Fortnite is basically the melting pot of modern day pop culture
From Stranger Things to DragonBall to memes and dances…it’s all here….
Last week, a seemingly routine thing for the game Fortnite caused a pretty big stir in tech media. The game added “skins” aka the likeness and voice effects for a bunch of characters from the DragonBall franchise including Goku, Vegeta, Beerus and Bulma. It’s a mostly routine thing for Fortnite by this point, adding skins/characters of everything from Star Wars to Steven Universe to Bruno Mars and Silk Sonic. But somehow last week’s DragonBall skins caused quite a bit more noise than most, causing the usual string of articles, but also tons of YouTube videos, Instagram posts and of course TikToks. Everyone seemed to go crazy over the Super Saiyans joining the game, and after seeing videos like the one right below, I realized something that happened without us noticing: Fortnite is basically the home and epicenter for most of our pop culture now.
Now if you watched the video above you probably saw every character in it perform Goku from DragonBall’s signature move the Kamehameha. This includes Marvel’s Venom, Iron Man and Spiderman , Sasuke from Naruto, LeBron James, Star Wars’ Darth Vader and others all performing a special move from a completely different franchise and universe. And had this been any other game, it probably would have made nosense. After all these are all different franchises and having games where different characters come together was only done by Super Smash Brothers right? And even then Nintendo had to own most of those properties in order for that game to happen. And yet what used to break both real world and in-game logic is exactly what Fortnite has made its bread and butter, helping it become one of the biggest, if not the biggest gaming success of the last 5 years.
Fortnite has defined the industry when it comes to its revenue generation model where it makes most of money in microtransactions, its cross-play functionality which makes everyone play together regardless of using a phone, console or PC, and even it’s story delivery model, which we can agree copied a bit of Overwatch’s approach of creating an ever evolving story that’s not necessarily a dedicated story mode within the game. However Fortnite has evolved this model by basically making it the basis of bringing in all these different franchises and characters. After all its through this weird story of portals opening around Fortnite’s world has the game been able to incorporate everyone from Aquaman to John Wick, and with the game’s seasons model, every few months means new story content and basically another sprinkling of characters, themes or even moves from something we love to watch read, or consume in one way or another.
And that’s really how you come to realize how much of a chokehold Fortnite has pop culture in. Whether wittingly or not, Fortnite’s become the video game home to almost everything we love now or loved growing up. It’s basically in many ways the equivalent of the set of toys you had as a kid. Chances are you made them interact or fight even if not all of it made sense. You likely dreamt of Batman fighting bad guys with the Ghostbusters. And now Fortnite is the game where that can happen. We’ll put a small excerpt of some of the Franchises biggest collaborations below but chances are if it’s something people love, Fortnite has probably had it in some capacity or another. Add in the dances and emotes in the game that range from
viral TikTok challenge dances to references to shows like Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air and Scrubs and it becomes borderline insane just how much of modern-day pop culture this game contains.
And if you think we’re exaggerating this, then maybe you should consider how this is the game that got even more popular when Drake (yes that Drake) played it with one of its most popular streamers Tyler “Ninja” Blevins. It’s had World Cup events that award the winners millions and have other celebrities like Marshmallow playing. And the celebrity connection doesn’t end there, because Fortnite has basically become the future stage of many an artist as well. From Travis Scott’s “Astronomical” virtual concert in 2019 to shows by Ariana Grande, Lil Nas X, BTS and Justin Bieber. And it’s a growing category too, with Epic, the company that owns Fortnite, stating just how much virtual concerts are a huge part or the game’s future, turning it from more than just a giant digital playground to a place for unique, online interactions with some of the greatest artists on the planet. Even if you could dismiss it as for kids when it comes to the actual gaming, how are you going to look past your favorite rapper releasing their latest track or album in a Fortnite experience? It’s this level of undeniability that made Epic have the guts to directly challenge Apple in last year’s Apple v Epic court battle
They even timed it perfectly too because Fortnite made its
latest version unavailable for the iPhone and iPad just when just as it
launched a huge collaboration with Marvel that had a special story, more
characters like The Avengers, Xmen andDr Doom and enough marketing to make you think it was the next big chapter of the MCU. And you can imagine the millions of kids (and Marvel loving adults) that hit up Apple when they couldn’t get the new characters, and still hate the fact that the only way to play Fortnite on an iPhone now is through game streaming. It was a huge powermove, and Epic could only pull it because well, Fortnite is Fortnite. The game’s social relevance has eclipsed it’s technical limitations along with any unwritten rules that used to exist in the industry before (e.g. Never mess with Apple). Even now, Destiny 2, the biggest direct competition Fortnite has, has just introduced a new
collaboration with Fortnite, where it’s guardian characters can dress up in Fortnite inspired skins. They could have just copied certain Fortnite
designs without directly working with them, just like Overwatch has Power Rangers inspired Genji skins(seriously Fortnite, where’s my Power Rangers collab), but instead Destiny literally reached out to their competitor to officially work with them just to do the same thing. The only other time I’ve seen influence I’ve seen influence like that is when the Kardashians scared Instagram into acting right earlier this month.
And that’s arguably where Fortnite lands now. As influential as the Kardashians. Or at least as undeniable. Because hate it or love it, Fortnite has etched its place in our collective pop culture now, mainly by being the place where our collective pop culture lives. Whether u take it as a playground where u can be anyone from Master Chief to John Cena, a glimpse into the future of concerts and other forms of art, a hub for all our memes, dances and internet sayings come to life, an industry shifter in games and tech, or just that game that famous people play and people emulate moments from in American clubs(there’s TikTok videos of this), Fortnite is basically everywhere now. And whether you know it or not, you’ll likely interact with it in some form or another on the web. Or at the very least, find a reason why you should interact with it if you ever want to revisit your childhood
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