NewJeans in PUBG: K-pop joins forces with games to create synergy

A promotional image of the battle royale game "PUBG: Battlegrounds" featuring K-pop act NewJeans / Courtesy of Krafton

When K-pop meets videogames, they enrich the experience of both fans by presenting never-before-seen collaborative products and content. Knowing that this can broaden their global reach and boost sales, a growing number of K-pop labels and game companies are joining forces to create synergy.

At the forefront of this trend is the girl group NewJeans, which has recently teamed up with Krafton. Krafton is the Korean company that published the popular battle royale game PUBG: Battlegrounds.

On June 12, Krafton unveiled NewJeans-themed in-game content and collaborative items such as costume sets, weapon skins and sprays for PUBG: Battlegrounds players. With this update, the number of concurrent users peaked at 661,283 on June 13, according to game platform Steam.

"Fans at home and abroad will be highly interested in the collaboration between a representative title of the battle royale genre and a global icon spearheading the trend," a Krafton official said.

Another girl group, aespa, has joined hands with the San Francisco-based software developer Niantic to promote the company's augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go. Based on the popular Japanese animation series "Pokemon," the game allows players to locate, catch, train and battle their Pokemons through mobile devices with GPS.

Pokemon Go Korea, the Korean branch of the Japanese company Pokemon Co, unveiled on May 31 a promotional video on YouTube featuring the four members — Karina, Winter, Giselle and Ningning — exploring real-world locations to look for Pokemons. The 30-second video has garnered more than 200,000 views as of Tuesday.

The quartet also held a special event on Instagram, asking people to guess the names of its favorite Pokemons. The winners will receive the members' photos and autographed albums, among other prizes.

The number of Pokemon Go players here exceeded 4.2 million just three days after its official release in Korea in 2017, according to a survey conducted by app analytics company, WiseApp. Niantic CEO John Hanke said in March that the game is still enjoying worldwide popularity, boasting 40 million monthly active users.

Furthermore, Com2uS and Kakao Games — the videogame unit of the Korean tech behemoth Kakao — plan to showcase new games using the intellectual property (IP) of K-pop stars.

The former is set to publish "BTS Cooking On: TinyTAN Restaurant" later this year, which utilizes the IP of TinyTAN, the animated characters inspired by the seven members of the boy band BTS. The upcoming cooking simulation game will be available in 11 languages, including English and Chinese, and will be released in about 170 countries.

Kakao Games, which signed an IP license deal with K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment in April, will launch a mobile game tentatively titled "SM Game Station" later this year. In this mini-game, a player will assume the role of a manager who takes care of a top-tier K-pop artist.