It began like any gig anywhere in the world: I was waiting patiently, excitedly, with a couple of friends and a load of strangers. But then things got a little weird. A few audience members started waving flaming microphone stands. And did a dog just poke out of that guy’s rucksack? As a massive circular screen projected vivid images and shot out bursts of light, people listened to atmospheric warm-up soundscapes, the hype building for the main event: Travis Scott. Like an asteroid, he hurtled to the ground, the force of his impact flinging people hundreds of metres through the air.
This was all happening in Fortnite. And it just changed the world of entertainment... again.
Scott’s “Astronomical” event was huge, even by the standards of the biggest game on Earth. Viewed live by more than 12 million people – enough to fill Wembley stadium some 133 times over – the visually spectacular ten-minute concert debuted Scott’s new track “The Scotts”, featuring Kid Cudi, and showcased several songs from Scott’s previous albums, all mixed into a special performance within a persistent online game. Players of all ages, colours and creeds packed onto servers to see one of the world’s most famous rappers unveil new tracks in a set that wouldn’t look out of place at the Super Bowl or the Grammys. It was pulled off with incredible attention to design and set a new standard for interactive live entertainment.
Speak to any video game developer and they’ll tell you that creating this type of event is spectacularly hard. A large team of designers, sound designers, programmers, producers, artists and effects geniuses are all required to build, test, rebuild, retest and eventually get the thing working properly. That’s not to mention the work required to motion capture an artist, animate him or her and get the digitised version to look convincing. Needless to say, you shouldn’t expect these types of spectacles to come around too often, even if developer Epic Games' turnaround on Fortnite updates is incredibly impressive.
It's not the first time that music has entered the realm of gaming to provide something beyond a mere soundtrack. The 1990s had the dance mat. The mid to late 2000s saw a surge of titles such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. But these required agency from the player to “complete” some challenge or other. What's changed recently is a new trend for attending performances held within games. Grand Theft Auto V recently introduced famous DJs into the nightclubs of its online mode, allowing players to experience never-before-heard tracks. There was no mission or level – you just go, hang out and enjoy it like in real life.
“Other games are getting involved too,” says Chris Dring, publisher of gamesindustry.biz. “Korn recently showed up and did a performance in AdventureQuest 3D and late last year The Offspring performed in World Of Tanks. Fortnite is the biggest game in the world right now and that comes with increased focus and attention.” Inevitably, the pressure is on Fortnite developer Epic, and the artists themselves, to raise the bar with each new performance. For the artists it’s the difference between a very public flop and a monumental boost to their stardom.
Fortnite's position in this new marketplace hasn’t happened overnight. It has become a cultural phenomenon that itself perpetuates its own new cultural phenomena: France’s Antoine Griezmann adopted a Fortnite celebration at the 2018 World Cup. It's now such an engagement behemoth that Netflix considers it its major rival. No wonder that third parties have recently been partnering on one-time events. Last year, there was an in-game concert with Marshmello and an exclusive tie-in with Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker where fans could see a new clip before it hit cinemas. Last week, the new trailer for Christopher Nolan's Tenet premiered within Fortnite, and it was announced that in the summer the game will host a full-length screening of an “iconic” Nolan film. It has become a digitised plane where the planet’s biggest brands, bands and filmmakers can hold a captive audience of millions – and right now that's more attractive than ever.
It’s the timing that Nils Leonard, founder of London’s Uncommon Creative Studio, believes turned Travis Scott's performance into such a moment. “You can have the most incredible set list, the most rehearsed show and the most impressive stage set but sometimes the magic just doesn’t come. The crowd always want it, but do they need it?” he says. “In a locked-down world, having retreated to our castles and unable to attend anything en masse, we are hungry for campfires. This virus has exposed the true human weakness: our inability to be apart. We need to come together and as a result we need moments to come together around. It’s a human thing. And in a moment when we are unable to come together, Travis brought more than 12 million people into his orbit.”
In true form, Epic is keeping tight-lipped on what it is planning next. The studio declined to even comment on the Scott gig, albeit telling GQ it may have more to talk about “shortly”. One prediction? Functionality will be ratcheted up in the future. This being gaming, there’s every chance we’ll see increased interactivity for players – personal choices will alter how any given experience develops, just like Netflix's Black Mirror spin-off Bandersnatch. Perhaps they could influence the track list or even get up on stage and perform with the artist using a series of button prompts to mirror dance moves.
As the technology matures, artists will likely push for more creativity within their in-game concerts in order to ramp up hype for future outings. It’s one thing seeing Kendrick Lamar deliver a mind-blowing performance at the Grammys, or Beyoncé smash the halftime set at Super Bowl; imagine what they, their teams and their budgets could achieve with the anything-is-possible, no-physical-limits of a video game space. They could take a concept album such as Beyoncé’s Lemonade and turn it into a kind of full, feature-length interactive movie. “It makes sense why musicians would want to be a part of that,” Dring says. “For the players, this sort of thing provides a reason to log-in, hang out and share an experience with their fellow fans. For the game industry, it enables the business to highlight just how powerful it has become and to reach new partners and new audiences who perhaps before hadn’t considered these sorts of experiences.”
And with the freedom afforded by digital environments comes the ability to look back. “Imagine going into a Rolling Stones gig from 1972,” Peter Martin, CEO of virtual reality-focused creative agency Valis Studio, suggested to Pitchfork. “A Bob Marley show, Marvin Gaye: these are the sort of concepts we’re discussing right now.” Of all the entertainment mediums out there, video games are perhaps the least obsessed with nostalgia – always pushing forward, tied more than any other to technological advancements – but they could act as a gateway for music lovers to go back to their favourite ever gigs. And, in years to come, artists may use volumetric capture to immortalise performances for this very kind of experience – whether it's presented in a game or in another kind of digital space.
In the longer term, however, this may all look like merely emerging from the primordial soup. Futurists have long speculated about what the internet will ultimately lead to. A popular notion is that we will create something loosely termed the “metaverse”. There’s no single, agreed definition for the metaverse, but the overarching idea, as expressed by Wikipedia, is “A collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality and the internet.” It will be a place for individuals and businesses to work, play, create, own, sell, invest and reap rewards – one which never closes and where millions of people can interact concurrently (right now, the cap on a Fortnite game is 99).
One version of the metaverse imagines it as a 1:1 mirror of our world. So, for example, say you were considering booking a holiday. Before the internet, you relied on a travel agent to suggest a hotel; you needed to buy a book to find out about attractions and restaurants. When the internet arrived, you could check TripAdvisor and use Airbnb to avoid hotels and stay somewhere “authentic”. Upon the arrival of the metaverse, you’d be able to visit that city or hotel in virtual reality. While “there”, you could bookmark places you want to visit. You’d be able to see what kind of thing the restaurants are cooking. You could stand in the entrance of Notre-Dame and decide whether you want to go there for real. While doing this, you could simultaneously create an itinerary.
It's years away, but events such as Astronomical demonstrate the direction of travel – and if a metaverse does emerge, future historians may come to look on Fortnite as a significant early step on that journey. “Fortnite is a very different kind of social network,” says Nathan Brown, a video game writer, consultant and the ex-editor of game industry bible Edge. “It’s a living alternate world populated by millions of players who will log in to see whatever’s new, no matter what it is. It is a pop-cultural phenomenon, yes, but a cross-cultural one as well – a place where Batman can snipe John Wick from halfway across the map, only to get ganked by a Star Wars Stormtrooper while hoovering up the loot. It is the closest thing modern society has to the metaverse.”
Covid-19 is already accelerating the trends that would bring it about. What happens next is for the future to determine. But one thing is for certain: Travis Scott wasn’t the first ridiculously famous person to show up in Fortnite. And he definitely won’t be the last.
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