2023-12-07 15:02:15
Kommersant FM columnist Alexander Levi tells what new formats were presented by online game developer Epic Games.
Over the next three days, including the current one, Epic Games plans to launch new game services, as the authors themselves call them, in their Fortnite game. We’re talking about LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival, the last of which I find the most interesting. Here’s why – it’s the first Fortnite music game where you can create your own band with friends or go solo.
The developers were Harmonix studio, the author of the popular game Rock Band. Epic Games showed a short demo of the Fortnite Festival a couple of days ago during the Big Bang event, which took place online. The significance of the music game for the organizers themselves can be assessed through the scale of the person whom the company invited to launch. It was the rapper Eminem. The broadcast with his participation was watched by almost 12 million viewers, despite the fact that a huge number of people simply could not get to the event. Epic Games servers were not ready for such an influx of people.
Along with the excitement, which was pleasant for the organizers, the reputation of the event was spoiled by the brevity of the speech. Eminem performed two incomplete tracks, and many users came to the stream as if they were attending an artist’s concert – that’s exactly how they perceived it. Whether this is a promotional error or a deliberate delusion of fans is unclear. I believe users were expecting to see a performance in Fortnite similar to the previous performances of Travis Scott or Ariana Grande.
Users like the availability of celebrities in this format, and the wide possibilities of the virtual worlds themselves, their potential entertainment value, are still new. And it is popular artists who can significantly increase traffic to Fortnite even as a non-gaming platform. The music game isn’t out yet, but after watching the Fortnite Festival demo, I see it as more of a conduit for occasional concerts and shorter online performances, as a medium that will retain and potentially attract new audiences between events.
The music game comes out on December 9th. The star of the first season of Fortnite Festival will be Canadian musician The Weeknd.
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