Video Game Concerts: Unending Consumption on Video Game Platforms

Abstract

Over the past several decades, video games have gone from single-purpose games to multi-faceted platforms. This article is a case study that develops ‘unending consumption’ to understand the political economy of video game concerts. Unending consumption is the expansion of the means of consumption under a subscription model. By applying unending consumption to the political economy of video games, I show how video game concerts are embedded in the current moment of capitalism. The new political economy of video games blurs the line between video games and music as distinct media—an element of convergence. While video games and music converge through a new form of unending consumption, I argue these changes create more gatekeepers and limit the ability of independent creators to make a living.

Introduction

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, live music venues canceled their concerts to comply with national and local health guidelines. These closures had a massive economic impact on venues, promoters, artists, and live music workers. As a result, musicians, venues, and promoters struggled with how to continue live performance in a socially distanced world and many turned to livestreaming concerts (Anderton, 2021). Consumers jumped on the livestreaming bandwagon, but the business models supported powerful players in the music industry over most musicians. While livestreaming often used platforms designed for video streaming such as YouTube, Zoom, Twitch, and Facebook, some music industry entities turned to video games to reach fans and attempt to generate revenue, a move that changes the relationship between the video game and music industries.

Over the past two and a half decades, video games and music have gone from competitors to collaborators. Early in the 21st century, the recording industry viewed video games as a potential rival that held the capacity to disrupt profits for (what had been up until this moment) the trendiest element of the entertainment complex. In 2003, the international trade organization for record labels, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) (2003), worried

Sales have been affected by competition from newer forms of entertainment, particularly DVD and video games which saw strong growth in 2002. This has reduced the amount of retail space available to CDs and cut into consumer spending on music. (p. 3)

But by 2004, record labels ‘focused efforts to promote synergy between games and the music soundtracks for them, more and more opportunities are emerging from the sector for the promotion and marketing of music and artists’ (IFPI, 2004: 18). In particular, ‘licensing tacks to digital games is now a vital revenue source and has become a way for bands to extend their exposure’ (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009: xvi). But as the recording industry focuses more on licensing music to video games, they obscure this revenue stream from the public by not including this data in their reports (Arditi, 2021c).

This article further develops the concept of ‘unending consumption’ (Arditi, 2018, 2021b, 2022, 2023) to further theorize the political economy of video game concerts. I define unending consumption as the expansion of the means of consumption based on a subscription, where consumption becomes constant and consistent at the same time producers find ways to enable new modes of consumption (discussed further below). While my previous work focused on music streaming services, Amazon, television, movies, and video games, this article shows how discreet media cultures converge—a point which Vincent Mosco (2017: 51–55) claims embodies the power of digital media. Video games and music have their own unending consumption logics, but as we go deeper into the streaming era, the distinctions between mediated cultural forms become less distinct. The distinction between music, video games and film blur as popular music and narratives appear in games. At the same time, media corporations continue to merge disparate products and services, which further conceals the lines between types of media, as exemplified by Amazon’s strategy to sell retail, webhosting, television, film, music, and video games (West, 2022). Video game companies use music to hook consumers while the music industry finds fans through video games. Meanwhile, people find themselves ensnared in more circuits of consumption.

In this article, I use immanent critique to explore the emergent phenomenon of video games concerts. I employ immanent critique in the critical theory tradition as ‘a means of detecting the societal contradictions which offer the most determinate possibilities for emancipatory social change’ (Antonio, 1981: 332). By drawing out the societal contradictions in the political economy of video games, I show how video game concerts are embedded in the current moment of capitalism. I develop the empirical information from my first-person account of video game concerts, which lends the critique to interpretation. This self-reflective model allows me to narrate the societal contradictions as I see them developing. In doing so, I follow the critical perspective developed by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter (2009) which situates video games within ‘social structures, corporate contexts, and institutional forces’ (p. xxvii). This article also takes up Mia Consalvo’s (2006) call to ‘continue to examine not only cultural products, but also the business practices that lead to the production and circulation of these products’ (p. 134). By examining the business practices of record labels and video game producers, I demonstrate the way consumers become locked in unending consumption.

First, I outline the shifting models of the political economy of video game play. Video games have gone through three dominant business models, which include playing in arcades, at-home game systems, and streaming. Next, I demonstrate how video game platforms utilize a political economic strategy of unending consumption by analyzing information about current subscriptions and consumption models on several gaming platforms. As platforms, video games do more than facilitate game play by acting as multimedia platforms that generate revenue for corporations across media. Finally, I explore four video game platforms as case studies where video game platforms host concerts to demonstrate the shifting emphasis both video game platforms and music labels place on video game concerts.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, media prognosticators contended streaming provided opportunities for all musicians to make money online. It is not the case that streaming provided opportunity for smaller independent artists (Arditi, 2021a) and video games provide even fewer opportunities for these musicians. While the political economy of video games and music converge through a new form of unending consumption, I argue these changes create more gatekeepers and limit the ability of independent creators to make a living. The blurring between video games and music only benefits powerful corporate interests.

Political Economy of Video Games

In the streaming era, we have a moment where the fundamental political economy of media consumption is shifting. Political economy is the ‘study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources’ (Mosco, 2009: 24). Understanding the political economy of media and communication technologies allows us not only to see the economic relationships of media, but also to see them as social relationships that embody power. Vincent Mosco (2009) claims, ‘it is useful to see [communication] as a social exchange of meaning whose outcome is the measure or mark of a social relationship’ (p. 6). Robert McChesney (2008) emphasizes that the political economy of media examines ‘the firms, owners, labor practices, market structures, policies, occupational codes, and subsidies that in combination provide the context for the production of journalism and media’ (p. 151). Since video games and music are produced and distributed by large multinational corporations, the production and distribution of these cultural texts can tell us a lot about power and the social relations of society.

As people shift to video game streaming and online game play, the way the video game industry generates revenue and profit has changed, too. After an initial open access approach that worked together with the open-source hacker culture that developed video games (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009), the political economy of video games has developed three distinct models of social relations. First, gamers accessed arcade games using quarters in semi-public spaces in the arcade model. Second, gamers used video game consoles and personal computers to play games in the privacy of their homes in the console model. Third, people accessed video games online through PCs, personal devices, and gaming consoles often utilizing streaming technology in the streaming model. At the current moment, all three of these models coexist, but the emphasis is on the third model. At the convergence of these three models, we see unending consumption—a political economic strategy that attempts to make consumption constant and consistent.

In the arcade model of the political economy of video games, video games were dominated by arcade-style play. Players had to go to arcades, bars, or restaurants to play stand-alone video games. To indicate they wanted to play next, players would place their quarters on the machine to queue up. These games still exist, and nostalgia has led to the opening of establishments from Dave & Busters to Round 1 or in my community a video game bar called Free Play. These new venues either require users to buy credits on a card or pay a fee to enter the facility for unlimited play. Playing video games in the arcade model was inherently social because even when people played one-player games, there were usually people watching and waiting to play next. But more importantly, there was the ever-present scoreboard, and many gamers coveted the highest score spot. Today, the scoreboard ethos is still part of games, but when people play games at home, it is a virtual scoreboard where players can see how they match-up against other players. This competitive ethos results in eSports—in these games global rankings legitimate players. People continue to be involved in video games as spectators, today, whether in public spaces, eSports games, at people’s houses or via Twitch (Orme, 2022). However, video game consumption was limited in the arcade model by where they could be played, and players had a finite amount of time they could spend in an arcade.

With the console model, the primary consumption of video games happened through the purchase of game cartridges, floppy-disks, CDs, and DVDs to be played on consoles and computers. Whereas the arcade model was marked by publicness, consumption in the console model happened in the privacy of one’s home. Video game consoles are especially popular in this model. The launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) (following Atari) created a way of consuming video games at home that continues today with the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5.

The console model worked on a political economic logic that sold consoles at a loss with the hope of selling enough video games at a profit to make up for the loss on the sale of the machine. The first NES cost gamers US$180 while each game for the console cost around US$60 (Gurwin, 2020). This logic permeates the political economy of media and is visible in the early music industry when phonograph manufacturers realized there was more money to be made selling records than selling phonographs (Arditi, 2020; Siefert, 1995). Similarly, David Hesmondhalgh (2002) explains video game ‘hardware companies are, in turn, reliant on games development for their profits as the hardware (consoles) are sold at relatively small profit margins, whereas games have a very high mark-up’ (p. 244). In this way, video game consoles serve as a loss leader, a retail concept where retailers sell a product at a loss to get customers in their stores. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009) call this the ‘razor-and-blades’ strategy whereby console companies ‘gave consoles away at or below cost to make money on games’ (p. 17) or as they elaborate, ‘the money is in the software, the blades, for which the hardware is the razor’ (p. 78). When customers purchase a Schick razor, they must buy Schick refills regularly to shave. Similarly, when customers purchase a Nintendo system, they must purchase Nintendo games. The value of hardware is in its ability to attract and maintain customers who purchase exponentially more software in this model. But what happens when people cease to purchase software? In the console model, video game companies need to constantly entice gamers to buy more games based on new content or new technology.

The streaming model utilizes streaming technology to distribute and consume video games. It is this third model that I am most interested in this paper. While online video game play developed alongside the Internet, it has exploded over the past 20 years (Taylor, 2018). This streaming model covers everything from smartphone ‘casual’ games (Juul, 2012) such as CandyCrush and Angry Birds to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). In the streaming model, companies deploy Games as a Service (GaaS). Companies deploying GaaS see games as a work in process, and ‘studios indeterminately support and periodically release content incrementally for existing games instead of developing new games or stand-alone sequels’ (Dubois and Weststar, 2022). In other words, at the same time gaming consumption becomes consistent, game developers focus on tried-and-true models. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter show that the popular Madden franchise exemplifies this process because a team at Electronic Arts (EA) works on updating the game each year, but the basic parameters of the game remain the same. This has led some scholars to approach games as an asset rather than a commodity (Bernevega and Gekker, 2022). My earliest experience with the streaming model came playing Counter-Strike late-night in my dorm in 2001. The downloadable game did not require a cartridge or disk to play it and after it was downloaded, the dominant form of play was with others online. Counter-Strike has remained popular, even contributing to the development of eSports, and the game’s model of online play and online access has increased ever since its launch.

At the same time, consoles under the streaming model became an element to bring multimedia into the home. As such, ‘consoles were spoken of as a “Trojan horse” through which a host of digital media could surreptitiously be implanted in the home’ (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009: 75). By delivering a multimedia element to gaming, this also marks the beginning of the blurring between video games, music, and film. In this context, Microsoft viewed the Xbox not so much as a gaming machine, but as an entertainment machine. The Xbox opens the home, and the television specifically, to streamed multimedia content—the video game console becomes the central site of entertainment in the home. And this is where Microsoft used the razor-and-blades strategy by getting people to subscribe to Xbox Live and downloading games and add-ons via the Internet. Video games are multimedia experiences that rely on ‘platform capitalism’ (Srnicek, 2017) where people subscribe to platforms and make purchases in the game. David Nieborg, Thomas Poell, and Jose Van Dijck define ‘platformization’ as ‘the penetration of the infrastructures, economic processes, and governmental frameworks of platforms in different economic sectors and spheres of life’ (Poell et al., 2019). Platformization makes cultural products contingent, and as a result, video games that circulate via download or streaming ‘are malleable, modular in design, and informed by datafied user feedback, open to constant revision and recirculation’ (Nieborg and Poell, 2018). In the streaming model, a game is never complete as companies can constantly make changes, but those changes often come at an expense to the player.

Now these models entangle and obscure each other. For instance, the latent social aspect of playing at an arcade has been enhanced with streaming technologies. And some argue live streaming is now the most important aspect of the current political economy of video games (Johnson and Woodcock, 2019). T.L. Taylor posits spectatorship has only increased with Twitch—a live streaming app that allows spectators to watch people play games online. ‘Whether waiting for a turn at an arcade machine, having a console controller passed over, or watching a heated battle continue after your character has “died,” spectating has been a part of gaming since the beginning’ (Taylor, 2018: 37). We can watch people play Overwatch on Xbox consoles via Twitch on a TV in a bar with other spectators. Each node of this network of game consumption uses a different model of video game political economy. This marks a shift in how the models manifest because they happen at the same time enabled by streaming technology.

The current moment of the political economy of video games is a model of unending consumption. As capitalism adjusts to periods of contraction, the dominant capitalist system changes. In the mid-20th century, capitalism began to work on the logic of the expansion of the means of consumption (Aglietta, 2001). When supply outstrips demand, the market collapses. Video game companies could only sell so many arcade machines to businesses. Capitalists realized that wealthier consumers had extra money to spend, but already owned the mass consumer goods in production. As a result, the expansion of the means of consumption emphasizes selling more goods to the same consumers. Entertainment commodities provided the quintessential model to grow consumption. If someone owns a record player, they buy more records, or more recently, if they own a video game console, they can buy more games.

But the streaming model challenges the previous model. To understand this, unending consumption provides a tool to explain this political economy. Unending consumption is the deployment of the expansion of the means of consumption in the streaming era. As I explained regarding music subscriptions:

Unending consumption is the expansion of the means of consumption based on a subscription where an individual’s consumption becomes consistent and constant. By subscribing to a service, subscribers do not own a commodity at the conclusion of their subscription, but rather pay for the access to commodities as they go. (Arditi, 2018: 303)

While subscriptions are the primary means of unending consumption, the practice also points to other forms of sustained consumption in the streaming era. We pay for consumption through advertisements, product placement and microtransactions in games to name a few. This strategy forces us to pay more for video games than we paid under the previous models, but we do not necessarily spend more time playing more games.

These three models work together to create unending consumption in the streaming era. People buy games, subscribe to platforms, and watch each other play in arcades, online, or at eSports arenas. Many games, like Fortnite, are available online via a free-to-play model, but depending on the system a gamer plays, they may have to subscribe to a service to play online. In-game purchases are available from these games for everything from skins to bonus levels. Other games are available only to purchase, like Call of Duty, but Call of Duty requires a subscription to Xbox Live to play online and players can purchase bundles through the game’s store. Furthermore, spectators can watch their favorite Call of Duty players through Twitch. These models build to create unending consumption as players spend more money on video games than they would have in the past. Furthermore, as media industries rely more heavily on data, they further blur the distinctions between media types. At first glance, these technologies appear to make it easier for independent creators to access fans, but as I show below, the seeming openness of the Internet gives gatekeepers increased power. In the next section, I demonstrate ways video games operate as a model for unending consumption.

Unending Consumption in Video Games

Video games provide a vessel for unending consumption as a new moment of the political economy of media. Video game companies expropriate subscriptions from players, then they offer updates to games, finally they provide in-game purchases that entice players to continue to spend more money. These aspects of unending consumption work in tandem and alone. A game may operate with one model or deploy all three. I will discuss the impact of video game concerts in the next section.

Physical copies of games on video game consoles and PCs are going the same way as CDs and DVDs: obsolescence. We no longer need cartridges or disks because we can download them and/or stream them. But unlike previous forms of planned obsolescence, this system moves toward unending consumption. Beginning with the Atari, game cartridges were ubiquitous for gaming systems. Each new gaming system had its own unique cartridge that lacked compatibility with not only other brand consoles, but also with different generations of a console within a system: the Super NES could not play Sega Genesis games, nor could it play games from the NES. Each time someone purchased a new gaming console, they had to purchase new games. This was a system of planned obsolescence whereby companies ‘made sure that their goods had a shelf-life, and periodically, consumers would have to buy newer versions of commodities’ (Arditi, 2021b: 15). Planned obsolescence is particularly important to video game companies as they must develop a way to get gamers to play new games. This changed with the Sony PlayStation 2, which allowed gamers to play their old PlayStation games on their new console (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). Backward compatibility has been a feature of both Xbox and PlayStation consoles ever since. Microsoft and Sony realized that they could get gamers to purchase new games based solely on newer graphics on new systems while maintaining loyalty from customers who could continue to play their old games on an upgraded system.

Video game companies no longer need to entice gamers to buy the new version of games because gamers automatically have it, and they spend more than they otherwise would pay. Subscriptions shaped by the unending consumption model create this situation. An avid gamer wants access, but nothing is faster than a download.

Gaming companies offer different options for subscriptions. EA provides two tiers of subscriptions. First, they offer EA Play, a subscription that costs US$4.99 per month or US$29.99 per year. EA Play provides subscribers with 10 hours of early release game play on some games, unlimited access to a list of games and a 10% discount on digital content. Second, they offer EA PlayPro, which costs US$14.99 per month or US$99.99 per year. This tier provides unlimited early access to deluxe versions of games, access to a longer list of games than EA Play, rewards and content, and the same 10% discount on digital content. Here is the trick to the subscriptions, EA includes last year’s Madden, but not this year’s version. So, a subscribed Madden fan will purchase the newest version of Madden in addition to subscribing to the service. Purchasing Madden 24 for the Xbox ranges from US$69.99 to US$99.99 for the MVP version. Add-ons are available in game, such as new uniforms for player avatars—many players purchase these with Madden Points, which are available in the digital store for US$1.99 per 200 points. With access to digital content and updates (Švelch, 2019), a game becomes a constantly changing entertainment product.

Nintendo has a subscription service called Nintendo Switch Online. The most basic subscription costs US$3.99 per month or US$19.99 per year. It allows subscribers to play online, use the Nintendo cloud service, access an app, and play games from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the NES, and includes special offers. The next level is the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion pack, which costs US$49.99 per year and includes all the above plus access to Nintendo 64 games, Sega Genesis games and several other expansion packs. The primary reason people would subscribe to Nintendo’s service would be to play others online and access the classic Nintendo games. Since Nintendo produces new consoles at a slower rate than Xbox and PlayStation, this generates revenue for the company between systems.

Xbox Live is a subscription service that costs US$9.99 per month. I remember signing up for 3 months free after I bought an Xbox 360. At the time, I used the service to access other apps through my Xbox as an over-the-top (OTT) device—OTTs are ‘different types of Internet services used for sending and receiving communication content that in the past was distributed through dedicated and specialized networks’ (Flensburg, 2021: 94). Unlike other OTT devices, such as Roku, the Xbox 360 required a subscription to Xbox Live to access services to which you already subscribed. If someone subscribes to Xbox Live just for access to other apps, Microsoft raises US$9.99 per month in addition to one’s Internet access and other services. But the allure of Xbox also lives in its ability to connect gamers with other gamers for online play and two free games each month. Now for US$14.99 per month, subscribers receive a Game Pass that gives them unlimited access to hundreds of games on Xbox and PC. With an Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft ensures users pay at least US$179 per year excluding any game purchases or other in-game add-ons. This is the constant and consistent element of unending consumption because Microsoft knows it can count on this cash flow.

This also points to the concept of Games as a Service (GaaS—discussed above). When people own a game, they are more likely to update the game in GaaS. For instance, the popular Civilization franchise periodically releases expansion packs, scenarios packs, and passes. Civilization VI launched for PC in 2016 and each year until 2020 they released a version for different systems. Since some gamers purchased the game in 2016, each subsequent pack or pass is available to purchase as an update. Those buying it new can purchase the Platinum edition, which includes most of the expansion updates for US$119.99. Thinking about Civilization VI in the GaaS model creates flexibility for the players, while it also makes them easy marks for the publisher, 2 K Games, which can count on the added revenue with each update without creating a new game.

Two further forms of consumption increase revenue for video game companies. First, there is a proliferation of advertisements in video games. From advertisements on the field in EA’s FIFA franchise to branded Mercedes’ vehicles in Mario Kart 8, we view ads while we play games (McCarthy, 2021). This ad revenue is in addition to purchasing the game and paying for subscriptions and is a further element of unending consumption. In the inaugural issue of Games and Culture, Toby Miller (2006) anticipated the use of advertising revenue would be a key feature of video games moving forward. Second, video games provide stores where gamers can purchase add-ons, updates, and unlock elements of the game for a fee. There are also in-game purchases like loot boxes and battle passes (Joseph, 2021) to extend game options in MMORPGs and battle royale games. If someone plays a game and the option comes to speed up the game or add an element, many are likely to purchase the ad-on. This continues consumption beyond the initial US$50–60 purchase of the game.

Both of these sources of revenue demonstrate video games are platforms. ‘At the most general level, platforms’, Nick Srnicek (2017) argues, ‘are digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact. They therefore position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users: customers, advertisers, service providers, producers, suppliers, and even physical objects’ (p. 30). Srnicek labels this new model of capitalism ‘platform capitalism’ as it increasingly relies on platforms to generate revenue through sales and exploitation of data. Nieborg and Poell have taken the idea of platform capitalism and applied it directly to video games (Duffy et al., 2019; Nieborg, 2015; Nieborg and Poell, 2018; Poell et al., 2019). Video games are the entertainment platform par excellence. This was clear in the early 2000s when record labels began licensing music to video games to promote music. In Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV) and the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, this strategy becomes clear. GTAV provided over 240 licensed songs across its 18 radio stations and in its first 5 years gamers listened to over 75 billion minutes of music (Crecente, 2018). These songs were by everyone from new artists trying to get attention to superstars cashing in on the on the medium (Knopper, 2020). Meanwhile, Guitar Hero helped artists like Aerosmith generate more revenue than their record sales (Ambrosino, 2014). The synergy between music and video games relies on video games as a platform. But with video game concerts, the platformization of video games takes another turn. As David Nieborg (2021) notes ‘platform capitalism is an intensification of the inequalities that are a result of their economies of scope and scale’ (p. 307). In other words, independent or small-sized cultural creators become even more marginalized under platform capitalism. The classic examples of video game concerts discussed below are those of big stars like Travis Scott and Lil Nas X. Fortnite and Roblox provide a platform for these superstars, but they do not hold the same opportunity for smaller independent artists.

Streaming video games created a change in distribution and consumption. Video game companies no longer must use physical media to circulate games. Instead, they can use the Internet to update games and charge either for each individual update or through subscriptions. By deploying streaming technology, video game companies extract revenue through subscriptions and in-game purchases from consumers by exploiting their gamers’ desire to play at the same time they help only the biggest media companies at the expense of independent creators.

Live Music in Video Games

In-game concerts provide video game platforms with a mechanism to exploit video game players and music fans through unending consumption. Video games have dedicated players, but games do not necessarily tap into broader popular culture fans. As such, music works as a tool to attract people to the platform who otherwise do not play video games; this is similar to the development of other advertising strategies that use the cultural capital of popular musicians to draw fans to a product (Meier, 2017). The current atmosphere creates brand synergy between musicians and video games. Whereas musicians used to be reluctant to connect themselves to products through sponsorships and music in advertisements, they now embrace ‘selling out’ to generate revenue and make a living playing music (Klein, 2020; Klein et al., 2017; Taylor, 2012). For video game platforms, video game concerts work as events that draw fans to the platforms. Two video game platforms, Fortnite and Roblox, exemplify this strategy even as other games explore ways to incorporate concerts. Here I explore the way video game concerts develop a strategy of unending consumption for video game platforms as they converge two disparate elements of popular culture: music and video games.

While there was a shift to virtual concerts during the COVID-19 pandemic, video game platforms have streamed live concerts for close to two decades with early concerts in Second Life by U2 (Andrews, 2006) and the Liverpool Philharmonic (Dammann, 2007). A concert is usually located in a special place within the game where fans watch avatars of musicians perform the songs. These can be pre-recorded or live streamed, but regardless of mode, they are sold as live events. Liveness itself is highly problematic as it developed opposed to recorded music, and the attendant idea of recording people’s voices before they die (Siefert, 1995). As a result, Chris Anderton and Sergio Pisfil (2021) contend that we must look at performance, staging, and mediation as critical components to understand live music. In my observation, these concerts are live because the audiences experience them as such. Fans attend these events in real time and feel collective effervescence—the feeling of being a part of something.

Most of these video game concerts are free or take place on free-to-play platforms. Since these seemingly free video games do not charge for concerts, how do they make money? These games-as-platforms operate on the free-to-play model that utilizes in-game purchases to generate revenue. In the streaming model, the platform offers Downloadable Live Content (DLC) in the game to purchase virtual content (Dubois and Weststar, 2022). They offer fans DLC within the games that allow gamers to show their fandom through the purchase of skins for a player’s avatar. Video game platforms also hope that users who log-in to watch their favorite artist will continue to play the game after the concert—thereby converting them from concertgoers to gamers.

Changing an avatar’s skins has been part of gaming culture throughout PC gaming history (Kücklich, 2005), but the idea that video game platforms would sell skins is a very new concept. Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter describe how PC game publishers incorporated the hacker culture into the production of games beginning with Doom by providing users with editing tools to modify their skins. This practice, known as ‘modding’, is when players modify games ‘by altering the programmed code to change characters’ skins, adding weapons, creating fresh missions, even building whole new games out of old engines’ (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009: 24). Game publishers incorporated the enthusiasm of gamers for modifying skins by giving them editing tools and creating competitions for game mods. This allowed for the construction of what is known as play-labor or playbor—where ‘the active gamer is involved in the material production of media content itself’ (Behrenshausen, 2013: 875). Creating competitions for mods is a business strategy to get ‘playbor’ to become more affectively connected to the games. Game developers recognized the cultural desire among gamers to change their characters stemming from hacker culture (Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). However, most people who play video games are not hackers and they lack the ability to modify skins.

Fortnite stands contrary to this hacker culture. The free game allows users to purchase skins in-game to mod their avatars’ appearance. This is something other digital companies emphasize as well, from an American Apparel store in Second Life (Holden, 2006) to Meta launching a designer clothing line (Sato, 2022). However, Fortnite does not allow players to create their own mods; they must purchase everything through the game. In effect, Epic Games deployed a way to exploit gamers’ desire for individuality through means that generate profit. In fact, if a gamer modifies a Fortnite skin, Epic Games bans them. This taps into the affective desires of people to change their appearance while disrupting the culture associated with this creation. Free-to-play video games use these affective desires to generate revenue, but instead of fostering a hacker culture, they exploit that culture.

Game environments generate revenue on the same logic of merch (i.e. merchandise) at concerts. At a concert, fans are enthusiastic to purchase T-shirts, music, and bumper stickers to commemorate the concert experience and support artists. Merch is the way many touring bands go from breaking even to generating revenue that provides a salary (Krasilovsky et al., 2007). Many music industry executives see the same opportunity with virtual concerts. For instance, Billboard states ‘games—which offer a built-in, enormous, youthful audience eager to pony up real cash for virtual merchandise—are the future of the live-music business’ (Cirisano, 2020). The logic of in-game purchases is already baked into gaming culture, so music companies are trying to find ways to exploit this tendency.

Second Life is an open virtual world that permits players to do everyday real-world activities online. Because of its design, Second Life became an early video game platform to host concerts. In 2006, ‘Suzanne Vega and Duran Duran, respectively, became the first two major recording acts to perform live concerts inside Second Life, which at the time had around 400,000 members’ (Cirisano, 2020). While Suzanne Vega and Duran Duran are well-known, Second Life became a virtual platform on which almost any musician could play shows. Now the video game platform has a list of music venues and procedures for how to play a concert in the virtual world. However, the aging demographic of Second Life players is not the most attractive demographic for the music industry because they do not buy as much music.

Two video game platforms, Roblox and Fortnite, provide the exact type of cultural capital for music companies to associate with their artists. Epic Games launched Fortnite in 2017 and by May 2020, Fortnite had over 350 million registered accounts (Statt, 2020). Because of its size and demographics, record labels view Fortnite as the ideal video game platform for virtual concerts. To facilitate a more open world, Epic launched party royale, a play mode that does not permit players to kill each other as in regular game modes. Similar to Second Life, party mode permits users to walk around the Fortnite island without objectives (Webster, 2020).

Before the launch of party royale mode, Fortnite hosted its first concert by popular DJ, Marshmello, during which Epic suspended the use of weapons for the duration of the 10-minute concert (Statt, 2019). According to Epic 10.7 million gamers viewed the concert and at the time of writing almost 151 million views on Marshmello’s YouTube page. In addition, Marshmello’s song ‘Check This Out’ had a 24,000% increase in views on streaming platforms following the concert (Cirisano, 2020). Fortnite creates a platform for gamers to watch concerts, hangout with their friends, and buy merch. Marshmello’s concert demonstrated that Fortnite is an effective platform for unending consumption by introducing game players to new music and music fans to games.

Following the successful Marshmello concert, Fortnite contracted Travis Scott to create an even larger virtual concert. Scott held a five-show in-game concert residency in Fortnite’s party mode in April 2020 (D’Anastasio, 2020). All five shows were identical and prerecorded, but the openness of the platform’s environment allowed people to attend and chat during the show. But it was far larger than any concert:

The initial event drew 12.3 million concurrent players at its peak, and a staggering 27.7 million unique players from around the globe joined across five total airings of ‘Astronomical’, over the course of three days and multiple time zones. Including repeat viewers, fans showed up for the event a total of 45.8 million times—and that may not count another 73 million views logged by the official YouTube version, and millions more on gaming-focused livestreaming platform Twitch, where Nielsen SuperData estimates the premiere’s official stream reached a peak average-minute audience of 2.3 million viewers. (Twitch does not release exact viewer numbers.) (Cirisano, 2020)

These data show why music and video game executives want to expand the availability of in-game concerts. Having a concert with 12.3 million fans would be impossible anywhere in the world. Furthermore, buzz about the concert perpetuates the concert itself through additional YouTube views. For the cost of producing a 9-minute virtual performance, producers generated a performance that continues to produce audiences over various platforms, which is significant because the investment has a perpetual return and feels the same as the original.

But how do virtual concerts create revenue in a free-to-play video game platform? Travis Scott reportedly earned US$20 million for the concert—significantly more than the roughly US$1 million he earned for shows in his previous tour (Zewei, 2020). For a free-to-play video game that does not charge admission for the concerts, revenue generation is a challenge for video game platforms. ‘The Item Shop’ is the online store where Fortnite generates most revenue—gamers shop with V-Bucks, the virtual currency in the game. For the Travis Scott concert, there were two ways in which the game earned revenue. First, Fortnite sold Travis Scott skins, weapons, emotes (i.e. dance moves), and tools before and after the concert. Epic Games announced the concert on 20 April along with merch available on 21 April to prepare for the sequence of shows 23–25 April 2021 (Fortnite, n.d.). Since Epic Games released these items for a limited time, gamers and Scott fans made in-game purchases ahead of the concert for fear of missing out on the merch. Second, Scott sold real world merchandise to commemorate the Fortnite concert from T-shirts to keyboard wrist pads, there was even a Travis Scott Nerf gun designed to look like the in-game weapon merch available for the concert (Grobe, 2020). Unfortunately, neither Scott’s team nor Epic Games released data on how much merch they sold around the event. Video game companies and record labels exploit this as the ideal of unending consumption where a seemingly free concert (i.e. no price for admission) drives consumers to spend more than they otherwise would spend a day at home.

Another popular video game, Minecraft, began holding regular concerts in 2016 on a much smaller scale. Server space limited these shows to a few-dozen concertgoers (Fingas, 2016). But during the pandemic lockdown, Minecraft also made a move to the virtual space by increasing the number of music festivals on the game platform. On 25 April 2020 (at the same time as Scott’s ‘Astronomical’ concert), Minecraft hosted a music festival called Block by Blockwest. The brainchild of an indie band, Courier Club, the music festival overloaded their servers with 100,000 fans attempting to watch the concert (Shafer, 2020). As opposed to Fortnite, concerts in Minecraft have a do-it-yourself feel to them—users build models/venues and host the performances on their own servers. There is no released data on monetization of these concerts. Musicians who play concerts on Minecraft appear to do so as a marketing tool rather than as a source of revenue. A notable difference between Minecraft and Fortnite is that Minecraft has a purchase price along with a monthly fee to play. The business model involves attracting a musician’s audience to purchase and/or subscribe to Minecraft. After they begin playing, Minecraft aims to retain these players with their subscription to play online.

The final major online video game platform that hosts virtual concerts is Roblox, a platform that also allows players to create games. Roblox wants to create a metaverse, ‘a sprawling online experience with its own economy and culture’ (Millman, 2021). To bolster this experience, Roblox partnered with Warner Music Group to develop a concert model (Aswad, 2021). Roblox’s former global head of music, Jon Vlassopulos, formed partnerships with major record labels to secure their artists on the platform through both performance and merchandise (Cirisano, 2021). Roblox is uniquely positioned to host concerts because it is more of a platform than other games—the entire game is a series of games created by users in an open world. In a way, Roblox is similar to Second Life in that it creates a metaverse. A metaverse is ‘a simulated world which allows its denizens to live as whoever they designed their avatars to be, in a shared reality which is always on and beyond the control of any one user’ (Cross, 2021). On this metaverse model, the game becomes the platform, and it further blurs the line between game and music. Users create an avatar and move among different games/scenarios built by other users, and users can decide whether to charge to use their games. As a result, Roblox users can create their own concert games within the platform. While Warner made headlines investing in Roblox, Sony Music has been actively creating concerts on the platform and recently signed an agreement with the platform (Broadwell, 2021). Sony-affiliated artist Lil Nas X held a concert on Roblox that was attended by 30 million users. Then another Sony artist, Zara Larsson, launched her latest album in a game version of her home that allowed users to explore her house (Broadwell, 2021). Regardless of how much money artists earn, these deals and concerts demonstrate the music industry’s interest in video game concerts.

Roblox follows the same free-to-play model as Fortnite with a store for merch. To generate revenue within the game, Roblox executives deploy merch to create affective connections with players and virtual concerts provide such an opportunity. Vlassopulos describes the value of merch in a Billboard interview:

We’re a microtransaction platform. The community is used to spending 100 Robux, 200 Robux, 500 Robux—[about] $1, 2$, $5. Lil Nas X is on a path to eight figures for an annual run rate [for his Roblox merch collection]. And there’s no inventory or manufacturing. We can all go on holiday for a month, come back, and the community has been buying every day. For the artist that’s almost like catalog sales. (Cirisano, 2021)

Vlassopulos’ point that there is no inventory is important. In-game purchases do not require any additional infrastructure to sell merchandise because the game already has servers and a virtual store. Whereas a record store selling merch must purchase the merch at a risk and employ a clerk to sell the retail, merch requires an even larger investment for touring artists, but none of this exists in the virtual space. More importantly, the seemingly cheap cost of digital merch drives impulsive spending in ways a US$30 T-shirt at a show does not. This follows the existing logic found in digital music whereby digital files cost considerably less to produce and generate more profit for record companies (Arditi, 2020). The free-to-play model of video game concerts supports unending consumption because it traps music fans and gamers in endless networks of consumption.

While the free-to-play video game platforms have received the most attention for their use of video game concerts, more typical game environments are seeking ways to add video game concerts:

EA, a company that’s no stranger to the commercial power of music within video games, says it has plans of its own, too. Virtual concerts would be a natural fit for existing EA titles such as Madden NFL if they could be incorporated as halftime shows. (Ombler, 2020)

Music industry and video game industry executives think that by including concerts in other games, they may be able to attract die-hard music fans to a game and spend more money on the game. For instance, there may be little connection between Madden NFL players and BTS fans, but the BTS army has demonstrated an appetite to purchase anything BTS related. If EA Sports were to include a BTS concert within the game, they would be able to sell more copies of the game (Ewe, 2021). By cross promoting these types of shows, music industry and video game industry companies develop a model of unending consumption by targeting fans who may not otherwise be interested in a product.

From Epic Games to EA Sports, video game companies see themselves as platforms that can deliver entertainment content to players and music is the easiest cultural good to incorporate. These concerts blur the line between music and video games. By operating as platforms, online video games act as intermediaries that decide what content gets to consumers. Whether video game platforms use free-to-play models with in-game purchases, charge admission or incorporate content into console model software, each model creates more revenue for video game platforms than pure game play. Because gamers and music fans want to experience these events, video game concerts lock consumers in unending consumption.

Conclusion

With every new technological innovation, there lies an opportunity for progress. Evangelical technologists promise new technologies bring progress by creating new opportunities for liberty and democracy for everyone. However, as Armand Mattelart (2000) demonstrates, the promise that technology will bring us freedom, equality and democracy is as old as the printing press; the fact that every new communications technology promises a better world proves technologies never deliver on the promise. Video game platforms seemingly allow for unregulated social interaction and opportunities to transgress socioeconomic boundaries, but these platforms generate revenue for large corporations, even when their games are free-to-play. By engaging in strategies of unending consumption, video game companies demonstrate they permit cultural production and social interactions only under the parameters of capitalism. As video games and music converge with the advent of video game concerts, unending consumption only benefits major corporations at the expense of independent producers.

With video game concerts, the promise is that any artist can play online and reach an audience. Roblox appears to provide the virtual equivalent to small shows at bars or parties with the potential to permit nearly limitless attendance for fans. A band could plan a concert on Roblox and invite their fans. Their fans can invite friends and create a huge event. For the video game platform, the possibilities are endless. However, the exceptions prove the rule on video game concerts. As Chris Anderton (2021) states, ‘the existing hierarchy and inequality in the live music sector in the live past is likely to be replicated within the livestreaming sphere’ (p. 79). Yes, Travis Scott can earn US$20 million, but playing on a virtual model in Roblox does not lead to a following. It is more likely that if independent artists invite fans to a virtual show, few, if any, would attend because part of what made Scott or Lil Nas X such big hits was that fans and gamers wanted to be a part of the event. Small shows for independent artists are not magnetic events that attract a lot of people. Furthermore, how would an independent artist generate revenue on a free-to-play platform? Roblox is not willing to create merch for every band willing to play a virtual concert on the platform. Bands could decide to charge to access their game on the Roblox platform, but it is not likely that it would have a large attendance with admission.

As an unending consumption strategy, video game concerts generate revenue for video game companies and major record labels while leaving independent artists to struggle for attention. Video game concerts mark a convergence strategy for big corporations but lack the ability to help artists. In fact, the new streaming model of video games is a moment of capitalism that furthers the exploitation of cultural creators. As media corporations consolidate and grow more power, fewer cultural creators will be able to survive without corporate support. At the same time, the corporate support keeps getting smaller.