A few weeks ago, I went to a Fortnite event where developer-publisher Epic Games unveiled its plan for the near future of its game: a Lego survival game, a racing game, and a music game à la Rock Band and Fuser. This is on top of the toolset allowing anyone to make and publish their own games within Fortnite.

The whole thing was kind of weird.

Not that any of the experiences are bad – the Lego thing is super not for me, but I really like the racing game (made by Psyonix, developer of Rocket League), and I think the music element has the potential to become something interesting down the road. 

I’m just not so sure Epic’s utopian vision of Fortnite as this everything app makes sense. I agree with the idea that Fortnite is a great social tool – but only in the way most online video games can be great social tools. However, if my friends stopped playing Fortnite tomorrow in favor of, say, Call of Duty, I’d never play Fortnite again. It’s simply the loose glue that holds us together. We certainly aren’t seeking out Fortnite for thousands of different experiences – we just want the mindless shooter that allows us to hang out and talk. And thus far, Epic’s curation of user-created content on the Fortnite homepage does little to inspire confidence – it’s full of copyright infringement and mobile game ripoffs, and I don’t really want any part of it. 

That said, I’m happy to be proved wrong – Roblox has certainly proven out this particular model, and even though it wasn’t much of a success, I adore Dreams, which has a similar concept. And numbers speak louder than under-paid game journalists. Fortnite is undeniably one of the biggest games on the planet, so it has the user base to pull something like this off in a way Dreams never did. Epic’s pitch is an admirable one – inspire anyone to create whatever they want and publish it within the Fortnite ecosystem. It’s also acquiring fantastic studios to make high-end games for Fortnite (which I also don’t love because Epic still lays off hundreds of people despite its success). Epic, in its hunt to make the metaverse, has also signed deals with dozens of IP across film, games, and so on, creating a mess of intellectual property – everyone knows that for more than a few dollars, you can play Fortnite as your favorite character from your favorite whatever. So, who knows? Maybe this whole thing is building up to Epic’s grand utopian vision of a game full of thousands of other games where the entire world is brought together.

I bring all this up to highlight my thoughts going into my single interview of the day. I talked with Alex Rigopolous, the founder and head of Harmonix, creator of Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and most recently, Fortnite’s new music mode, Fortnite Festival, about what exactly a studio under Epic is doing to support Epic’s vision. We only had 20 minutes to chat, so it didn’t get as in-depth as I wanted, but I always enjoy talking with Rigopolous; I love Harmonix and want to see it succeed, and I think there’s a lot of promise with its music modes in Fortnite – especially once plastic instrument peripheral support is added. I wish them luck.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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