Fortnite’ Is Building The Metaverse Whether You Realize It Or Not
This month, Fortnite had an event where they debuted a new Star Wars clip in-game. The clip itself was not significant, and was kind of terrible. The big deal was the rest of it. The clip was introduced by a soaring TIE vs. Falcon fight players were invited to attend. The clip was presented by JJ Abrams himself, complete with a custom avatar. And at the end, there was a message from Emperor Palpatine itself of such significance to the movie, it was actually in the opening crawl. And you could only hear it in Fortnite.
Fortnite is building something here. Something much, much bigger than a battle royale game.
Call it the Metaverse if you’re a Snow Crash fan. Call it the Oasis if you’re more into Ready Player One. But I fully believe that this is what Fortnite is building, a shared virtual world where players and brands and IPs all collide and coexist in a myriad of ways. For playing games, yes, but also for…everything.
Observe any kid playing Fortnite and they’ll reveal that the game already exists as a sort of interactive social network, a bit like Minecraft before it. Yes, you play, but you are there to spend time with your friends.
In Ready Player One, players travel to different planets to play different games. Maybe the Epic Store becomes an entirely virtual space where instead of just clicking a button, while you’re hanging out on Planet Fortnite, you board a rocket to take you to Pandora to start playing Borderlands. You get the idea.
See this full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/12/27/fortnite-is-building-the-metaverse-whether-you-realize-it-or-not/#590032f356f6