GameLoud Looks to Fuse Music Biz With Mobile Gaming Market

Video games have breached just about every barrier of pop culture, sports, education, theater and even the gym, arguably making them the ultimate form of entertainment. And now, a small, recently established studio, GameChangerWorld — soon to relaunch as GameLoud early this year — has targeted one of the last remaining barricades: the wall between video games and music.

Yes, music already plays a major role in modern day games, with exclusive soundtracks and sound effects being crucial factors in the overall experience – not to mention the success of popular franchises like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. However, GameLoud’s focus is not on making the next big music title, but instead a collection of titles belonging to individual artists, in which the artists formulate the ideas for the project and GameLoud simply ensures their vision come to life on the technical side.

Here’s how this works:

“The band has complete creative control and gives me a detailed idea of what they are looking for,” said Clay Graham, creative director of GameLoud. “I then take that to one of our various developers and from then on act as the liaison between the artist and developer, ensuring the artists get what they want creative-wise and the developer gets a concept/model that can be built realistically in the mobile world.”

That’s right, “mobile world.” Graham says the company’s platform and all its aspects are “built for the fan on the go.” Their games are available on both iOS and Android devices.

Founded by John D’Esposito — who is no stranger to the music industry, creating popular festivals like Electric Adventure and The Bamboozle — in August of 2013, GameChangerWorld has since created over 20 titles with familiar artists including T-Mills, Forever the Sickest Kids, Mayday Parade, Allstar Weekend and many more; T-Mills’ Trailin’ Travis was their first project.

GameChangerWorld remains as GameLoud’s sister company, which produces tons of events from raves to concerts; the decision to establish distinct branches was made to keep things more organized.

“The idea began with GameChanger, but has now become GameLoud because we found that as the platform grew too broad the games got lost in the mix of live events,” D’Esposito explained. “Having them branded separately still lets them work together without being too confusing to fans.”

D’Esposito’s habit for constructing unique ideas and his reputation in the industry is what lead to the blossoming of this studio.

“In the last few years John had become aware of both the ever-growing mobile space as well as the music industry’s inability to advance with the fast-paced world of digital media as a standard,” said Graham. “So, after over 15 years of producing music festivals, his connections with numerous bands that had faith in his ability to take a leap into a world barely tread upon by music helped make the amalgamation successful.”

The vision for GameLoud came from the realization that many artists can no longer manage enough revenue to make a living.

“The idea was based on the combination of mobile apps’ struggle with lack of awareness and popular licenses as well as music artists suffering from lack of income [due to] piracy,” said D’Esposito. “If [the] bands can bring even a small percentage of their combined millions of fans to their apps that can see revenue no longer available from music sales.

We’re more-so targeting music fans and using the ever-growing mobile market as a potentially new revenue stream for the music industry.”

GameLoud offers a universal currency, called GameChange, that can be earned while playing any of their titles. Once enough points have been racked up they can be used to redeem prizes from artists in collaboration with the studio, including rewards like guitar picks, limited edition skate decks, t-shirts, autographed posters and more. See the full list of prizes on company’s website.

The studio has about 20 more titles they are currently adding the final touches to, with artists such as New Found Glory, We Came As Romans, Bayside and Miss May I; the games are slated to release in the first half of 2014.

“At this time, we have only created games based on music artists. However, we are looking to expand as we see so much potential in the platform in various ways,” said Graham. “We would love if in the future other developers could come to us with their successful game engines/models and we could work with them to refit them with an exclusive artist license as well as many other opportunities.”