Towards Mecca » Music in Games, who should pay for it?

A couple of months ago a music executive said that royalty rates for songs used in video games are “paltry” and a game executive replied by saying that really, the music companies ought to be paying the gaming companies for promoting their songs.

This argument could really be applied to any license, music or not. It used to be that a game could profit enormously by having a connection to an established license. But now that media consumption patterns have shifted, those licenses profit just as much by being featured in a game.

Ever since E.T., licensed games have had a reputation of being sloppy (at best). Perhaps licenses would benefit more from the games if they had a financial stake in the end product.

Who stands to benefit most from a licensing agreement? And what can be done with licensed games to redeem themselves in the eyes of players?

I hate to throw the “depends” bomb on this debate too but in this case there’s only 1 variable in my eyes.

As far as I’m concerned, that game executive is wrong in this case. He has a point, no doubt, since being featured in his game, the songs/albums have been selling better, but what would his game be without those songs? I know for a FACT that one of the biggest reasons someone buys a Guitar Hero/Rock Band is the track list. It might not be the biggest reason for most, but it is for some and that’s enough for this point. If all of the songs were completely new and NOT from recognizable bands, I can guarantee that these rhythm games would not have had as big a mass-market appeal as they are enjoying now.

This debate is very similar to the one that the actor who voiced Nico Belic started when he suggested he should get a bigger slice of the then 600,000,000$ dollar GTA4 pie. His argument was that his measly 185,000$ was laughable compared to the profits Rockstar was making from his talent.

What he missed was that his voice did NOT sell the game. It added nothing to the game that another B Actor wouldn’t have gladly done for less than 185,000$. If anything, the designers/artists/programmers should be getting more than 185,000$ since their combined talent is what really made the game and is arguably more difficult to come by than what any starving actor would practically give away had it not been for the Actor’s Guild.

A prime example of this is 2K games losing the NFL license. Although it’s true that the NFL would still do incredibly well without the game, the game in this case wouldn’t do well at all without the license. That’s the only difference from this example and the Guitar Hero one. The only factor there is that the music industry is in an obvious decline and has been since the rise in popularity of the MP3 format and the Activision executive is just kicking a dog while it’s down.

The Music Industry as a whole still contributes to the popularity of Guitar Hero and so should get it’s due. The fact that having songs in a game improves their other non-gaming sales is a plus, no doubt, but their songs still make the game! Imagine one of either Guitar Hero or Rock Band’s next sequels got in a dispute with all of the record companies at once and had to only have non-recognizable music. That would be the end of that franchise then and there. Paying money to avoid that more than makes sense.

My 2 cents.

Alfredo

Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pm

It basically comes done to who-needs-who. In this case, Activision and Harmonix need the various music companies in order to have any success with their games.

Games like GTA have included an incredible track list to listen too while you drive around, but the series does not depend on the music to garner any success.

In the cases of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, people are buying their product because of the track list. So why should the music industry pay the gaming industry when the music is the main reason these games are a success?

Osama