To celebrate their first-ever Official Charts UK #1 album, The Wombats have teamed up with music video games (MVG) pioneers, Be-Games to launch a first of its kind, interactive mobile game, available for free on App Stores worldwide! Download the game here.
The game is inspired by the music video for the band’s song, ‘This Car Drives All By Itself’, whilst also featuring other tracks from the chart-topping album, Fix Yourself, Not The World. It allows fans and gamers to immerse themselves in a playable version of the scalextric music video the band released in support of the album campaign. Users are able to play with either Murph, Tørd or Dan from the band, as well as a choice of racetracks around the globe. Each track represents a different city from the band’s current tour – the goal is to avoid obstacles, collect boosts and make it to the show without crashing!
Despite a turbulent last couple of years, the gaming industry has managed to thrive during the pandemic and is now larger than the movie and music industries combined. Mobile games alone boasted over 2.6b players in 2021, seeing a +35% increase in pre-pandemic revenues to $116b. Besides being a fun and engaging new way for fans to consume music, MVG’s can also be utilised more broadly as a way to promote album and ticket sales via a groundbreaking new medium. Moreover, they offer an additional source of income to support artist revenue.
Founded by game industry veteran Jam Allinson and music industry entrepreneur George James, Be-Games brings an exciting new dimension to multi-award-winning digital agency, Be-Hookd Digital. Be-Hookd is trusted by prominent artists and brands around the globe, with offices in London and New York.
CEO & Co-founder Jam Allinson says “As we see gaming become bigger than the music and movie industries combined, accounting for over half of the entertainment market, the two worlds of music and video games are becoming irreversibly entwined. Be-Games are pioneering MVGs to offer fans and artists the best of both worlds. A playable music video on the App Stores opens up an ever growing mobile gaming space which boasted over 2.6billion players last year”
Co-founder George James adds “The Wombats and AWAL are long standing clients of Be-Hookd and in that time together the way we engage the avid Wombats fanbase has evolved and adapted with the ever changing social media landscape. This music video game is a shining example of how Be-Hookd and our new subsidiary Be-Games are shaping fan engagement and bringing fresh creative strategies to our clients.”
The Wombats manager Simon Bobbett says “It was a pleasure working with Be-Hookd on the band’s first venture into “gaming”, one of many new initiatives the band have explored in this current climate, having recently launched a successful NFT / Metaverse experience via Sandbox… we are really excited about how it turned out, the team over Be-Hookd have really delivered on a great initial idea, and we can’t wait for our fans to play the game on launch this week”
Be-Games’ pipeline is already filling up with lots more MVG releases for artists throughout 2022.