kottke.org posts about fortnite
In just a few days (Dec 5), the entirety of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill duology will be released in theaters as one four-hour-long film. Here’s the trailer:
Quentin Tarantino’s KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR unites Volume 1 and Volume 2 into a single, unrated epic—presented exactly as he intended, complete with a new, never-before-seen anime sequence.
And there will be an intermission. I haven’t seen KB in awhile and am looking forward to this.
Oh, and QT has a Kill Bill collab with Fortnite? Apparently in the original script, there was a scene where Yuki Yubari (Gogo Yubari’s twin sister) tries to get revenge on Kiddo, but it was cut because the director deemed it “too much to chew” for one shoot. Using Unreal Engine 5, Fortnite characters, and a motion-captured Uma Thurman, Tarantino has finally made the scene a reality. You can find it in the game or watch it on YouTube:
Speaking of Daft Punk, did you know they released some new music recently? Ok well, that’s not quiiiite true, but in late September, Epic launched the Daft Punk Experience in Fortnite and IMO it’s a) extremely cool, nd b) should be considered a part of the group’s official discography.
For a taste of what it’s like, here’s the seven-minute intro to the experience:
I watched this live when it launched, on a big TV and with the sound turned up, and it was awesome. Again, no new music, but definitely a new music video experience.
During the intro, you can control your player slightly but the game mostly moves you through it. After you’re inside the pyramid though, there’s a lot to do. The main event is a concert playing some of the songs from their Alive 2007 tour; here’s what that looks like from start to finish (33 min):
You can move freely around and dance, including with other players who are in the pyramid with you. During some songs, you can bounce really high on the dance floor or fly around the room.
Off of the main pyramid are four smaller interactive rooms (in order of coolness):
- Dream Chamber Studios: You can choose from almost two dozen Daft Punk songs and mix them together, adjust tempos, etc. This room alone makes the whole experience worthwhile…it’s the easiest way to create DP remixes.
- Around the World. You and up to three other players work to recreate and then customize the iconic Around the World music video. Oh, and you’re all Lego characters.
- Daft Club: Dance to music from Random Access Memories. (You can see the full Daft Club sequence in the latter part of this video.)
- Robot Rock Arena: You and some teammates join forces to defeat robots using musical weapons.
In all, that’s six new interactive audiovisual experiences from Daft Punk, featuring 31 songs from their discography. It’s huge.
The easiest way to see/experience all of this is to play the game…the Daft Punk Experience is still playable afaik. Fortnite is a free download and the DPE is free as well. If you’re a Daft Punk fan, it’s worth checking out for sure.
Nearly everything about Fortnite’s popular Battle Royale mode is geared towards creating conflict between its players. In this episode of Pop Culture Detective, Jonathan McIntosh explores whether you can be a pacifist in a virtual world filled with war and, beyond that, whether you can make friends with your fiercest enemy. As a Fortnite player who has qualms about even the cartoony violence in the game, I loved this video. It reminded me of Robin Sloan’s piece in the Atlantic from 2018: I Played Fortnite and Figured Out the Universe.
When they’re successful, these negotiations are honestly more nervy and exciting than the game’s most intense shoot-outs. I’m not the only one who thinks so. In forums dedicated to Fortnite Battle Royale, some players share clips of chance alliances, and others reply glumly: “Super rare to find someone [who] won’t shoot you when you emote.” I dream of a Political Fortnite in which victory goes not to the twitchiest sniper but the most charismatic organizer, with factions forming and dissolving… I imagine the fear and thrill of seeing not one but a dozen tiny silhouettes on the far ridge-a war band sweeping fast down the hillside. I’m outnumbered; can I convince them to let me join them?
(thx, andy)
This was me a couple of years ago when I first started playing Fortnite, as satirized by Adam Driver and the SNL gang:
I found this sketch via a piece that Tom Vanderbilt wrote about playing Fortnite with his daughter (and her friends).
It’s not as though Sylvie and I discussed the problem of free will as we dodged RPG rounds. For the most part, our interactions weren’t nearly so high-minded. We stole each other’s kills and squabbled over loot. She badgered me for V-Bucks so she could buy her character new baubles in the Item Shop. But sometimes, after playing, we’d go for a walk and analyze how we were able to notch a dub — Fortnite-speak for a win — or how we might have done better. We’d assess the quality of newly introduced weapons. (The best were OP, for “overpowering,” but often the makers of Fortnite would later “nerf” them for being too OP.) She’d chide me for trying to improve by battling more, rather than by practicing in Creative mode — which suddenly made her open to hearing about the late Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson’s theories of “deliberate practice.” (Like many kids, she had a built-in filter against my teachable moments.) We actually were, per Adam Driver’s character, bonding.
And in our Fortnite games I saw her cultivate prowess. I’m not talking merely about the widely discussed perceptual and cognitive benefits of video games, which include an improved ability to track objects in space and tune out cognitive “distractors.” I’m talking about that suite of abilities sometimes referred to as “21st-century skills”: imaginatively solving open-ended problems, working collaboratively in teams, synthesizing complex information streams. “Unfortunately, in most formal education settings, we’re not emphasizing those very much,” argues Eric Klopfer, who directs the Education Arcade at MIT. “Just playing Fortnite doesn’t necessarily give you those skills — but playing Fortnite in the right way, with the right people, is certainly a good step in that direction.”
This is the plain and perhaps embarrassing truth: During my sabbatical, I didn’t pursue any activity (with the possible exception of mountain biking) as diligently as I did playing Fortnite. My kids have been playing it for awhile, both together and separately, and it was fun to watch them working together to complete quests and sometimes even win. I tried playing with them a few times the previous year, but the last shooter game I played was Quake III in the late 90s and so I was comically bad, running around firing my weapon into the sky or the ground and generally just embarrassing my kids, who left my reboot card where it landed after I’d died more often than not.
Early last year, even before I left on my sabbatical, I decided I wanted to learn how to play properly, so that I could do something with my kids on their turf. I played mostly by myself at first — and poorly. Slowly I figured out the rules of the game and how to move and shoot. I played online with my friend David, who was forgiving of my deficiencies, and we caught up while he explained how the game worked and we explored the island together. I finally got a kill and a win, in the same match — I’d found a good hiding place in a bush and then emerged when it was down to me and some other hapless fool (who was probably 8 years old or a bot) and I somehow got them. A friend who had arrived for dinner mid-game was very surprised when I started yelling my head off and running around the house.
Over the summer after I started the sabbatical, I played most days for at least 30 minutes. I got better and was having more fun. I won some matches and bought the Battle Pass so I could get some different skins and emotes. Even though I got a late start in the season, I grinded on quests to get the Darth Vader skin, which is amusing to wear while you’re trying out different emotes. (You haven’t lived until you’ve watched Vader do the death drop or dance to My Money Don’t Jiggle Jiggle, It Folds.1) When the kids got back from camp, I was good enough to at least not slow them down too much and get a couple of kills in the meantime. I learned the lingo and how to work as a team, with my kids leading the way.1 I’m still not great, but it’s become one of our favorite things to do together and I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
Incredibly (I guess), I’ve never played Fortnite. I have however been paying some attention to the game / platform, but it still surprised me to see that the prizes totaled an impressive $30 million! Held over three days this past weekend, the competition was hosted at the Arthur Ashe Stadium, home of the US Open of tennis, which is certainly an interesting image for the debate around the use of “sport” in “e-sports.” It was also more than a tournament.
But the World Cup was also home to a miniature Fortnite amusement park, a Marshmello concert, a tease of the game’s upcoming10th season, and multiple moments that blurred the line between the game and the real world. It was a chance for Epic to show off just how big Fortnite really is.
Player-fans, many of whom were attending as families, could meet mascots, speak with stars of the game, or visit and play multiple attractions. It was pretty much a small scale theme park, and of course there was lots and lots of buying of branded products.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the World Cup was how it blurred the line between the real world and the digital universe Epic has created. Not only did locations and characters from the game make their way IRL, but so did the Battle Pass. Just like in the game, fans were encouraged to complete multiple tasks each day (in this case, that meant visiting attractions) in order to earn rewards including a physical V-Bucks coin.
More than 40 million people played in the 10 weeks of qualifiers, the oldest player in the final lineup was 24 (!!), and the winning duo won a $3 million grand prize. I feel old.
Perhaps more my beat than actually playing the game, have a look at this fascinating dive into the world of Fortnite, which debunks four hypes about the game, then considers Epic’s (makers of the game) situation and prospectives. The article then really gets interesting when the author starts looking at the use of the game as a public square, the time spent there, and how it could be / is used as a platform. Ball also writes about the founder, Tim Sweeney, and what he is planning for the cloud, a marketplace, and his long time obsession with the “Metaverse.” Imagine something like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and a platform vision which might face off with Zuckerberg’s similar(ish) ideas for Oculus.
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