What does Travis Scott's Fortnite event reveal about the future of entertainment?

It's not a novelty that Fortnite changed the world of games: the success of the game was directly responsible not only for the fact that the genre battle royale have become the latest darling of gamers and have put all publishers in a race to release the next great game of the genre, as well as making Epic one of the largest companies in the world and made it possible for it to create its own large virtual store, becoming the first strong competitor for the Steam.

But the company doesn't seem to be interested in using its biggest success just to transform the videogames, but the market for Entertainment as a whole. It all started in 2018 when the game was used to promote the movie Avengers: Infinity War, with an event that allowed players to control the villain Thanos and use the Infinity Gauntlet to decimate opponents. 

Since then, events Fortnite became a common thing to promote other works that were not directly related to the game, such as movies (Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise Skywalker, Birds of Prey: Harley Quinn and Her Fantabulous Emancipation e John Wick 3), TV series and events (such as the new season of Stranger Things and Superbowl) and even celebrity gamers (like the famous streamer Ninja), making Fortnite not just a game, but an important advertising tool.

This facet of the game reached another level in late April, when a special five-day event featured a full-length show from the rapper. Travis Scott within the game, with a giant avatar of the musician in the middle of the map. The performance was seen live by 12,3 million people, and the entire show was seen by 27,7 million during the five-day event.

This presentation went down in game history as the largest concentration of people in a single location within the game. And this may be one of the most important events in the games market in recent years, as it opened up a whole new possibility of partnerships, and it is possible that this is the inauguration of a whole new era of the gaming industry. Entertainment.

Video games and advertising

When we see the testimonies of people in the advertising market, it is easy to see that the Fortnite has done something historic with its events, not just for the video game media itself, but also how it can be used for propaganda purposes.

In an interview for the website Campaign, the publicist Nnamdi David, director of media strategies at mediahub, states the events promoted by Fortnite may have finally shown advertisers that the games market is a niche worth investing in. For years there has been a certain prejudice from companies that do not work directly with this niche — even if the numbers show that it is ideal for reaching a younger audience.

David claims that the event with Travis Scott achieved all the goals of a great marketing campaign, but in the end it was much more than that, as it showed us a type of experience that could only have worked within a video game and, at the same time, overthrew what was until then the last trump that TV had over the media: the possibility of making an event Live.

Yes, Sarah Salter, director of innovation at wavemaker, states that the performance of Travis Scott proved to us how these virtual events can somehow replicate the same feeling we get when we are at a real concert. She also notes that this experience further blurred the lines between the real and virtual worlds, and showed a new way of creating an entertainment event that could be experienced simultaneously by the entire world.

Already for Christophe Brumby, director of strategies at Amplify, what was most interesting to him from these latest experiences with Fortnite is that they are helping to totally redefine what a live performance should look like in a post- COVID-19. This is because this type of event not only allows millions of people around the world to participate simultaneously in the same experience, but also helps to create connections and that feeling of belonging to a group even at a time when the recommendation is that everyone is isolated inside. from their homes.

But stop brumby, the show of Travis Scott should just be the first step of this new form of entertainment. He believes that, in the future, the media will have to find ways to make players not only spectators of these events, but interact directly with them, creating ways that individual and collective actions of players can directly influence the presentation. Thus, the events themselves would become games themselves, which would further increase the immersion of players.

The Brazil of lives

And, even if the Brazilian advertising market is still a little far from the public of Fortnite, this could be the next big step for companies to start investing in this medium as well — mainly because the needs caused by the pandemic of COVID-19 showed that the public in the country embraced the idea of ​​a virtual event.

In recent months, thelives” (live streams made through sites such as YouTube or social networks such as Social media coordinator and Facebook) became a true public phenomenon, with the singer's concert I love you reaching 3,3 million consecutive viewers — a world record on the video platform. But it's not just music broadcasts that have been successful in the country, and even broadcasts by political figures and businessmen have attracted a larger audience than the same type of content broadcast on a TV station.

Therefore, more and more companies have bet on sponsoring these events as a way to publicize their brand, and in an interview with the newspaper The New York Times a Ambev stated that he believes that about 250 million people watched lives of country singers sponsored by the company. And while we don't know the exact number of players from Fortnite in Brazil, a 2019 survey revealed that more than half of the Brazilian population plays some type of electronic game. Considering that this is still an underused niche in the advertising market, it becomes a great investment location for brands that want to reach a younger audience in a place without much ad competition.

If you are part of this audience, we have separated a list of all more than 100 artists who confirmed that they will do a live during the month of May, with the day and time when they should happen, in addition to indicating on which sites or social networks they will be broadcast.

Fortnite Party

And this new way of looking at video games should be officially inaugurated with the launch of Fortnite Party, a new game mode designed so that players can interact with each other without risking being shot in the back.

Without the presence of weapons or building materials, this new mode is designed to function as a stage for musical performances and a place of interaction for players who access Fortnite less for the battles and more for meeting with friends, offering several mini games that can be enjoyed in groups.

The launch party took place at 22 pm on May 08 (Brasilia time) and was attended by DJs Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki e Deadmau5, who performed live sets for an hour on the main stage of the map of Fortnite Party. 

The event could be the official inauguration not only of a new game mode, but of a new way of how the advertising market sees games in general, and opens space for many new events of this type to take place in the coming months and years.

Source: Campaign, ScreenRant, The New York Times, Epic Games, Forbes