South Korean pop titans Blackpink are coming to Roblox. The band made historical past this 12 months as the primary Okay-pop group to headline Coachella, and now the four-piece is heading to the metaverse through a devoted Roblox fan hub.
The expertise will likely be a everlasting addition to the digital on-line recreation, giving followers (aka Blinks) an interactive house to rejoice Blackpink’s music and are available collectively to recreate their famed choreography.
In Blackpink: The Palace, followers may also be capable to take images with the avatars of Jennie, Lisa, Jisoo, and Rosé, and buy a sequence of customized outfits and emotes for their very own avatars. Customers may also have the option improve their in-experience gadgets by smashing crystals utilizing a hammer-like “lightstick” just like the light-up trinkets that followers wield at live shows.
Blackpink: The Palace will likely be up to date all year long forward with a sequence of challenges that can reward gamers with Robux, Roblox’s in-game foreign money.
The Blackpink-themed Roblox world is because of launch August 25, and has been developed by British studio Karta. Any fan who visits the sport world inside the first 24 hours of launch will obtain a novel badge for his or her Roblox profile.
“We stay up for welcoming followers from everywhere in the world to an attractive digital palace the place they will occasion, join, and expertise all the pieces Blackpink past the constraints of time and house,” stated Hyojung Lee, Head of IPX Division at YG Plus, in a press release.
Roblox began 2023 by internet hosting an in-game live performance from Okay-pop boy band NCT 127. Final 12 months, fellow Okay-pop stars Stray Children and Sunmi helped launch Spotify’s official Roblox Island with meet and greet occasions, music manufacturing instruments, and digital merch.
Blackpink, in the meantime, gained the first-ever “Greatest Metaverse Efficiency” award on the 2022 MTV VMAs for his or her collaboration with battle royale shooter PUBG Cell. The group has additionally collaborated with South Korean metaverse platform Zepeto, which is increasing into the NFT world with its ZTX platform on Ethereum scaling community Arbitrum.
Okay-pop has rapidly change into a daily fixture in metaverse worlds after a number of high-profile international digital live shows had been broadcast over the pandemic, together with from breakout teams like BTS and Twice. This allowed them to succeed in a worldwide on-line viewers, with the previous additionally performing in video games like Minecraft and Fortnite.
It’s a transfer that’s backed by the South Korean authorities, which reportedly invested $170 million in metaverse developments in 2022.
The pivot to the metaverse isn’t that a lot of a soar for a lot of Okay-pop followers. Every member of the four-piece group Aespa, for instance, has a digital counterpart that’s utilized in music movies and for metaverse performances.
Earlier this 12 months, The New York Occasions reported that Korean firm Kakao Leisure teamed with cell gaming large Netmarble to create a digital Okay-pop band referred to as Mave, able to interacting with bodily world followers via AI applied sciences. Mave launched their first monitor in March, with the video for “Pandora” racking up practically 4 million views on YouTube.