fortnite aspen
Tim Sweeney is really, REALLY into that whole Metaverse thing, although he apparently thinks some companies have the completely wrong idea about how it should work. But he’s not letting how other companies are approaching the concept get in the way of what he believes it should be. Like everything else he’s done at Epic Games, he’s forging ahead on his vision. In this case, that means giving people a chance to build their own businesses in and around Fortnite using the Unreal Editor for Fortnite. (That’s a roundabout way of saying Epic Games is releasing the program into the wild for people to make use of.)
The idea is that with Unreal Editor for Fortnite, creators will be able to use the game like someone might be able to use the App Store or Steam and share a product with people through it. Epic plans to build an economy that will support creators through the game and generate profit from people playing around with that content. PC Gamer compared it to Roblox – which is a pretty apt comparison that a lot of people could relate to, although, we’d like to point out that Second Life’s had this whole "metaverse, selling products to people through a game for profit" thing down for a while. Although, that is a bit less kid friendly and we all know companies what that sweet kid-related cash flow.
As with a lot of things game developers talk about, Epic’s plans for turning Fortnite into a metaverse haven't been 100% defined. For instance, Sweeney discusses creators being able to build a business around Forntite, but not how they will compensate creators. Part of that may have to do with the fact that the metaverse itself is still being hashed out by those trying to define it in a way that makes it useful to their companies. As Sweeney noted, the whole metaverse thing is pretty “over-hyped right now”. He also thinks we have to wait for a system to be put in place where it’s more freely available to people without a major company or government dictating the rules. Of course, that means there’s a pretty good chance we may never see the metaverse as Sweeney is envisioning.
In this article: Fortnite, Epic Games.
