According to a certain music platform, a total of 1,500 game music works were released in 2020, and the number of annual releases reached 7,000 in 2023, doubling in just three years.

Furthermore, more and more game companies, such as Hypergryph's "Arknights," miHoYo's "Genshin Impact," and Tencent's "Light and Night Love," are starting to hold offline concerts. Selling out tickets instantly and having tickets being hard to come by has become the norm.

From being "heard" to being "seen," innovative business models such as virtual performances, peripheral development, and offline concerts are pushing game music towards industrialization and commercialization.

What is the value of game music? How to break through the bottleneck of commercialization? Music producers from Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo, and other game companies discussed these issues at the CGDC Game Music Forum. Caixin reporters found that game music still faces profitability challenges while talent shortage and integration of online and offline operations, cultural tourism, and overseas markets are considered as the promising directions in the industry.

Expanding the value of IP through music

As one game industry insider told Caixin reporters, game concerts are always losing money, and being able to be self-sufficient is rare. So why do game companies still insist on doing it?

"We still think this is a valuable thing to do. The value lies in increasing user stickiness and empathy between users, raising the brand value of miHoYo itself, and enhancing intangible assets," said Cai Jinhuan, the music director of miHoYo and chief of HOYO-MiX.

Cai Jinhuan mentioned that game music used to be a time of low stock prices. At that time, the game industry did not have a clear understanding of the quality and value of music, and game music was therefore labeled as "cheap." With the rise of the game industry, users' aesthetics have been evolving and they have raised higher demands for music quality.

"The number of original music works in 'Light and Night Love' has exceeded 400, featuring a wide range of music styles from romantic and lyrical to high-energy and jumping. When it comes to female-oriented game music, we need to pay more attention to emotional expression, atmosphere, melody refinement, and other aspects, strengthen the character's characteristics through specific styles and custom musical elements, and achieve character's 3D auditory presentation," said Tang Chengying, the music producer of Tencent Games Aurora Studio's 'Light and Night Love.'

"Game music needs to explore different styles according to different types of demands. In 'Identity V,' multiple sub-IPs have been created based on periodic event music to cultivate users' auditory expectations. We must believe that players' musical aesthetics are self-adaptive. We should not pursue popularity for the sake of utility, instead, we should have the courage to take a relatively niche musical route, maintain strong stylization and differentiation," said Wang Jingfei, the music director of NetEase game 'Identity V.'

Even viewed as an auxiliary product for games, game music is reaching an even broader audience and even helping game IPs break out of their circle. Yang Wei, director of content cooperation at Tencent Music Entertainment Group, said that in the past, game music mostly met the needs of game scenes. Nowadays, with its excellent quality, game music's influence has expanded even more widely among users.

Game music talent shortage

Caixin reporters noticed that the topic of game music talent shortage was discussed most frequently at the entire forum. Indeed, game companies are profit-driven, and it is inevitable that there will be a problem of mismatch between talents trained by traditional music academies and market actual demand.

"What kind of music talent do game companies need?" MiHoYo's 'Honkai Impact 3rd' music producer Gong Qi believes that game music production requires versatile talent who has profound music knowledge and profound understanding of game development and can compose music according to the actual game environment and incorporate the music with game design and rules inventory.

"We need talents who can communicate with developers via developer's thinking, learn algorithms and game development process, and directly address topics while reducing communication costs," Gong said.

Professor and doctoral supervisor An Dong of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music said that it is necessary to set up related game music training courses for the industry's development characteristics and trends. It is also worth trying to introduce industry mentors to jointly train talents and achieve deep integration of industry, academy, and research.

Since game companies rarely have suitable music talents, most game music is outsourced. However, miHoYo chose to build its own music studio HOYO-MiX.

Cai Jinhao told Caixin reporters that self-construction is more suitable for the production process of games than outsourcing. "For example, cooperation between people, outsourcing may provide very limited information, while we have a lot of information. The outside world's evaluation of MiHoYo is very high in terms of adaptability, because the team participated deeply in the early production of the project and broke down the barriers of information. We will adjust the direction according to the data. This is the meaning of being a music team, as we will evolve on our own."

Cai Jinhao said that HOYO-MiX is currently a brand that focuses on music originality as its core attraction, accumulating works, explosive products, and credit.

How to break through commercialization?

Although the profit situation of game music is not satisfactory at present, there is still imagination space for industrialization and commercialization in the long run. One direction is to convert online "traffic" into offline "retention".

Chai Xujun, President of EUPD, said that compared with traditional concerts, musicals, and symphony concerts, new formats such as game music concerts bring new audiences. High-quality content can bring these audiences from the screen to the offline world, and it can have an empowering effect on local tourism and the real economy.

"Game music industry in Europe, America, Japan and other regions and countries, not only established a positive profitable business model, but also released it as a very independent music content to the market." Chai Xujun believes that in China, everyone is accustomed to seeing themselves as a game company, rather than a comprehensive IP company. Therefore, game music performances are regarded as periodic marketing activities rather than a sustainable business model, and the number of players who can participate is also very limited.

"We can change our thinking. Game music can consider authorizing, co-construction, or production committees to allow professional teams to try to do things that are in line with offline commercial logic based on high-quality IP content." Chai Xujun said.

Cai Jinhao also told Caixin reporters that there are other channels for realizing game music performances. For example, industrialization of concerts, whether a high-efficiency and professional ecological chain can be constructed, including service providers, suppliers, and outsourcing companies, to ensure that they have a deep understanding of players' needs and preferences. Another example is the offline reuse of music IP authorization.

Another direction is to go overseas. Ding Nan, Senior Vice President of Digital and Business at Universal Music Greater China, said that as a relatively global language, game music can tell stories through music and achieve great results.

Ding Nan believes that the development of game music towards the global market still needs to handle the issues of breadth and depth well. In terms of breadth, we need to think about what kind of ways and channels to make game music go overseas and reach players and even music enthusiasts. In terms of depth, we need to deeply explore the connection role between people and games and scenes played by game music, and truly understand and recognize the cultural trends and focuses of the audience.