Editorial: Could Fortnite Become the Next Second Life? A First Look at Fortnite Party Royale

I am not a gamer. The only possible exception to this ironclad rule are puzzle games, such as Cyan’s Myst, Riven, and Obduction, and the truly wonderful Eastshade).

I’m simply not that interested in most shoot-em-up, combat-and-killing-focused games and MMOs (although I did get as far as level 20 in Lord of the Rings Online, only because I am such a Lord of the Rings fan).

To give you one example, I succumbed to peer pressure when No Man’s Sky released a VR-compatible update, and I bought the game. I think I played No Man’s Sky a grand total of three hours, maximum, and that was in desktop mode! Since then, it has been quietly gathering dust in a corner of my hard drive.

So I came to Fortnite as a clueless newbie with pretty much zero previous computer game experience.

I have written about the phenomenally successful battle royale game of Fortnite several times on my blog already. I blogged about Marshmello’s concert in Fortnite back in February 2019, and in November of that year, I even went so far as to actually download and install Fortnite on my computer, just so I could visit, explore, and report on the groundbreaking decision by the Royal Canadian Legion (Canada’s military veterans’ association) to create a custom-built Remembrance Island within Fortnite to celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11th (which I blogged about here and here). I thought it was such a cool way to reach out to an audience that the Legion probably would have otherwise had difficulty connecting with (namely, children and teenagers).

I then promptly uninstalled the game and pretty much forgot about it.

Oh, and I also reported on Tim Sweeney’s SIGGRAPH talk in July of 2019, in which the founder and CEO of Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, mused about the future of the metaverse. At that time, I wrote:

I must confess that…I am rather skeptical that Fortnite, as it is right now, would form a useful model for the future metaverse. Games are designed to be focused more on linear play-through and set objectives, while virtual worlds are meant to be more open-ended and less goal-oriented in nature (although you can certainly have games within virtual worlds). As well, you can have thriving social communities in MMOs like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, so there is a somewhat fuzzy boundary between games and virtual worlds.

Well, today I am going to eat those words.

I have decided to start covering Fortnite on this blog. Why? Well, it’s because of something new in Fortnite, called Party Royale: an open-ended, non-combat extension of the game.

Marshall Honorof of the blog Tom’s Guide writes:

Party Royale went live in Fortnite on April 29th, 2020 as part of the game’s most recent update. The mode has no weapons and no crafting — the two hallmarks, one would think, of the Fortnite experience. Instead, an in-game message invites players to “hang out with friends, play games, perfect your skydive and more.” Also noteworthy: Unlike normal Fortnite games, Party Royale mode is not limited to 100 players.

Here’s the slickly-produced official trailer for Fortnite Battle Royale:

On May 8th, 2020, Fortnite held its first big event in Party Royale, dubbed the Fortnite Party Royale Premiere: an epic concert featuring not just one, but three top-tier, internationally-known DJs: Deadmau5, Steve Aoki and Dillon Francis. I’ll be writing more about that in another blogpost later, but if (like me) you missed all the fuss, here’s a replay of the one-hour event:

And you can bet that Epic Games has been busily signing deals with the representatives of various big-name musical performers for future concerts to be held in Fortnite Party Royale. They’re only just getting started.

And their reach (over 250 million Fortnite players as of March 2019) means that they have a huge potential audience for those future concerts, 85% of whom are aged 18 to 34—a highly-desired advertising target market that makes corporations salivate, and which is significantly younger than the userbase of more established virtual worlds like Second Life:

So, it’s time to firmly put Fortnite on my radar.

I am adding Fortnite Party Royale to my List of Non-Combat, Open-World Exploration/Puzzle/Life Simulation Games, instead of my much longer Comprehensive List of Social VR Platforms and Virtual Worlds, because it seems to fit in bettter among the games on the first list. However, you could argue that Fortnite Battle Royale is the first tentative step for Epic Games to expand Fornite from just a game to a full-blown, open-ended virtual world like Second Life.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Forbes reporter Paul Tassi is convinced that Fortnite will indeed become the next Second Life. In a recent artcle titled ‘Fortnite’ Party Royale Will Become ‘Second Life’ On Its Way To Being The Metaverse, he writes:

Last night I attended yet another concert in Fortnite’s Party Royale mode, the combat-free zone where everyone just hangs out and doesn’t kill each other. It’s a small island and an early experiment, and yet as I witnessed live sets performed by Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki and deadmau5, all world-famous DJs, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was yet again witnessing something pretty significant and incredible.

I’ve talked a lot about the Metaverse with Fortnite, the grand virtual world that may end up replacing the internet someday, and in fiction, often appears in immersive VR form, and is full of brands and companies vying for their place among users. And you can definitely feel a significant step in that direction from Fortnite, especially last night as I, controlling X-Men’s Psylocke as my Avatar, danced with John Wick and Harley Quinn and dozens of other player avatars during the hour-long show.

When I posted the clips online, many of my followers remarked that this looked like Second Life, and honestly, while the Metaverse is still ages away in its “true” form, it does feel like Fortnite is gearing up to start with something more akin to Second Life or PlayStation Home instead.

Paul continues:

Second Life operates as a virtual world where players are not killing each other, but rather building homes, trading goods and services with each other, and attending events (Second Life was doing concerts a decade before Fortnite).

Now, it seems like Fortnite is on that path, but in a more attractive package. These days screenshots of Second Life unintentionally make it look like some sort of porn sim (though plenty of naughty stuff can and does happen in Second Life), while Fortnite’s Pixar-like animation and brand deals with Marvel, DC, Star Wars and more are combining different intellectual properties in one place in a way that no other game has before in a better-looking world.

Fortnite has pretty much all the pieces it needs for its own version of Second Life. With Party Royale, it has a combat-free hub where you can’t destroy anything and you just hang out playing minigames and attending events. With Fortnite Creative, you have an infinite hub of user-generated content that could be used to populate expansions to that initial world.

Combine those two together, and what do you have? Really, all the building blocks you need for a virtual world in the Unreal engine. How long until Epic starts letting players build their own houses in an expanding Party Royale zone? How long until creators can sell their custom works to other players, creating an in-game economy? My guess for both, not long.

Second Life had better be looking over their shoulder. A new competitor has appeared in the race. And they have deep pockets: Epic Games made a profit of $3 billion over 2018 (source). Fortnite has the potential to steamroller over Second Life, particularly as SL’s significantly older user base begins to decline. And you can bet the youngsters are flocking to Fortnite and other games in droves. While Second Life still has its relatively small but intensely passionate fan base, it is widely seen as outdated, faintly quaint technology among the general public (remember this recent article in The Atlantic magazine?). That’s why Linden Lab embarked on the ultimately disastrous Sansar project in the first place; they knew that Second Life could only be extended so far, and they could see that the writing was on the wall.

Marshall Honorof of Tom’s Guide (link up top) summarizes the potential impact of Fortnite Battle Royale quite nicely:

What’s interesting about Party Royale mode is not necessarily the feature itself, but that Fortnite is beginning to establish itself as a digital alternative to the “third place”: a location where people feel at home that isn’t their house, or their office. For a lot of people, this is often a bar, or a gym, or a coffee shop — places where it’s basically impossible to go right now. Party Royale could encourage people to mingle digitally in the long run, or it could just be a stopgap until things get back to normal in the physical world. We’ll know for sure in (hopefully) a few months.

The line between what is a virtual world and what is a game has always been a somewhat blurry one. For example, virtual worlds such as Second Life have always been home to games, for example, But the launch of Party Royale in Fortnite is the clearest signal yet that the game companies want to move into the open-ended virtual worlds market, too. The game companies might not actually refer to them as “virtual worlds”, but that is essentially what they are.

So, last night, I went and reinstalled Fortnite on my personal computer. Things are about to get very, very interesting, and I want to be there when it happens! And expect expanded coverage of Fortnite Party Royale on this blog in the future.