#2: World-record-breaking concert experience

      Upon reading the title, readers are likely expecting an extravagant trip with a group of friends to see a concert with a star-studded lineup. Well, it was breathtaking, but it was a virtual concert I attended happily with thousands of strangers.

    Sky: Children of the light, or my personal favorite video game, is a social, open-world game that has an incredible central journey, cute cosmetics, a wonderful soundtrack, and community events. As someone who has played for over two years, I have had a positive experience connecting with friends and strangers all across the world through playing this game. 

    ThatGameCompany, the developers of Sky, had decided to create an event that would take the game to the next level for their participation in the 2023 Gamescon taking place in Germany. They built off of and brought back one of the best seasons of the game in an even bigger, and better way.

    The event, the AURORA encore concerts, is a follow-up to the Fall 2022-Winter 2023 season of AURORA. It was a collaboration season that involved hosting a virtual concert experience for the Norwegian singer-songwriter, AURORA. She is best known for her song "Runaway" and her role as the mysterious, angelic voice from Frozen II. She had had previous experience of doing vocal pieces for the original soundtrack, and an array of her songs hold relevance to the themes in Sky (Nature, longing, hope, unity, love, light, battling against darkness, and survival).

    I had already participated in and seen the concert back in December, so why bother watching it again this time around? Well, this time TGC took things to the next level in an attempt to break the world record for Most users in a concert themed virtual world. They rallied the community to tune into the concert event, especially on August 25th, when the world record attempt was held. They promised (and delivered) bigger crowds, interactive minigames, returning limited cosmetics, and an exclusive emote.

    This was something I did not want to miss. The issue for me was that it was taking place at 3pm in Germany where Gamescon was being held... which is 6am Arizona time. So, I dragged myself out of bed at 5:55 and logged on, right before the magic of the concert unfolded before me.

    

    

My Sky Avatar (Bottom-center-left) seated just before the concert began

    The virtual concert opened with Exhale Inhale, a song that recently became one of my favorites for its sweeping lyrics and urgent themes of the preservation of nature. Runaway was next, which took users on a sweeping flight over the Isle of Dawn, the first "tutorial" realm of Sky. The song that followed was Soft Inside, which took users through a vast cave and told a story of crystal miners.

    The only hiccup in the concert experience was around the end of this song and through parts of the next song, Warrior, was many users experienced servers errors and a few disconnected completely. But that was to be expected considering each server was trying to hold down 10,000+ users. 

    Everything was running smoothly by the time The Seed started to play. The powerful lyrics played to an environmental theme that showed the consequences of greed; the lyrics "...You cannot eat money, oh no. When the last tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." (Aurora 2018) particularly showcase that. It was further enhanced by lore-infused scenes of a war that sets up the game's main story.

    Without an introduction like the previous songs, the touching ballad Through the eyes of a child begins. It is a song of longing for childlike innocence as users are taken through the aftermath of devastation. As the song outro ends, Hundreds of Sky kids (User's avatars) are ascended up to Orbit, the games final area in its main story, to experience AURORA's main track from the game. The vocal work of Aurora combined with the breathtaking visuals that precede the final cutscene of the main game brings a plethora of emotions in many users who have taken this journey before.

    To bring the concert to an end on a triumphant note, every participant is taken back to the coliseum where everyone was seated, and Queendom plays as players swarm around like bees and enjoy flying to the song.

An almost comical screenshot of thousands of players being flung outwards as the chorus of Queendom plays.

    That was the concerts' end, and as for the overarching question of whether the record was broken... It was! By a landslide! The official record was only for one server, and it was broken at 10,061 players. If the record counted all attendance across all servers, there were an insane 1.25 million users who participated! Not only that, but an additional record was broken for The most avatars emoting at once. 

    I was so ecstatic to be apart of the game's history, it was such a memorable experience with the community and I hope that someday, the event comes back again so even more people can have the chance to be apart of a concert. I'm glad I made the commitment to get up early and feel such a great sense of pride for the community of this adorable little game that I love so dearly. I can't wait for what the future that Sky holds with their PC release at the end of this year and an Animated series slated for next year. Until then, I'll be happy to make more memories as I continue to play.

World record broken announcement

The message displayed on my server when the concert ended