In Case You Missed It, Travis Scott in Fortnite Set the New Gold Standard for Virtual World Performances

Somehow during its seventeen years of existence, "virtual concert in Second Life" has generally come to mean just that, and not much more: One or more avatars performing on a stage pretty much like they would at a real world show, with the possible bonus of synchronized gestures and out-of-sync mouth movement. Late last week, however, hiphop star and Fortnite showed how much more amazing, immersive, and only-in-a-virtual world a virtual concert can truly be. And to a truly massive audience:

More than 12 million players logged in for Fortnite's concert featuring Travis Scott, with reviewers calling it "stunning" and "spectacular". It included a skyscraper-sized version of Scott teleporting across the landscape as he performed his songs... A digital version of Scott performed a fully-animated, scripted 10-minute set - shorter than a concert performance. As Scott moved from song to song, his virtual avatar changed - first into a cyborg, then a fluorescent spaceman. The landscape shifted and crumbled around players on an enormous scale. After it was over, Scott tweeted: "Honestly today was one of the most inspiring days. Love every single one of you guys."

Watch above, and expect to see many more such virtual world concerts by major performers soon, especially with real world shows cancelled during the pandemic. Now that Scott showed what's doable in a virtual world, that's the gold standard going forward. Indeed, beyond a live DJ set in the zero gravity nightclub of Inspire or the live performances of the Skydancers, I'm hard-pressed to think of many "not possible in real life" (TM Bettina Tizzy) music events in SL. It's been 14 years since Suzanne Vega performed live in Second Life, so the novelty value of "popular music star performs in virtual world" in and of itself has long since faded. 

And yes, yes, the Scott performance is (far as I can tell) completely pre-recorded while Scott himself is not directly involved, but I'm not sure that completely matters.

Doing a show as complex as Scott's would be extremely difficult to pull off if it also required that he perform live, and I ultimately don't know how exciting that is anymore. Back in the Suzanne Vega days, an implicit hook to an event like that was, "Real celebrity uses some weird game thing only geeks play". But now that thousands of real life entertainers play in virtual worlds like Fortnite on their own time for their own personal fun, that condescending angle is no longer newsworthy, or accurate. As long as the real artist is directly involved on some level (even if that's just posting about it on social media) that's probably enough for most gamers.

Besides, there's probably a happy medium between pre-recorded and live: Make the performance pre-recorded, and afterward, have the performer log into the virtual world, put on a headset and chat/hangout with selected fans.

Comments

[sirhc desantis]

Some seriously neat effects in there, Shame about the 10 year old frenetic 'things' jumping up and down :) Sums up fortnite I guess?

( clearer angles here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1ytL21OKQ )

Yeah agree that it was 'prerecorded' but as a showcase - really pretty not bad at all.

Oh now I have to go and make a flaming mic stand to hold over my head for no apparent reason

[seph]

It's incredible how technically impossible 95% of that is in Second Life. Does Linden Lab hope for things like this? This is where so much of Second Life becomes a non-starter.

Take just Travis, he'd have to be an animesh object rigged with Bento, a winged cenotaur glued ontop of Ruth who outside animators will not want to deal with. Then having to understand what LI is and why Travis is 10k and can't be bigger than 64 meters and the space he occupies is only 256x256m with a 40 person capacity.

Nevermind how uploaded sounds can only be 10 seconds long and they'd need a shoutcast server.

Nevermind how with even 100s of emitters, SL's particle system couldn't accomplish 1/10th of those effects.

Nevermind even with recently released EEP glued ontop of old Windlight, they woudln't be able to accomplish dynamically changing the sky and world so drastically.

Second Life still wins in that anyone can join anytime and throw on a concert to tens of people a day whereas this is obviously super coordinated and we'll only get a few a year from a few big artists. But still, incredible how technically behind Linden Lab has allowed Second Life to be, and how they built Sansar even more crippled when Sansar had all the resources in the world to be able to match something like this.

[Luther Weymanns]

For SecondLife this Fortnite example is what happens when you have a static company with a static application for twenty years. When they take sixty-million in capital out for a product that is a none starter and another forty million in capital out for the stockholders, you end up with SecondLife. A very untraditional software company that is incapable of a competitive business model.

[Top Down]

This is complete BS getting excited over this all they did was play a soundtrack over effects besides the music is shit I'll take a live stream in SL with a real performance any day.

[irihapeti]

i thought it was quite cool

[Tan Mojo]

This was life changing. For a person like me who wants to become a content creator, this was a huge realization that the metaverse does not lie within known pastures. SL, Sansar, OpenSim, VRChat, High Fidelity, Sinespace - all of these platforms INTENDED to become the metaverse have all failed in their own way (although I still have hope for Sinespace).

And here comes Fortnite with cartoony graphics, player base of kids, twitchy gameplay, and now live social events! Not intended to be the metaverse, but is starting to morph into one. The goal of Epic Games CEO is to transform Fortnite into a social hub that supports monetized user created content. Fortnite already has a creative mode and now offers a non-combat hub/map.

Yeah, the music was prerecorded and the entire event was pre-scripted. But, it was one of the most visually stunning things I've ever seen. The audience was not passive either. The event manipulated player actions, clothing, and surroundings.

This is a significant event. 12.3 million in attendance. Epic Games has the technological infrastructure to spin up 100,000+ virtual instances to accommodate that many people. It has made me rethink what the metaverse could be and who might be involved in actually creating it.

I downloaded Fortnite last night. I'm looking forward to this weekend of exploring the non-combat aspects of it. I also plan to do this Core and hopefully soon, Crayta, via the Stadia platform.

Minecraft was the writing on the wall. This Travis Scott Fortnite event just broke that wall.