There have been quite a few “Virtual concerts” in video games in recent years, and on December 8th, the game Sky: Children of the Light became one the games that has hosted a concert in game. Though “Concert” feel like a bit of a stretch, it’s more like a Musical Event. Similar TO Fortnite’s Soundwave Series Events. All of the songs also seemed to just be the Studio Tracks, which was kind of a bummer. I didn’t really expect an actually live event, but a bit of a live feel to the music would have helped make it a bit more unique.
It was still quite a lot of fun, and a fairly unique event. It was also a bit of a technically impressive feat, at least for this game.
So what is Sky? It’s a pretty simple game, that feels much more like a relaxing social space than a real “game”. There is some plot to it, you go around collecting spirits which tell little visual stories, and collecting Candle Wax, because the game is all about the Deepest Candle Lore… Or something. The Social Interaction is heavily emphasized, though ironically, because, you can’t actually chat or talk to other players except in a few select spaces or if you are good friends with them through the friendship tree.
I started playing just before the Aurora event in anticipation of the event.
The game also has “Seasons” around various themes with special unlock-able cosmetics and such. In a first for the game, it has tied in with a real person, and not a made up special spirit, in the Season of Aurora. Every few weeks, a new special quest would unlock where you would escort a spirit through a lengthy story set to a song from Aurora, Runaway, All is Soft Inside, Warrior, and The Seed. There are also a bunch of Aurora themed cosmetics to unlock, some free, some exclusive to the Season Pass, some simply purchased in game with money.
The Season has sort of culminated in a giant Concert with an “appearance” by Aurora herself. Or at least, a Sky Child style avatar of her. The Concert consisted of Exhale, Inhale, for the opening and then a repeat of the previous 4 songs, Through the Eyes of a Child, then Queendom as the closing song. Each song however had the players transported to these elaborately orchestrated set pieces where the player was transformed into some sort of creature and transported along side Aurora in a fantastical light show set tot he music. Like the individual quests, these would tell short visual stories involving spirits, which seemed to be more elaborate versions of the stories previously done. It’s honestly kind of hard to tell.
Between each song, Aurora would speak a bit to the crowd and encourage players to use in game emotes and such to react. I feel like on a technically level, this was sort of done to keep players in sync and allow for some catch up for anyone who might be lagging.
The technically impressive part of this, is the size of the crowds. In a normal game of Sky, each, whatever you want to call them, environmental pod thingy, has 8 people, max. So you will encounter people fairly frequently, but not really a lot of huge crowds. For the concert, they ran several simultaneous instances, each maxing out at 4000 players each. At the end of the show it shows how many people were in your instance, mine was 3900 something. Another person on the Aurora Discord I am in had 3800 something. Now, granted, there were some limitations to make this happen. Most of the people in each instance during the arena portions, only show as very basic and generic Sky Children avatars. Once you pick a seating section, you got grouped with a smaller set of avatars and you could see all of them in their full outfitted glory, and chat with them as well. Especially given this is firstly a Mobile Game, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have completely melted people’s phones trying to render out 4000 elaborately dressed avatars at once. I imagine the smaller song segments were helped as well by transforming the players into simple animal avatars, birds and butterflies and jellyfish.
In general, it was quite a sight seeing everyone flying around all over in the huge crowd. Especially at the end of the show when a giant Aurora spirit would suck everyone into a giant tornado of Moths swirling around.
Anyway, if you missed it or want to see the show yourself, it’s running through Jan 2nd or so in game, every 4 hours, and is free to everyone. There is also a special item that can be bought that will let the player relive the show indefinitely. I’m also sure it’s on Youtube somewhere. I tried to record my show but the phone would record for a few minutes then just stop.
According to the Sky Facebook Page, 1.6 Million people watched the initial showing on the 8th.
