When I was younger, my music taste always went in phases. Dubstep, heavy rock, slow acoustic songs, and disco-inspired dance music have occupied my playlists at different times over the years. In the last five years or so, though, country music has taken over. I’ve been to countless live shows and come to really love it.
As someone who’s always enjoyed rhythm games, I was excited when Space Ape Games revealed Country Star, a country music version of their hit mobile game Beatstar. However, having watched a video by Grady Smith, a country music content creator who worked with Space Ape on the game, I was interested in the process of a UK based studio developing a country music game aimed predominantly at Americans.
Ahead of the game’s release on September 21, I spoke to Simon Hade, Founder of Space Ape Games, about making the game, country music’s rise in the UK, and the genre’s relationship with video games.
Tom Hopkins: How was it making a country music focused game as a UK based team? Do you think that was actually a benefit in any way, being an outsider to the culture somewhat?
Simon Hade: Haha on balance I’d definitely NOT describe it as an advantage to be in the UK making games for Americans. Making successful games is all about having a deep understanding of who you’re making the game for. In the past we’ve been fairly representative of the audience for our games: our CFO and game lead of Transformers Earth Wars - a seven year old game - still plays hardcore every day. The leadership of our puzzle game, Chrome Valley Customs, are the most seasoned puzzle gamers I know. So making a game for someone other than ourselves was not something we were used to.
But that objectivity does have some benefits. It meant we were more easily able to ingest expert outside opinions, and approach the genre with an open mind. Once we’d surrounded ourselves with people like Grady Smith then we were more able to adopt their feedback wholeheartedly, whereas if we had more preconceptions about what was cool or not then maybe we’d have missed the mark.
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+ 2Did you approach Country Star any differently with it being a new genre of music for the team?
Yes we approached things very differently with Country Star. Our music curation process on Beatstar was very organic and “creative led.” We have a deep bench of people who have been working on music games going back to Guitar Hero, Rock Band, SingStar, and Tap Tap Revenge, so they already had strong intuition as to what songs would work and what artists would resonate with music gamers. But also with Beatstar we were figuring out licensing as we were developing the game. It took us a year to land our first major label, then a year to land our first publisher, and then another two years to sign everyone else. So the primary filter was first: what songs can we even license, then will they work? So there was a lot of back and forth as we were working out who to talk to and who needed to sign off on each song.
With Country Star we had all these relationships already so we could easily make a list of the songs that we had access to. But we also knew that working with those major partners is a heavy lift so we wanted to make sure we were really serious first. So to test the game we did two things: the first was to add a Country genre in Beatstar. In November last year we ran “Country Month” and we had these big mainstream hits like Shania [Twain], Luke Bryan, and Sweet Home Alabama. We used that to test the appetite for Country Music amongst core Beatstar fans. What we learned was that the genre was too polarising and didn’t sit comfortably in our core game. We suspected that would be the case but it was useful to get validation because of course it would have been easier if everything could co-exist under the Beatstar brand.
We then tested a version of Country Star in Canada with purely independent country artists. These were artists who were working outside the major label ecosystem. Artists like Cody Jinks, Turnpike Troubadours, Charles Wesley Godwin (before he blew up and signed to Big Loud, which were very happy about because we work with them). That flexibility allowed us to iterate on the design of the game and build confidence before we brought on the majors.
That test was really interesting because many of the artists in the game at that point were barely known outside of the Texas Red Dirt scene. Now Texas is an important scene, and growing, but still relatively niche. We also had some bluegrass like Trampled By Turtles and Country Rap. The songs were great but not widely known, which is something we historically avoided in Beatstar. In Beatstar we would prioritise huge globally recognisable bangers with a billion plus streams as they have been shown to work best because the way people tend to engage with Beatstar is to focus on songs they know. This familiarity is super important because it helps players pre-empt what is coming up in the song.
The game design and marketing are all really focussed on exposing songs you will recognise. But in our tests for Country Star that incorporated independent artists we saw something very different. People loved the promise of a Country Music game. Of course they were more interested if they saw their favourite song in there, but country fans tended to be way more open minded to discovering new music, and the format of the songs tended to make them more predictable than, say, your typical rap or EDM song, so it worked. This was a real turning point in the project because we’d always thought of Beatstar as this music discovery platform but now with Country Star we had a sign that we could really lean into this discovery aspect. This led us to put the artist front and centre in the game, and be less shy about working with great but lesser known music that many - even country music fans - might not have heard.
So as a result, Country Star has a huge diversity, from mainstream country radio hits to obscure TikTok singer songwriters and everything in between.
Has your own relationship with country music changed since you started working on the game?
Absolutely. The last time I listened to country music prior to this project was when I bought a Garth Brooks CD in 1992. In Summer last year I started looking into the genre seriously. We went to Nashville a few times, including for CMA Fest. I binge watched Yellowstone. We started following country music culture sites like Whisky Riff and Country Central and of course brought in Grady to teach us all about it. You can check out his video on it.
Now I am at least 10,000 hours into active listening to country music. I’ve gone well beyond what was strictly necessary for the game and I have a go-to playlist of around 30 hours of country music that I’ve curated over the year and listen to regularly.
How did the world of country music affect the aesthetic of the game?
Our game artist’s initial pre-conceptions of Country Music was very much old time Country & Western vibes. This played into a lot of misconceptions people have outside of the US, that this is a dated stodgy genre. So one of the first things we did was to take the artists and designers to Nashville. They went to concerts and honky tonks. I took them to a Predators game, and they just met lots of people whose lives revolve around country music. Now Nashville is just one lens - obviously there is a whole different scene in Texas, and the independent music scene is different again, and the artists who are incubating on social media are different again. But that trip to Nashville was what kicked it all off.
From that first trip they grokked that country music in the US is just… extremely mainstream. It’s pervasive and not at all the niche, or old. Country music fans were young, they were also listening to rock, hip hop, and pop music, and country was just a regular part of life - as opposed over here in the UK where you really have to be a proper outlaw and seek it out. This seems so obvious to anyone who has spent any time in the US, but it was a big revelation that led us to explore a more grounded look and feel that a regular everyday person in the US could identify with.
We wanted the game to be part of this world. It’s grounded in a real place (actually inspired by a bar in Nashville called Tootsies, but it could be anywhere in middle America). The style is very straightforward compared to Beatstar, which is very gamey. This is the sum total of many small things, such as the angle of the game board to evoke a guitar neck, to the textures on the buttons, to the transition screens where we have tour posters of artists. Before that trip the game felt like we were cosplaying as your grandpa’s country and western game - and not something that could be culturally relevant to a large mainstream US audience.
click to enlarge + 2I discovered the game through Grady Smith. What was his role and did you work with other experts in similar roles?
Oh wow that’s great. He’d get a kick out of that! I know he’s always surprised at how international his audience is. My story with Grady is pretty much as he laid out in his video, we’d been watching a lot of his videos, and one about sub genres was part of the mandatory onboarding material when someone joined the team. I reached out to him on Instagram and somehow caught his eye and we had a few calls and eventually we flew out to meet him. He’d just moved to Nashville a month or so before so he was pretty fresh but could point us to the insider spots and introduce us to people who could fast track our education.
We also had amazing support from our label and publishing partners. These are massive global conglomerates, but all have a Nashville office that just deals in country music. Without exception these subsidiaries were super entrepreneurial and up for trying anything. Country music has been growing and so there was a huge appetite to try new things, and so we had an amazing reception everywhere we went. People would take us to gigs or send us unreleased tracks from artists they were excited about so that helped us to get a read of what was happening.
Were there any artists who were particularly helpful or interested in being involved in Country Star, or any artists the team were desperate to include?
Almost everyone we meet is itching to get involved. Gaming is a pretty novel thing for artists generally, but in country it’s never been done before. Many describe it as a “childhood dream” or similar to be in a game and they like that we’re approaching the genre in an authentic way.
We had a few really serendipitous moments when we’d run into someone who knows someone in Mid Town Nashville and then before we knew it we were at a venue talking to an artist or demoing it to managers. One night we were having dinner with a guy called Ward Guenther who hosts an Apple Country Music Radio show as his day job, but at night hosts a live music session called Whisky Jam. He invited us to join that night to see a band he thought we’d like. They were called Hollier, and they were releasing their debut album that night at midnight and performed a few songs for it at the gig. We loved it, and got talking to them in the bar after and my recollection is a bit hazy but I think we signed them on the spot and their songs were in the game within days. They’ve since been killing it in their live shows and we’re psyched to have them in the game.
I have so many stories of catching these artists on the way up, either through Grady or other connections in Nashville, and I think that makes the game incredibly special especially when they go on to open for major tours or come out months later with a big record deal.
Lera Lynn, a Texas and Nashville based musician, has produced the music for Endless Dungeon, an upcoming twin-stick action game, but aside from games like Red Dead Redemption and a few others, country music has a limited use in video games. Do you think country music can start to have more of an impact on other video game genres?
Oh we’re thinking bigger than video games. A few artists are charting in places like Australia and UK but outside of the very biggest names country artists are nowhere near reaching their potential internationally. Our play here is to not only give American country music fans a game to play their favourite music, but to bring this music to the rest of the world.
I’m expecting Country Star - along with Yellowstone and a few others - to impact tour schedules and open up synchs for shows and ads and other media internationally. So sure, why not have more country music in games? I think that would be great.
What quirks or country music culture did you want to implement in Country Star?
Authenticity is one thing that keeps coming through. Our approach in the game and on our socials is going to be quite down to earth, and we try not to take ourselves too seriously. We also found that Country fans are much more likely to be deep fans of specific artists, whereas the typical Beatstar player tends to identify as a fan of specific songs. This was an important insight because it unlocked a few departures from the Beatstar design. In Beatstar we rarely have more than a couple songs from an artist, and then that is reserved for the absolute mega stars. Whereas in Country Star it’s common for us to have three or as many as five songs from an artist, and we bring the artist much more to the front in transitions and the UI.
We’ve also tried to not go too deep into the rabbit whole of sub genre classification. There is a lot of internet gate keeping that goes on about whether this artist or that artist, or this song or that is “real” country. There are also debates over whether Americana and certain singer songwriters should be in there, or whether some mainstream country pop artists should be there. We’re happy to steer clear of all that. We just want to choose great songs and try not to put artists in a box and just be a celebration of good music. Of course we have some genre staples like “90’s Country” and “Honky Tonk” but we want Texas red dirt hits to sit alongside bluegrass, southern rock, and the classics. If it’s a fun song and makes for great gameplay and is somehow connected to country then it can live in Country Star.
Do you think the game is a great place for people to learn new songs, or even get into country music?
Absolutely. We’ve felt it, and we see it whenever someone discovers a new song in the game it really sticks with them. This is because the gameplay really forces you to engage with the song in a way that a background playlist or radio doesn’t. So I’m hoping that our playlists and socials will be good entry points for people to learn more about country music.
Country music has become much more popular in the UK in recent years, thanks in part to word of mouth, so do you think the social aspects will be particularly important in Country Star?
As for word of mouth, yes we saw that word of mouth virality was such an important part of Beatstar’s growth. When someone in a family, or dorm, or house gets it then soon everyone has it. We tried hard to find ways to productise this experience of challenging friends with leaderboards and the like but still the most fun way to experience these games is passing the phone around on the couch.
To this day the majority of people who download Beatstar do so from searching the App or Google Play store or otherwise organically, so I’d expect a similar phenomenon with Country Star.
Is there anything cool you’ve learned about UK country music, or the music industry’s relationship with video games in your time working on Country Star?
I can’t really remember seeing country artists come to the UK before. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention before but just in the last year I’ve seen Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Billy Strings (all three sold out instantly!), Jesse Daniel, Breland, Charley Crockett, Lainey Wilson, Kip Moore, Kane Brown, Blackberry Smoke, and Shania. And of course we have Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen coming up soon and another Childers and Billy Strings tour soon. I’m glad to see promoters moving up to larger venues as I felt that a lot of the gigs last year were selling out in minutes and there is much more demand for live country music than people realise.
One of the events that triggered us to get serious and commit to the game was when Garth [Brooks] sold out four stadiums in Dublin last year - pretty crazy for someone who is not even on the mainstream streaming services and whose content is relatively inaccessible here. The fact that despite that he could sell out 400k+ tickets is a sign of some serious pent up demand.
A big part of it is from the relentless grind of grass roots local associations like Holler, Country To Country, Americana week and so on. But I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that TikTok and streaming services have no boundaries, so these artists are finding an audience and that explains the fact that young people are showing up in droves to these concerts. I’m hoping we can play a big part in accelerating that growth.
The live experience is such a core part of country music culture, how will you look to connect to that in Country Star?
We’re exploring some really interesting partnerships for post launch. In Beatstar we regularly run big competitive events in the game where players post high scores in weekend events and we have had great success theming them around specific artists, or new album releases. Those events are huge for us but the experience is all entirely within the game, for example, you can win digital merch, emotes, banners, as well as the songs.
One of the things I’m especially excited for is to extend that in Country Star to also include opportunities for real life prizes. We are in talks with some major artists to do VIP concert experiences, meet and greets, collectibles like signed guitars, and all kinds of things. We’ve been a bit overwhelmed to be honest, as there is just so much demand from artists and their teams to have Country Star integrated into their tours. Right now we’re focused on making sure the launch goes well, but I’m hoping you’ll see some things along these lines later this year.
You’ve been working really closely with artists, noticeably so in the marketing stage, was that an important and exciting part of development?
It was really exciting because it happened organically. I mentioned that we first started testing the game with independent artists who were very supportive and excited to experiment with new things. They started really leaning in to promoting the game so we decided to put it all together as part of a “Country Risers” campaign.
This meant that we would give random songs from this list of emerging or indie artists to people who pre-ordered on the App or Play Stores, and also collaborate with those artists to promote those songs in conjunction with the launch. This campaign follows a similar format that used to work with artists like Eminem, Chainsmokers, Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran, Black Eyed Peas etc. in Beatstar. So far we have had tremendous support from artists like Mike and the Moonpies, country rapper David Morris, Hannah Dasher, Jesse Daniel, and Charles Wesley Godwin who is releasing his new album on the same day as the game.
Caleb Lee Hutchinson is also releasing his new song “Silverado” in the game at launch, a week prior to release on streaming platforms. I’m expecting a lot more noise around the launch also as more artists jump on a bandwagon and we’re cooking up really interesting collabs with some live music venues in Nashville and some tours.
How do you see the Country Star experience expanding in the coming months and years?
With Beatstar the roadmap was very clear. When we launched the game two years ago it was quite bare bones. A few months after launch we added the Tour Pass feature (which gave a new way to unlock songs). Then we added new event formats every few months and only started doing big artist collaborations a year ago.
On the other hand, with Country Star we have all of those features available immediately out of the gate, as it inherits all the years of R&D. I’m hoping we can add more international content to the game, because just like I want to bring these amazing American artists to the rest of the world, there is some amazing talent in Australia, Canada and the UK - not to mention thriving local country music scenes in Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, and whenever we play these songs for our American testers they love them. So I’m most excited about just scaling the game internationally and building out that playlist, real world tie-ins as our artists tour, and then see what players want after that. Our community has a nice habit of telling us exactly what they expect to see in the game so there is no shortage of ideas.
When we were in Finland in the Summer we had an internal esports competition between Supercell and partner companies to see who could post the best score in the guitar solo at the end of Free Bird. It was surprisingly compelling, and until then I’d never considered the esports potential of the game so that is something I’d love to explore more.
Country Star launched globally on September 21 and is available on the App Store and Google Play Store.
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