New World Notes

Disney & Epic's New Fortnite-Interoperable Universe is the Mass Market On-Ramp the Metaverse Needs

This announcement came sooner than I'd have guessed -- though last December, I did predict that in 2024, a leading metaverse platform would be acquired. Well, Disney now owns 10% of one at least: 

The Walt Disney Company and Epic Games will collaborate on an all-new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences. Disney will also invest $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games alongside the multiyear project.

In addition to being a world-class games experience and interoperating with Fortnite, the new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more. 

“Disney was one of the first companies to believe in the potential of bringing their worlds together with ours in Fortnite, and they use Unreal Engine across their portfolio,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games. “Now we’re collaborating on something entirely new to build a persistent, open and interoperable ecosystem that will bring together the Disney and Fortnite communities.”

Interoperable emphases mine, because that strongly suggests Fortnite's existing 100 million+ players will be able to leap pretty  seamlessly into this new Disney/Epic universe. This is on top of Epic's recently announced partnerships with LEGO, Rocket League, and Rockband creator Harmonix. 

Part of me reads this news and worries about how this might crimp the Metaverse's quirky, indie, grassroots spirit across various platforms. For instance, now that Disney is getting directly involved in the metaverse platform business, any user-created fan tributes of Disney's massive IP library may soon get the knife.

But more of me is excited by what's effectively a mass market on-ramp for the Metaverse: 

Epic Adds LEGO, Racing & Rock Band-Type Music Gaming to Fortnite, Also Expanding the Platform as an All-in-One Metaverse Experience

Along with helping promote user-made islands made in Fortnite, Epic just added a LEGO game expansion, Rocket Racing (from the creators of Rocket League), and Fortnite Festival, a Rockband-type multiplayer game mode from the creators of that franchise, to the core Fortnite experience. (Watch above.)

Longtime game industry reporter Stephen Totilo has the rundown on his Axios newsletter, where he also notes that Fortnite brought in 100 million active players last month. Stephen gave me a chance to explain how this fits into Epic's attempt to evolve Fortnite into the Metaverse:

Game Awards Adds Category for User-Generated Fortnite Maps -- Including Alliance's Murder Mystery!

Above: Best Fortnite Island nominee Murder Mystery by Alliance (Island Code: 8513-2892-9361)

The 1oth annual Game Awards are announced here in LA on December 7th, and while the show has been attracting more viewers than the Oscars since 2018, this year includes another milestone -- the first award for user-generated content on a metaverse platform. Specifically, The Best Fortnite Island of the year, with 10 nominees for community-created islands built in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).

Created and hosted by Geoff Keighley -- who back in the day, worked with me on an editorial project devoted to modding communities in gaming -- it's a great addition to the Game Awards, recognition that UGC/metaverse platforms are a growing force in the game industry as a whole. Hopefully we'll see this become an official category in future Game Awards, across many platforms. (User-made Roblox experiences, I never tire of pointing out, are as popular as many top AAA games, and have become incredibly ambitious in recent years.)

Among the Best Island nominees is one close to my heart: Murder Mystery (Island Code: 8513-2892-9361). It was created by Alliance, a creative studio that's featured in my book for its innovative work creating branded Fortnite experiences for top brands like Doritos and Joe Biden's 2020 Presential campaign. (Seriously.)

Since launching Murder Mystery, Alliance CEO/co-founder Mackenize Jackson (aka MackJack) tells me it's been played over 4 million times in its first two months.

"We hit 1 million players in the first week of release," she tells me. "We’ve had a lot of players engaging with the game, making content, and we’re excited to continue making future content updates on the game!"

As the name suggests, gameplay is highly multiplayer and plot twisty:

With Fortnite OG Attracting 45M Daily Players, Here's a Look At the Platform's Continued Strength as a Metaverse Platform -- And Advice for Brands Interested in Creating Fortnite Experiences

Huge milestone for Fortnite last Saturday:

A little over six years after it launched, battle royale sensation Fortnite just broke its all-time one-day player record — by going back in time. The launch of Fortnite OG, a special season which brings back the game’s original Chapter 1 map, drew an incredible 44.7 million players on Saturday, Nov. 4, who between them racked up 102 million hours of play.

I'm told Fortnite's daily/monthly user numbers have been trending down in recent months, but the clamor to play OG demonstrates the continued strength of the brand. Tens of million of people clearly still have it installed on their devices, or are perfectly willing to re-install, when there's a burst of new content. 

This strength from Fortnite as a consumer brand is echoed by its continued strength as a metaverse platform:

• Roughly fifty-percent of time spent in Fortnite is in creator-made experiences developed by the Fortnite community and third party brands (Epic tells me).
• Nearly 1000 Fortnite Creative user creators are earning a decent part-time ($10K/year or more) or full-time income -- with many earning more than most Epic employees, some more than everyone except Sweeney himself. 

A substantial number of those players who returned to play OG will also go on to explore community/brand-made content. So here's some advice (featured in my book) from Mackenzie and Simon of Alliance, a studio which has created Fortnite experiences for brands like Doritos and, well, Joe Biden's 2020 campaign:

As Epic Lays Off Employees in Metaverse Transition, Nearly 400 Community Creators Earning $100K+/Year from Fortnite Creative. Over 60 Earn Millions.

Infographic via Game Discover

Hard news from Tim Sweeney at Epic:

As we shared earlier, we are laying off around 16% of Epic employees... For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.

While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had when Fortnite Battle Royale took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a major structural change to our economics.

To see the other, more hopeful side of the structural change, take a look at his infographic from analytics firm Game Discover, tracking the size of the Fortnite Creative economy. As you can see above, nearly 400 user creators are now able to earn an annualized income of $100,000 or more, while 61 creators are earning seven figures. On the very high end, five are earning eight figures.

None of this is meant to take away from the pain that Epic's now laid off full-time employees are feeling. (Fortunately Epic is giving them extremely generous exit packages.) Many of them, however, will now probably become Fortnite Creative creators themselves. So we should also note the impressive growth of this grassroots creator economy emerging:

Fortnite Creative Plagued by IP-Violating Maps That Harm Devs Playing by the Rules, Says Top Metaverse Studio Head

At right: Popular Fortnite Creative maps featuring Sponge Bob, Shrek, Minecraft without authorization

Mackenzie Jackson, who leads a top Fortnite Creative development studio that's created Fortnite deployments for Doritos and other top brands, recently posted this viral rant about how companies like hers are having to compete against Creative maps with rampant IP violations. Pleading directly to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney:

We deserve better that this. @TimSweeneyEpic I appreciate the world you have given us with Fortnite. I hold it so close to my heart, but I can’t keep silent on this stuff socially. Internal reporting isn’t working so I’m going public. You take to twitter to advocate for all the wrongdoings of Apple etc. I’m asking you to hear us out too.

Only about 5% of Creative maps include IP violations, MackJack estimates. The problem is that they're unfairly pulling players away from professional studios like hers, and there's no way for them to do anything about it:

"Apparently they will only be removed if the owner of the IP reports it with Epic. Epic wont take any action otherwise," as she puts it to in Discord. "Which just means for those creators following rules and not wanting to risk their reputation they will always be competing against the islands breaking the rules.

"To be candid about it, it has affected my companies finances to the point where it is worth my time to try to reach out to the IPs myself and try to get them to report with Epic. The IP [violating] games are essentially clickbait that is working--driving a high percentage of our player base to maps that are breaking TOS, we are all competing for shares of the engagement. Our maps dropped out of discovery due to it. Effectively killing our player base and our engagement revenue takes an astronomical hit."

Her tweet has been viewed over 100,000 times, pointing from her perspective to a groundswell of anger among Creative developers like her. 

"I can assure you that every dev team has complained at least once," she tells me, laughing without mirth. "Every creator I have talked to is reporting these islands. I just wanted Tim Sweeney to see the communities frustration around it. He tweets about Apple and all those injustices [with App Store fees/policies] and I need him to see his community and do better."

I've reached out to Epic about this and will post any reply I get here. My guess is Epic's hands are somewhat tied by lthe "safe harbor" provision of the US copyright law, but IANAL. I am surprised obvious potential IP violations aren't flagged before a map is published.

Anyway, read MackJack's original tweet below:

Fortnite Becomes Much More of a Metaverse Platform with Unreal Editor Integration, Asset Store, Better Monetization for User Creators

Fortnite in recent years has been the least metaverse-ish of the leading metaverse platforms. While interviewing insiders for my book, my strong sense is that Epic hadn't originally anticipated outside brands considering the platform as a real world application platform, and assumed it would be more akin to a standard modding mode for gamers. And that as a publisher from the traditional AAA game industry, Epic was still holding a tight rein on the platform to protect its brand, even if that meant falling short of the Stephenson ideal.

"It's insane,” as one frustrated community creator puts it to me. “They want to be a part of this Metaverse, but they are limiting what can actually be done. If you're really wanting a true Metaverse, then more brands should be able to be in a space whether [Epic] wants to support it or not."

That all changed this week.

Epic made a series of announcements and updates during GDC 2023 that I'm still combing through, somewhat distracted by Rod Humble's Second Life-but-XXL mic drop.

For one, there's the integration of Unreal with Fortnite (watch above), enabling multi-user, multi-platform live editing. (Question: I wonder if live editing can some day be incorporated into published maps, enabling a creator to alter an experience around its user in real time.)  

And then as mentioned in the video, Epic is launching the Epic equivalent of the Unity Asset Store, called Fab:

 

Despite Widespread Tech Layoffs, Metaverse Platforms Currently Have 800+ Job Openings

With news that Microsoft is shutting down its VR metaverse platform AltspaceVR, along with widespread layoffs across most of the major tech companies, you might assume the Metaverse as an industry is also feeling the string.

Not so much.

On a quick tally of leading metaverse platforms in terms of active users, along with promising metaverse startups I've written about recently, I'm seeing nearly 800 current job openings at minimum. (And by the way, Microsoft and Minecraft developer Mojang still currently have 6 Minecraft-related job openings.) 

Here's links to these job openings available as of today, January 24, 2023:

Roblox, the market leader among metaverse platforms in terms of users, currently has 194 job openings.

Epic Games, developer of Fortnite/Fortnite Creative, currently has 368 job openings.

Rec Room, the most popular metaverse platform among Quest 2 users, currently has 45 job openings.

VRChat, the best next gen metaverse platform, currently has 19 job openings.

Naver Z, developer of mobile metaverse platform Zepeto, currently has 14 job openings.

Lockwood Publishing, the game studio behind Avakin Life, currently has 7 job openings.

Garena, the creator of Freefire, a Fortnite-like metaverse platform that's huge in Asia/South America, currently has 54 job openings.

There's also at least 150 job openings in promising startups featured by New World Notes, including:

Watch: Powerful YouTube Series on People Transformed Through Fortnite Creative

"Created in Fortnite" is a really beautiful and moving YouTube series from Epic Games, mini-documentaries of diverse individuals whose lives have been transformed by becoming builders in Fortnite Creative. Here's one above on GQuanoe, who created the much-shared tribute to MLK's "I have a dream" speech in Fortnite.

Also cool: Grace Lind Hubbell at Epic, who helped put this together (with Victory Pictures), got her start in Teen Second Life. Her avatar name was Lucky Figtree, and she worked on SL-based experiences like Global Kids and Relay for Life back in the day. And now here she is, helping lead a big budget production for Epic Games. In other words: it's a documentary series about people who've been transformed by the Metaverse, told with the help of someone who's been transformed by the Metaverse.

Here's another one featuring Sophieex, a young British mother (sorry, mum!) who became fast friends and Creative collaborator with a New York-based creator called Caiya: