As part of Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki Digital, Lockwood Publishing CCO Oliver Kern took to the virtual stage to talk about running music events inside games.

He started at the beginning of the process, looking at finding the right artist or label to be a part of your game. Kern's example artist ended up being so excited about the game that he engaged with the audience and ended up on national television for the novelty of playing a gig in a digital environment.

Moving on to retention, Kern recommended thinking about your event cadence and thinking about how to keep things "fresh", considering how often you run events, how you measure repeat-visit rates, and so on.

Everyone wants a cut

A tricky aspect of the whole process is monetisation, with Kern noting that "it's kind of obvious that the artist or the label would want to participate there". In that regard, you need to consider how the other part will benefit from your monetisation as well as yourself.

Indeed, this goes somewhat deeper, with business agreements required to not only license the music, but also licensing the artist's avatar in the game and any virtual items based on real-world merchandise that they may want to sell in-game.

Looking at a specific example, Kern noted that Lockwood pays an annual licensing fee to a specific label, which allows for a cadence of a weekly club party, alongside a monthly party with label artists, and then a quarterly "big concert" which draws in even larger player numbers.

Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki Digital is the best of our Pocket Gamer Connects conference in an online form, with an entire week of talks, meetings, and pitch events taking place from September 14th to the 18th. You can read up on all the tracks taking place throughout the week here.