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Video Games And Famous Musicians Collaboration

Video games as an industry have grown at an extremely fast pace ever since their creation. So as games began to get even more popular, it came as no surprise that some bands decided to partner up with certain video game developers and create music, especially for the game. This is a win-win situation for both sides, as this serves as a way to attract fans of the band to play the game, and vice-versa.

How Did It Start?

There are some games that upon their release, were extremely well-known not only by being a great game but by also having an amazing soundtrack. While this is not a direct collaboration, it pretty much paved the way for collaborations to happen in the future. Some of the games that included amazing soundtracks are TonyHawk’s Pro Skater 2, which had hit songs from bands like Papa Roach, Millencolin, Rage Against The Machine, and many other well-known bands.

Need For Speed also had an amazing soundtrack that included many famous bands and artists. This sudden increase in popularity for these bands for sure did not go unnoticed by them, and every other musician. So bands are starting to see an opportunity to work along with certain game developers, as a way to boost their popularity.

It is impossible to talk about this topic without mentioning two specific games. Guitar Hero, and Rock Band. In guitar hero, players would get to play their favorite music as the lead guitarists and you would even get to face-off against famous musicians, and one of the most remarkable ones was the battle against Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave. Both of these games had participation for amazing musicians, and Guitar Hero even had a full game dedicated to the band Metallica.

In Rock Band, the game received countless additional songs that could be purchased, and a lot of them were from rock and metal bands. The game had many songs from the band Avenged Sevenfold, and the band even released a video of them playing one of their songs in the game.

Famous Collaborations

It didn’t take long for big bands to begin to reach out to collaborate with video games. In 2010, the band Avenged Sevenfold released the song Not Ready To Die, which was created specifically for Call Of Duty: Black Ops.

To give a more recent example, famous video game producer and creator of Kojima Productions, Hideo Kojima collaborated with the metal/rock band Bring Me The Horizon and had them write a song for his game, Death Stranding, and the song is called Ludens. We can for sure expect even more collabs to happen in the future, as the new generation of metal and rock bands grew up playing video games.

Metal in video games has been popular for a very long time, as it was an essential part of many games, like the iconic Doom, Quake, Twisted Metal, and one of them even had the iconic Jack Black play the part of the protagonist, in the amazing Brutal Legend. Some games are only as good as their soundtrack.

But Guitar Hero had other collaborations with big bands, like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, and Guitar Hero: Van Halen. Rock band also did collaborations with bands such as Greenday, AC/DC, and even The Beatles. It is amazing to see just how big of impact video games have, and to see the bands that they were able to collaborate with.

What Can We Expect

As time goes by, we can expect even more collaborations between metal and rock bands with video games. As both are enormous industries, it only makes sense for both of them to work together. Games like Fortnite took inspiration from musicians like Slash and released a skin inspired in his visual. In this game you can only buy these skins for limited time, once its gone you can’t find them again, in this case you can get a Fortnite account with all the rare skins that you need.

Rock and metal are a genre that can fit perfectly in certain genres. Having an action-packed game along with a badass metal or rock soundtrack can make you as a player feel like you’re invincible. There is no better example than the new Doom games that were released these last few years, and we have the genius mind of Mick Gordon to thank for giving us one of the most brutal and amazing soundtracks of all time.

While it isn’t a direct collaboration, you can see the influence of metal and rock in a lot of games out there. We can see that games like Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry, especially the recent boom of FFXIV Gil can bring many eyes for the show. But games are not the only media that collaborate with metal and rock bands, as another huge media that use this type of music, is none other than the anime industry.

There is a lot that can be learned by observing collaboration like these, and you can see that two big industries can work together to put together something even more amazing. This also serves as a way to show just how big the gaming community has become over the last years, and it can be expected to only grow bigger and bigger. So we can sure look forward do more bands working on creating unique music for specific games. If big shots like Metallica, Bring Me The Horizon, and Avenged Sevenfold made songs for games, who can say what other bands will collaborate with upcoming games in the future. As new bands come along, we can expect them to have grown up playing games, and they will for sure be searching for any opportunity to work together compose a nice song for any games.

When talking about games, there is a lot that needs to be taken into consideration, but it is a popular opinion that if the game has a nice soundtrack, that it will always be remembered for that. The Tony Hawk’s games are well known for that, and even the famous GTA: San Andreas had a radio station dedicated to only rock and metal songs, and its soundtrack included bands like Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and many others.