You Lose! Experience
- Brand
- Magdalena Bay
- Year
- 2021
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Entertainment
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Wayward Creative
Objective
To turn the September 2021 release of Magdalena Bay's single "You Lose!" into pre-saves for the duo's debut album, Mercurial World, and into streams of the new track. Rather than a plain pre-save landing page, the label needed a hook that would hold fans on-site long enough to convert, so it built a playable gag around the song itself.
Solution
The game opens on a retro-futuristic arcade screen, scored by an 8-bit instrumental version of "You Lose!": the player pilots a synth-styled spaceship against waves of monsters descending Space Invaders-style, moving and firing to hold them off. The campaign's joke is a reversal of the usual arcade stakes — the game is literally called "You Lose!", and the biggest loser wins, so getting overwhelmed by the monsters is the point, not a failure state. Once a run ends, the screen hands the fan straight into the pre-save funnel: buttons to stream the new single on the services of their choice and to pre-save the upcoming album, Mercurial World.
- 1
The player opens youlose.mercurialworld.com, a standalone browser microsite built around Magdalena Bay's song "You Lose!" — no download or app required.
- 2
The player controls a synth-shaped spaceship stationed at the bottom of the screen, a direct visual nod to classic Space Invaders.
- 3
Monsters drawn from the song's music video descend in waves; the player shoots and dodges to clear each wave.
- 4
Losing is the stated objective rather than a failure state: the campaign's rule is that the biggest loser wins, and the game's title doubles as its own game-over message.
- 5
Without leaving the experience, the player can jump to streaming links for Magdalena Bay's new tracks and pre-save the forthcoming album Mercurial World.
- 6
An 8-bit instrumental version of "You Lose!", composed specifically for the game, plays as the soundtrack throughout.
