VII】 What could be the fusion of 🎮 and 🎶?
Nowadays, games are much more than what they used to be. Gaming is not just about playing, nor wasting time. It represents a journey filled with entertainment, which could either be short or long. Since it’s about entertainment, games have crossed boundaries and entered the world of pop music. Here goes the best example, League of Legends by Riot Games.
The second music group in LoL, True Damage
True Damage, a newly debuted hip-hop group for League of Legends recently released its first single “Giants”, featuring artists Keke Palmer, Becky G, Soyeon from the KPOP group (G)I-DLE, Duckwrth and Thutmose. Each of them impersonates and provides the vocals for some of the most popular characters from League of Legends, Keke as Senna (the freshly unveiled character), Becky as Qiyana, Soyeon as Akali, both Thutmose and Duckwrth as Ekko, while Yasuo plays the silent DJ role. The artists took it to the stage in Paris’ AccorHotels Arena during the 2019 World Championship Finals Opening Ceremony, completed the performance with augmented reality and holographic for the fans. The project was not only aim to promote a new set of in-game skins and a partnership with Louis Vuitton, but also to portray the ever-expanding foothold of Riot Games in the broader entertainment landscape (Pei 2019) .
True Damage was actually consecutive to last year’s finals when Riot Games created a KPOP group called K/DA and revealed in Incheon’s Munhak Stadium in South Korea (Pei 2019) . The animated music video of their song “POP/STARS” has reached 13 million views after releasing for only 2 days. It was an enormous hit immediately after its debut, even leading a huge amount of non-gamers to check it out. The music video currently sits at 284 million views on YouTube, which is more than most mainstream KPOP songs (Mickunas 2019).
The figures on YouTube
Like “POP/STARS”, the early success of “Giants” puts it more in line with mainstream music than a video game promotion. The music video, released on 10th Nov, has reached 6.9 million views the next day on the official League of Legends YouTube channel. It received an overall positive feedback, counting over 400,000 likes. The live performance video of “Giants” itself has reached 1.4 million views as well (Mickunas 2019). With that, League of Legends have already created high presence on social networking sites, especially YouTube.
In summary...
League of Legends have shown the world how far a game could go. Their target is no longer merely gamers, but also other online communities as they are creating more varieties of entertainment.











