The Most Underrated Music and Gaming Campaigns from 2024
Dwarf metal! Pokemon vocaloids! Tekken grime!
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Want more music and gaming news? Subscribe to my music and gaming podcast GXM, which I co-host with Laced A&R and community manager, Tom Quillfeldt. The latest episode features Anthony John Agnello, who joins us to revisit some of the best game soundtracks released in 2024.
The Most Underrated Music and Gaming Campaigns from 2024
It’s still January, which means there’s time to squeeze in a final retrospective feature! This time, we’re looking at the most underrated music and gaming campaigns from 2024, with a nice mix of integrations, activations, new music releases and savvy business decisions influenced by video game monetisation mechanics.
Note: These picks are my personal choices and have been made to spotlight campaigns you might not be aware of. As such, don’t expect to see much on Roblox, Fortnite and League of Legends here. We do have a cool deep dive into one of my favourite Roblox music campaigns going live in the next couple of weeks, so subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!
Tekken 8: The Anthem ft. D Double E and Fumez The Engineer
At the beginning of 2024, Bandai Namco and UK PR agency Bastion teamed up with UK grime veteran D Double E and producer Fumez The Engineer to create a new single (anthem) to promote the latest instalment in their best-selling fighting game franchise, Tekken.
Tekken 8’s The Anthem is one of the best examples from the growing ‘anthem’ trend in video games, where game studios collaborate with major artists to write an original song used in key marketing beats. This Tekken partnership works because it pays tribute to the historic relationship between fighting games and rap music, where rappers and MCs such as D Double E, Dizzee Rascal, Ice Cube, J Cole and even Kanye have sampled music from or written lyrics about the games they grew up playing as kids: Street Fighter, Soul Calibur and Tekken.
The results for this campaign speak for themselves. An exclusive interview in the BBC, coverage in NME and Complex, plays on major UK radios stations like BBC Radio 1, 185k+ views on the official music video and more than 400k streams on Spotify. The success of this campaign highlights the importance of having someone on the team with historic music & gaming knowledge – I know one of the guys who worked on this really knows his stuff, which would have been a huge help with ideating this and pitching it.
Project Voltage - Hatsune Miku x The Pokemon Company
Hatsune Miku started life as one of the original voice synthesisers created by Crypton Future Media for Yamaha’s Vocaloid software, which allows users to input lyrics and manipulate vocal samples provided by voice actress Saki Fujita. Depicted as a 16-year-old girl with distinct turquoise twin tails, Hatsune Miku is now one of the most popular virtual idols in the world, featuring in more than 100k songs and her own video games while smashing out performances at major festivals like Coachella.
At the end of 2023, The Pokemon Company teamed up with Hatsune Miku to remix 18 songs from the Pokemon video games for Project Voltage, with each song representing Hatsune Miku as a specific Pokemon energy type. These songs continued to release gradually throughout 2024, and the campaign was so successful it was recently rebooted as Project Voltage High.
Hatsune Miku and vocaloid producers in general are incredibly popular in Japan where they’re deeply embedded within geek/anime culture. Hatsune Miku is basically a national icon in Japan, and her video game Hatsune Miku Colourful Stage is the country’s most downloaded music game, with 3.3 million daily active users generating $604 million in revenue since its release in September 2020, according to Sensor Tower.
That said, Hatsune Miku is still well known in the West, with Fortnite recently announcing her as the Icon for Season 7 of Fortnite Festival. Vocaloid music has a very distinct style due to its synthetic nature, combining elements of hyper pop, metal and electronica with a futuristic sound, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Western music companies partnering with vocaloid producers in Japan to create ‘gamified’ versions of their music and win over new fans in East Asia.
Static Dress Make Their Own Game Boy Game With a Sick ‘90s Marketing Campaign to Boot
Making a browser game to promote a new music release can be a fairly cost-effective way to immerse people in your music and drum up some easy PR wins. Faye Webster, Heavee, Porter Robinson, Bring Me The Horizon, and Tigran Hamasyan are just some of the artists who did this in 2024, but no one did it better than UK metal band Static Dress, who released a playable version of their debut album Rouge Carpet Disaster on a Game Boy cartridge, accompanied by a marketing campaign reminiscent of ‘90s video game print ads.
The multi-level game is a ‘fully playable final exploration of the complex visual lore’ in the band’s debut album and took three years to develop, according to vocalist Olli Appleyard. Fully playable on Game Boy Colour, Advance and SP, the game also includes an 8-bit version of the album.
This is genuinely one of the most innovative music marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. The print ads are gorgeous and the game – from everything I’ve read – is excellent. It’s full of hidden Easter eggs (secrets) that have been deciphered by fans, and a fitting tribute to the band’s love of video games. This is the kind of stuff that puts bands on the radar for video game partnership opportunities.
Avenged Sevenfold Launches a Rewards Program Influenced by Video Game Battle Passes
Metal band Avenged Sevenfold came up with an interesting solution to tackle the economic challenges of the global music industry by taking heavy influence from the battle pass monetisation mechanics used in live service games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.
Announced in March 2024, the band’s Season Pass is a subscription-based pass that rewards fans with points for attending concerts, streaming music and scanning NFC tags on merchandise purchases. These points are stored in a MetaMask or Coinbase NFT wallet, and can be redeemed for rewards such as free concert tickets or VIP meet and greets. Alternatively, rewards can be traded on the blockchain.
As well as rewarding fans for their continued support, this initiative was a clever way for the band to further immerse themselves in video game culture and communities due to the similarities between their Season Pass and the battle passes used in most live-service games.
South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Creates Gugak Versions of Game Soundtracks
This one definitely flew under the radar, which is reasonable given most of the coverage was in Korean and I’m still struggling to find most of the songs as a result! But in short: South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism teamed up with the National Gugak Center to give 13 popular video game songs a traditional Korean music (Gugak) makeover.
I first caught wind of this announcement in May 2024, after arrangements for Korean games such as Lies of P, Skull, Sanabi, MapleStory, TalesWeaver, Epic Seven, Lost Ark, Everyone's Marble, Guardian Tales, Blade & Soul, Lineage, Aion and Black Desert were announced. You can check out the mostly-complete playlist on YouTube here - it’s well worth a listen.
The aim here, according to a policy manager from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, is to connect young South Koreans with traditional music. ““I hope that Korean traditional music will become closer to the youth (MZ) generation by changing familiar game music into Korean traditional music,” they tell Indie Game.
Post Malone Gets His Own DLC in Hunt: Showdown
Post had a busy year with video game activations in 2024. Alongside being a playable wrestler and curating the soundtrack for W2K24, Post teamed up with the team at Crytek for "Post Malone's Murder Circus" - a major update and limited-time event that saw Post Malone lead a twisted carnival cast as the ‘Deposed King’.
While the event itself is cool, I wanted to shout out the announcement video where Post Malone sits down with the game’s director to riff about video games and how much he loves playing Hunt for 15 minutes. It’s no secret that Post Malone is a huge fan of video games, but seeing him so enthused about this collaboration and the game in general put a massive smile on my face and encouraged me to download the game for the first time.
You can’t fake authenticity, especially in the video game world, but Post’s extensive knowledge of the game and competitive video games in general was a huge hit with fans on Reddit. We need more campaigns like this where the featured artists are given an opportunity to talk about how much they love video games. It means a lot of gaming communities.
Deep Rock Galactic Teams Up With Dwarf Metal Band Wind Rose on ‘Rock and Stone’
In what’s probably the most unusual music and gaming collaboration from 2024, the developers of Deep Rock Galactic, a co-operative shooter where you play as space dwarves mining precious metals, teamed up with the power metal dwarf band, Wind Rose, to write an original song for the game.
The aptly-named Rock and Stone is the end-result. The music video has more than one million plays on YouTube, and picked up loads of press coverage because this is one of those collaborations that just makes sense - especially or metal heads and fans of power metal!
It’s worth noting that this isn’t Wind Rose’s first foray into the world of gaming. One of their most popular songs, Diggy Diggy Hole (are you starting to see a pattern here?), is actually a cover of a famous YouTube song about Minecraft!
Kimbra, TOKiMONSTA, and Laszewo Debut new Music in Candy Crush Saga
Just in case you need a refresher (British sweet pun there, wheyyyy) on how popular Candy Crush Saga is, Sensor Tower tells me it has 12 million daily active users who spend more than 30 minutes playing the game every day. In the last 30 days, it’s made more than $80m in revenue. In the last year, it’s made more than $1 billion. Big numbers for Activision Blizzard!
Back in September 2024, Candy Crush Saga launched a Music Season tournament, where “players participate in challenges themed around music to win special rewards.” It was promoted by getting Kimbra, TOKiMONSTA, and Łaszewo to write new music for the game inspired by its iconic sounds. According to the press release:
Kimbra ft Candy Crush, "Honeycomb" — weaves in candified sounds to create a song that feels both nostalgic and explosive.
TOKiMONSTA ft Candy Crush, "Floating" — blends electronic rhythms with iconic Candy Crush elements like the wobble and accordions, pushing the boundaries of her genre.
Łaszewo feat Candy Crush, "Too Sweet" — brings a fresh perspective by combining in-game audio with dynamic beats and playful lyrics, breaking traditional musical molds.
While Candy Crush isn’t a game that most people would associate with music, it definitely has iconic sound effects, and this is a great example of a casual puzzle game getting creative to incorporate artists into marketing beats.
Massive Metal Bands Arrange the Soundtrack for Cult of the Lamb
Quick disclaimer: I worked on this, but it’s a special one that deserves a shout out because nothing else like it has been done on this scale. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Sam George created an arranged metal version of River Boy’s soundtrack for Massive Monster’s best-selling indie game, Cult of the Lamb, and we [Laced] jumped in to get some of the hottest names in metal involved, featuring members past and present from Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Polyphia, Animals as Leaders, While She Sleeps, Malevolence, and Monuments.
The project was released as Hymns of the Unholy in October 2024, backed by an official music video from animation house Half Giant, lyric videos for each track from 12 Inch Media and loads of sick merch including death metal T-shirts and a limited edition vinyl.
This idea came to life from the studio’s directors being metal heads and wanting to do something cool to celebrate the game’s links with metal. I’d love to see more studios like Massive Monster creating official arranged versions of their soundtracks, whether they’re metal, electronica or jazz fusion!
I didn’t know about the post Malone X Hunt collab - that’s so sick!! I’ll have to redownload this weekend and check it out