Who can forget discovering their favorite songs in Guitar Hero when you were in your in you early teens? I know that the only reason I know the name Lacuna Coil is because of the game. Guitar Hero is known as a rhythm game because it requires you to have rhythm when playing – other games like this include Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, and a whole host of other games popular over in Japan. While these games all share a common theme, music, premiering songs within the game isn’t all that common. That’s what makes the new mobile game Beat Fever so special, because it’s doing just that with the new Oliver Heldens track, “What The Funk.”
Beat Fever is more than just a rhythm game, though. It’s a sort of like Pokémon, World of Warcraft and TapTap Revenge got together and had a strange child – yes, there’s a social and capture element to the game, as well. How cool is that?
“What The Funk” is available exclusively on Beat Fever until its official release on September 27. We caught up with Oli to ask him about the partnership and the future integration of new music with platforms like Beat Fever. Check that out below, as well as a demo of the game at the bottom! 
Have you ever played rhythm games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band before? Were you any good at them?
Ha yes I have! Who doesn’t love to play video games. I’ve always tried my best but I guess I’m better at making music in real life than trying to do so in a video game.
Were you able to test out Beat Fever before you agreed to release your song there? What did you think?
Yes I tried it out and was immediately impressed by how much it made me think of Guitar Hero. GH is kind of a nostalgic thing for people of my age so I think it’s really cool that people can now play this game with my track.
Did you ever think you’d have one of your songs in a game like Beat Fever?
No, never thought of it. But that makes it extra cool now.
As far as release strategies, this has to be one of the more unique situations we’ve seen. How did it all come about? Who approached who?
Yeah it’s quite new, also for me and the team. We were approached by the BeatFever team and it didn’t take long before we realised we could do something cool with them. After that it was just a fun process of creating our own world in the game and I’m really happy with what we ended up with. My team and I are always looking for fun new ways to build hype around a new release so we came up with offering the track exclusively through BeatFever until the official release date on September 27th. It’s not available anywhere else yet!
Do you see this as the logical progression of the melding of electronic music and technology? That is, EDM becoming part of technological pop culture via games?
I feel like EDM is getting bigger and bigger worldwide. And well that’s also the case for technological changes. Technology is everywhere. So I’m not surprised really that releasing your tracks via games is now part of the possibilities.
Are you going to be playing the song live during any shows in Amsterdam?
Most definitely! I’ll be playing this one out wherever and whenever I can! Maybe not always in the original way because there are also a few sick remixes coming up for this track.
Play the game below! Note: if you’re on a desktop, you can use Q,S,K,P or 1 2 3 4 to control the lanes.
Photo via Rukes.com
