every year added new bands to discover and meant an entire generation of kids in the ‘90s and ‘00s experienced the series during the most formative years of their lives, whether they dropped in on the PlayStation or years later on the PS2, Xbox 360 and GameCube.
While the musical legacy of these games is largely documented in features by journalists and social media posts by fans, I wanted to highlight the ‘invisible’ impact of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks – one that ties into the idea of cultivating super fans and music marketing goals that can’t be measured.
When it comes to cultivating superfans, I don’t think anyone or anything has done it better than the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games.
As one of the earliest (but definitely not the first) showcases of sync in video games, the series highlighted the magic that happens when you attach music to an experience or moment that players are emotionally attached to.
The music in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is great. But players didn’t fall in love with it because of its musical merits alone.
Players fell in love with the music because it was tied to their emotional enjoyment of the game. And while certain songs might have seemed alien at first [looking at you, 25 ta life], you eventually come around to them on your 10th, 20th or 30th listen. Video games encourage active listening once players have mastered the fundamentals; trick loops in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater meant players could let their muscle memory takeover and just enjoy the music a couple of hours in. It’s no different to listening to tunes when you’re driving a car.
As for the superfan aspect, most video game soundtracks with licensed music have 20 or 30 licensed songs (the exception being bigger open-world games with radio stations). As players hear these songs over and over again, they become genuine fans of the bands they’re listening to and check out their wider discography.
What starts with a video game sync can end with players streaming an album.
What starts with a video game sync can end with players buying every album and artist has ever released.
What starts with a video game sync can end with players discovering their new favourite band, buying merchandise, travelling down to gigs and even buying festival tickets because the band feature on the line-up.
What starts with a video game sync can cultivate thousands of superfans.
These are all reasons why I’m so passionate about highlighting the power of video games from a sync and music discovery perspective. I strongly believe platforms like Roblox and Fortnite are the next music discovery platforms and we’ll have thousands of kids in their '30s, 20 years from now, talking about the Fortnite effect of music.
It’s important for labels and management to bear all of this in mind when they’re considering sync deals. Music is undervalued nowadays so while I don’t think we’ll ever see a moment similar to what happened in the ‘90s and ‘00s with those early Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and FIFA games, I passionately believe video games will always be one of the most powerful mediums for music discovery and cultivating super fans.
Krafton Launches Collaboration with K-Pop Group aespa in PUBG Battlegrounds
In brief: Krafton has launched a massive collaboration with K-pop group aespa in its free-to-play battle royale shooter, PUBG: Battlegrounds. The month-long event launched on the 7th July and introduces aespa character skins, special missions and a massive selection of aespa-themed cosmetic items into the game. Certain areas of the map have also been transformed into concert venues, but the highlight of the collaboration is the release of ‘Dark Arts,’ a new aespa song accompanied by a PUBG-themed music video. This new song has also been applied as the default Lobby theme, meaning millions of players will have to hear it when they first search for matches.
EXP: More K-pop collaborations! Perhaps more notably, another massive aespa collaboration in the video game space right off the back of the group’s collaboration with Capcom for the latest Street Fighter game.
PUBG is massively popular in South Korea where many of the game’s professional esports players are located. It’s difficult to put a number on the game’s total players as they stretch across PC, console and a dedicated mobile version of the game, but PUBG is the second-most popular game on Steam with an average of 300-600k concurrent players every day, while the mobile version of the game has 25 million daily active players (although the aespa collaboration is only happening on PC and console).
The music collaborations in PUBG are a fantastic showcase of how game developers can creatively monetise and integrate music IP into gameplay experiences without having to rely on recorded music.
Here’s a full rundown of everything included in the collaboration, most of which can be purchased using a special in-game event currency known as aespa Tokens. These tokens can be earned by completing missions or earned randomly by opening ‘Step Up Packages’ and ‘Loot Cache Packs’, basically loot crates where the contents of are determined by random number generation (RNG).
Character skin sets for each aespa member (Karina, Giselle, Winter, Ningning) essentially letting PUBG players experience the game as their favourite member. They can be crated for 1500 aespa Tokens each or unlocked randomly.
Five special aespa-themed weapon skins for rifles (500 Tokens to craft) and the melee pan weapon (150 Tokens to craft).
aespa-themed skins for the parachute (250 Tokens to craft) and special sprays for each member (150 Tokens to craft).
Nine new dance emotes tied to five aespa songs: Next Level (Part 1, Part 2), Supernova (Part 1, Part 2), Whiplash (Part 1, Part 2), Dirty Work (Part 1, Part 2), and Dark Arts (Part 1). The Part 1 emote bundle costs 5000 G-coin ($50). The emotes can be used at any time, but when they’re used on the special aespa concert stages they’ll cause music videos to play on the concert screens.
All in-vehicle music has been changed to aespa songs.
The starting planes which drop players into the map will display celebratory aespa imagery.
Alongside the pay-to-unlock aespa-themed cosmetics, players can unlock some aespa-themed items by completing missions or events.
One of the most notable things about this collaboration is players can’t head to an Item Store like they do in Fortnite and just outright purchase the character skins, which are arguably the most enticing draw of the entire collaboration. The easiest way of obtaining these skins is by purchasing crates that reward you with aespa Tokens.
Outside of this, theres a big focus on gacha mechanics, which is essentially opening loot crates until you get the items you want. This means players could have to spend a lot of money to unlock all the character skins. There’s a decent post here on Reddit outlining the % drop rates for specific skins, which also puts a total cost on the amount players will have to spend to unlock all the character skins through aespa Tokens – $405.
If you want to take a look at some of the emotes and character outfits, check out this video here.
PUBG is already an incredibly popular game in South Korea, so I don’t think this collaboration will have much of an impact from a user acquisition perspective. But the RNG mechanisms around the aespa-themed cosmetics should encourage a lot of in-game spending.
Plenty of food for thought here for game developers and artist managers!
PlayStation’s K-Pop Campaign with Blackpink’s Lisa: a Gap in the Market for Music Gaming Ambassadors?
In Brief: PlayStation launched a new global ad campaign at the beginning of July featuring Lisa from K-pop group Blackpink. The commercial [which can be viewed here] features Lisa playing a variety of PS5 games and dancing around gameplay footage. The campaign has been a huge hit with the K-pop community and has seen Lisa also feature in shorter social media clips.
EXP: Yes, more K-pop and video games. But it’s no surprise video game studios keep embracing K-pop collabs given the natural synergy between k-pop and video games. Of course, it helps that some of K-pop’s biggest stars are also genuine video game players. Lisa herself is a big gamer, a self-confessed Animal Crossing fan who also took up the role of global ambassador for the Korean MMORPG, Perfect World, back in 2019.
I’ve been following K-pop and video game collaborations for some time, and it’s not unusual for major artists to get involved in wider marketing beats for the collaborations they’re involved with. The biggest difference between the collabs in the West and those in South Korea are the K-pop artists seem to go above and beyond with getting involved and genuinely seem to love the games they’re promoting. Check out this Cookie Run Kingdom x BTS campaign as an example which featured numerous videos of the boy group playing and talking about the game.
All of this got me thinking… are video game studios missing out by not teaming up with major artists who are genuine [I stress, genuine] fans of their games for marketing beats? Or is it labels and management teams who are missing out on the revenue opps associated with regional and global marketing campaigns?
If companies such as JustEat can throw millions at celebrities for ad campaigns, why can’t game studios budget for major artist partnerships instead of throwing millions at the biggest streamers? There are plenty of notable bands and artists who are big gamers and would make incredible brand ambassadors for specific studios or game platforms: Jack Black, T-Pain, Snoop, Twenty One Pilots, Linkin Park, Post Malone.
Of course, some of this might be down to the liability that can occur when things go wrong in the music industry. Both Fortnite and PlayStation had massive commercial partnerships in place with Travis Scott but have noticeably distanced themselves from the rapper following the Astroworld tragedy.
I’d love to see more crossover with video games and music for wider campaigns. I’ve referenced this video a couple of times now, but the Q&A feature between Post and Hunt: Showdown is one of the best examples of what I’m talking about - authentic music and gaming brand partnerships.
And in other news…
Shout out to the SEO Gods at Meristation for finding a way to link Sabbath’s final show with video games. [Link]
Charlie Rosen, band leader for the Grammy-winning video game jazz fusion collective The 8-Bit Big Band, chats to Jazz Times about the link between Broadway music and video game music, the Great Video Game Music Songbook, and channeling Herbie Hancock in his arrangements. [Link]
If you’re interested in learning more about what we do at Laced, check out this lovely feature over at Bandcamp detailing the work of the Label and what makes our releases so special. [Link]
Majjam is a new multiplayer adventure game developed by Opus Major where you use “rhythms, melodies, and harmonies to work together to rescue the world around you.” [Link]
More K-pop news: the fictional music groups from Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters anime are dominating the charts. [Link]
Indie developer looking for a composer? The music label Scarlet Moon has announced that the legendary composer Motoi Sakuraba (Dark Souls, Tales Of, Mario Golf) has joined its roster of talent and he’s open to work. [Link]
I linked it further up but here’s some more shameless self-promo: I reached out to every band on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 soundtrack to ask them how it feels to have their music in the series. [Link]
Speaking of Tony Hawk, there’s a great op-ed in Polygon about the music in the games, although saying its a better music discovery tool than Spotify in 2025 is a pretty bold statement! [Link]
Apparel company WIND AND SEA is set to launch a special triple collaboration with legendary hip-hop crew De La Soul and the beloved ’90s rhythm action game PaRappa the Rapper. [Link]
Deadmau5 has signed virtual artist Deathpixie, who’s being billed as the first virtual artist in the electronic music space, to his Mau5trap label. [Link]
Listen to…
The video game adaptation of Solo Levelling, the hit South Korean graphic novel and anime, launched a collaboration song with the K-pop group i-dle. The official music video has 1.4 million views and was posted from the game’s YouTube channel, which should help bring new players into the game. [Link]
That Wind and Sea x PaRappa the Rapper collab got me thinking about how awesome the De La Soul song written for the second game is. [Link]
The 8-Bit Big Band have a new tune up and its a Gospel-inspired arrangement of Mario medleys! [Link]