With the concert by Ariana Grande a few days ago, Fortnite it has not simply pursued its transformation strategy into a parallel universe of commercial products, mini-games and social phenomenology. No: it has dramatically upped the ante when it comes to events within online video games.
The idea of a concert inside Fortnite is obviously not new, it had already happened with the DJ Marshmello e Travis Scott. But that of Ariana Grande represented a further evolution, which goes beyond the idea of bringing music and a singer to her potential audience, it is also a very interesting piece in the strategy of what was once just a game to throw oneself into. on an island to shoot himself with strangers.
Fortnite today it is a field of communication and advertising experimentation, where dozens of different brands coexist thanks to the malleability of a world that started without a real story, to build step by step a narrative made up of events on a global scale that constantly shuffle the cards to keep the contents fresh. Both those who may have started more than a year ago can now legitimately speak of the first versions of the game as something distant, now almost unrecognizable.
The Ariana Grande concert represents the culmination of this internal mythology of map-sucking black holes, superhero invasions, floods and alien attacks. From a UFO parked in the center of the map the countdown that announced the concert has started. Instead of a stage or a giant version of the artist walking around the map, this time the performance was preceded by a series of mini-games, followed by the appearance of an avatar of the Grande who accompanied the players in the next part of the show. of colorful bubbles and neoclassical labyrinths worthy of Escher.
It wasn’t a video game, not a music video, but something that has positioned itself in the middle, blurring the edges, shifting the boundaries or even trying to erase them. An experience designed for a new audience, far from televisions, radios and perhaps even Spotify. If until today there was the impression that Fortnite was trying to incorporate external events in a more or less experimental way, the concert of the Grande immediately appeared as something intrinsically fortnitesque, something able to combine the artistic vision of the game with that of the artist.
The head of the creative division of Epic, Donald Mustard, stated a while ago that Fortnite could create a new medium. It is difficult today to think what could come in a few years, difficult even to think that Fornite will be there in a few years, because everything can be in the world of video games. The very nature of the game, which even before being born has changed its skin several times, is its continuous metamorphosis. the surprises are therefore not over, but probably the younger ones will enjoy them (those who buy skins at the end of the concert as if they were t-shirts outside a building) and those who are able to keep up. For everyone else there are the videos after.
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