Fortnite and Disney; The summer love story that just won't end

 Coming to a theatre near you!

So we haven't spoken about Fortnite for a hot minute, and that's because nothing has really come out of the "Biggest game in the world"(or, formerly, I guess, now that the age of 'Among Us' is here) since the advent of Chapter 2. Oh who am I kidding, tons has happened in Fortnite but it's all just been so far afield of the game that I used to casually play that it seems just wrong for me to try and immerse myself in this title that has been pushed so far outside my demographic. What started as a fun Battle Royale title has morphed into the early stages of this virtual social platform/ jack of all trades/ official Disney Marketing blimp which, on my more neurotic days, just shimmers with an air of 'Soulless machine' more than anything else. I mean, if Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about trying to save oneself from a world built and paid for by the cynical profit margins of shady megacorporations, than Fortnite is perhaps the exact opposite of surrendering yourself to them happily and engaging in their most intimate spaces. When you see all those mindless automatons in their 'happy state' with the VR pods, imagine Fortnite within their headset world and see how well the image fits.

But the good fortunes of the Fortnite creators mustn't be forgotten or diminished, because they have reached that golden level of pop-culture relevancy where their very name carries universal definition. Just like Minecraft, GTA or Call of Duty, no one is ever under any delusions about what you mean when Fortnite is bought into the conversation, and if the longevity of those other titles is anything to go by, I guess that means Fortnite is around to stay. (If you ever had any doubts about that.) One of the most transparent ways through which this fact has become obvious is in the way that the old guards of Entertainment have found themselves coming around to it's shores, like the music industry through Travis Scott and Marshmello. But perhaps the oldest of the giants who has settled themselves firmly with the Fortnite Kingdom is no longer than the sleeping beast of Disney, and that is a relationship that just fascinates me.

I hardly need to tell you, with it happening in one of the biggest movies of all time, but perhaps the first time there was any indication this fancy wasn't just passing and it would hold, it would have to be the scene in Avengers Endgame which featured Fortnite. How incredible, for a non-stock-composite game to feature in the highest grossing movie of all time; I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during that conference call. (Which windowless room full of stuffy executives erupted with more excitement over the prospect? I genuinely can't decide.) And as if that wasn't enough, Fortnite themselves held Avengers themed events over the release of the two movies which was a close enough marketing tie to actually warrant the use of Thanos in their game, even when Thanos was at the height of the storytelling! (Note how remarkable this is because old school marketing heads generally hate having their characters portrayed anywhere else simultaneously because they're all so far out of touch it isn't even funny.)

However, since those crazy times the Marvel Cinematic Universal has wound itself down for a while in order to give everyone a sufficient enough break not to become too sick with Marvel movies and you'd be forgiven for expecting Fortnite's collaboration with Disney properties to do the same, except nope. Fortnite manged to team up with Disney again for a 'Star Wars The Last Jedi' celebration, proving that theirs is a love written in the stars. If things progress like this it won't be long before all these big clueless companies begin looking about Fortnite as the 'front page' of gaming (provided that they don't already) and flood the game with their offers. Of course, in such a situation I'd imagine the buck would fall with Disney and how they feel about the prospect of open relationships, but I'm sure Fortnite will always find room for everyone else somewhere in their vacuous maw.

What really drove me to make this blog was actually something that happened really recently with Fortnite, in relation to the sort of events they were conducting in the here and now. Right in the middle of this new Galactus themed Fortnite story arc (yet again, Marvel is more active in Fortnite than in the movie world right now) they launched an initiative involving 'Hunters' and a collection of really enticing looking skins and such. At the head of all these, however, is a face that should be familair to anyone who's had interest in Disney of late, because it's the actual Mandalorian. That's right! The Mandolarian, or Din 'no one cares we're calling him Mando anyway' Djarin, and Baby Yoda, or I-refuse-to-call-him-that, have come to the world of Fortnite and it's their Season 2 iterations to top it off. (You can tell by the Mudhorn emblazoned on Mando's shoulder) And I for one am struggling to put my indignation into words.

"'Indignation', you say?" Why yes I do, because bare in mind, dear reader, that these are the single most popular characters to come to the Star Wars world since... Well, Ashoka Tano. These are literal super stars in the Star Wars landscape, and yet their first (and so far only) foray into the world of gaming hasn't been through a tie-in to an official Star Wars game, but through a Fortnite brand deal! Their first game! I honestly thought that Battlefront would get in on the action back when the first series was still around, but at that stage the team were busy wrapping things up in terms of new content so they couldn't quite manage it. Instead the golden goose of Fortnite gets to lay the golden egg and have Mando themed content installed, and I'm starting to worry that this might be a prelude to the sort of direction that Disney is heading in when it comes to the licencing of their ludicrously valuable properties.

Most in gaming remember how Disney squeezed themselves out of the gaming market after their own inhouse studios couldn't manage to score a decent hit, and since then they've had to make do with licencing out their games. Most contentious of which was the decision to licence exclusively to EA for what feels like ever, but their other titles have been around the place. Square Enix, through Kingdom Hearts, still has access to Disney original content, but that may be starting to change all because of a little game called Avengers. Now bear in mind that this is just my personal interpretation of Disney's actions, but I think I've got a decent grip of things. So Disney, recognising the great relationship they share with Square, probably thought it safe now to start diversifying their marketing through the game industry and thus authorised a persistent platform for Marvel marketing through 'Avengers', a game that was destined to do well because of the attached name. Yet now that things have gone the other way and Square's Avengers has not only failed to cement itself in pop culture but also hasn't managed to generate a profit yet; (as of the making of this blog) that is seriously going to shake Disney's confidence. My suspicion is that their relationship with the tried and true Epic games is only going to grow as Disney leans on them more and more, and in doing so we'll start to see ever less of our favourite, now Disney owned, franchises in the gaming world. The name is just too big to risk failure now.

Maybe just seeing the Mandalorian pimped out in this unceremonious attempt to sell battle passes is what's standing out to me here. There seems to be a lot of dignity imbued in him that's hard to play out on the stage of Fortnite, and that might be my own bias speaking but I believe it none the less. As a lifelong Star Wars fan it's no surprise that all I really want is a space to live out my Scoundrel fantasies, and Fortnite just doesn't really pull that off me, so I guess fans like me are SOL for this new phase of Disney property management. Only Spiderman is really safe to still make it to imaginative and risk-taking game fronts because that's lucky enough to have Sony backing, who's to say what the future holds for Star Wars. I'd imagine, however, that given the strength of their partnership, Fortnite's going to be taking a lot of Disney's gaming firsts for the forseeable future.