So... Travis Scott Held a Concert on Fortnite
I say social media, you say Facebook or Instagram. These are the social networks of the past decade. There is a new era of social networks beginning to emerge: Clubhouse, TikTok, and Byte to name a few. One, in particular, has caught my eye. Well, it's not a company, but a category: video games.
Most of my writing focuses on how people and, to some extent, brands can stay top of mind. When a platform becomes a ground for attention, it's certain that people and brands will begin to figure out ways to monetize or in the words of Tim Wu, "harvest the platform." This is beginning to happen at scale for virtual worlds and video games.
Let me start at the beginning. Video games have been around since the early 70s with games such as Pong and Space Invaders. Pong sold over 19,000 units in its first year and Space Invaders did even better, generating revenue of $3B by 1982. This clearly showed that video games weren’t just a fad, but a rising form of entertainment that would soon begin consuming our lives.
As the internet began to emerge, there was a new era of games called massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) games. These were games you'd play with your friends online. Sometimes this was done through something called a LAN party, a way to connect gamers through a local area network. Other times this was done over the internet. Games like Starcraft and World of Warcraft were PC games where you could battle online. Some of these people, who you never met in person would become your good friends and you played with them online for hours (I am familiar with it because I was one of them). The games even had their own economy. You could use the in-game currency from playing to buy virtual goods. Some people were so invested in the game that they would use real money to purchase virtual goods from websites like eBay. This generated over $15B in revenue in 2015.
PC games weren’t the only popular form of gaming. Companies such as Sony and Microsoft were building platforms like Playstation and Xbox, which sold millions of units. The immense success of these consoles spawned their own social networks with Xbox Live and Playstation Network. In 2006 a company called Twitch started that changed the video game industry forever. People began to livestream, and video games became a social activity on the internet where streamers could interact with their fans. Influencers started to emerge, and people were making money playing video games. Gone were the days where your parents would say, "Stop playing video games and get a real job." Presently, gamers like Ninja are making $500,000 a month (mostly due to streaming on YouTube and Twitch). It was inevitable that video games would become mainstream, not just for the fascination of a large minority of people globally.
Then the pandemic hit and something interesting happened. People couldn't socialize outside their homes. Video games started to become not only places for people to play together, but hang out together. This brings me to the title of this essay; Travis Scott held a 10-minute concert on Fortnite viewed live by over 12 million people. A few days later there was a Diplo performance in the game which appeared to be a success, but metrics weren’t released publicly. This wasn’t the first time Fortnite did this. Last year, they held a concert with Marshmellow that had over 10 million attendees live watching the concert. The sheer scale of this is amazing and shows the emerging potential of these platforms.
Fortnite isn’t the only game where this is occurring, Animal Crossing is another one. Gary Whitta, the screenwriter for Star Wars: Rogue One, started a talk show on the game. Yes, you read that correctly. A talk show! He has already had celebrities such as Naomi Kyle on the show. The first show had over 12,000 people watching it live.
Coronavirus has accelerated the transformation to a digital world. Video games are one of the beneficiaries of this trend. When you start thinking about how to build your brand, it's important to not just look at today's platform, but tomorrow's, as well, starting with video games. What began as a way for people to entertain themselves is becoming a playing field that brands across the world will be using to assert their dominance. This is similar to what platforms like YouTube and Twitter have done today. Perhaps you can jump ahead of them and get started now. What's stopping you?