You’ve probably seen musical biopics and TV shows. It’s the story of a band you know rising to fame. You’ve probably heard cartoon characters perform songs from virtual bands or music recorded by real creative artists.
We Are OFK is both.
- OFK is our virtual band, and like every other band we love, we have real songs on our streaming service.
- We Are OFK is a video game about our band’s origins.
with me so far? Well, we’re making a little biography about ourselves.
The story of a musical biopic usually goes something like this: A small-town artist works hard, goes unappreciated, and almost gives up. Then they meet a record company executive and “get it” or impress a famous person at a bar, who propels them to stardom. They record an album! They go on tour! They see the world! Sex! No no no drugs! … hit rock bottom. Their friends are angry, sad or whatever, and some combination of these horrible things motivates the artists to turn their lives around. Remind me how to do this. I love these stories!They are exciting, but very big.
Do you know how many artists have become megastars? That’s not a lot.Most musicians never ‘make it’, but making music does. No pay a living wage. Still, a lot of people make music, paid or not. Talking about big pop stars is exciting, but I think people are just trying to make something…that’s magic to me.
The same is true for virtual bands. They’re so charming and imaginative, but also larger than life.For all of us on Team OFK…we don’t really know anyone like that. We mostly hang out on the couch, doodle, eat sandwiches in the park, and order noodles for delivery.
We Are OFK is an indie-sized experiment in making a small biopic. A smaller virtual band. An imaginary group created by artists, musicians and game designers. We know how hard it is to create, finish, and launch something. What if you could watch these pop stars perform on your laptop in bed and create virtual musicians who know they’ll probably never play a stadium concert? I hope someone can leave a nice comment about the difficulty of recording another video and posting it online. Day jobs, loneliness, awkward group chats, someone at a party who won’t stop talking to you… get through it all.
We feel close to this band, our band, so we made our biography a game. Decide what they say, the texts they send, how they present themselves through a small journey of trying to create something they’re proud of. Proud.
We Are OFK premieres on PS5 and PS4 on August 18th, and will continue every week thereafter until we have a full episode featuring all of OFK’s new songs from the debut EP.
It’s not a full album yet, because it’s hard to make! We all have to start small.
