James Whitbrook
Few “live-service” games can pull off a communal live event like Fortnite can. Over the years tens upon tens of millions of players have jumped in to watch concerts, see J.J. Abrams debut Star Wars footage and have Emperor Palpatine Canonically Chat Shit in Fortnite, watch movies, or even kick off new seasons by having Galactus himself eat the world. So suffice to say, the thought of Disney and Epic Games showing off the fruits of the former’s $1.5 billion investment in the latter at D23 this past weekend carried a certain level of expectation. Instead, what fans got was a whole lot of waiting for things they basically knew were coming already.
This past Saturday night, Epic and Disney touted that players could jump into a specially-created island in Fortnite to tune into the Disney Horizons panel at D23, which promised both updates on Disney’s theme parks as well as the first official details about Disney’s investment in Epic. Announced back in February, the deal involved not just the billion-and-a-half-dollar stake, but plans to create “an all-new games and entertainment universe that will further expand the reach of beloved Disney stories and experiences.” What that actually amounted to was a virtual recreation of the Honda Center in Anaheim, California—bedecked with giant models of The Mandalorian‘s Din Djarin and Spider-Man on either side of a waiting screen, playing trailers for previous Disney-affiliated Fortnite crossovers on loop.
And it was a lot of waiting. Doors opened on the “experience” an hour ahead of when both Disney and Epic had expected the D23 panel to get to Fortnite-relevant news, but as the panel itself was more musical number than news event, it kept getting pushed back. What could players do in the mean time? Dance, mostly. Emoting repeatedly raised a community “cheer bar” which, the further it filled up, caused non-player avatars in the sea of crowds below the player area to light up and dance. There were collectible coins dotted around the arena to collect, mostly for experience towards your battle pass progress for the season. You could sit in a seat, if you wanted an unfiltered view of what was, for over an hour, mostly a blank screen or trailers you could watch on YouTube.
By the time it actually came for the livestream to begin, things were pretty abrupt. According to the panel’s host, Disney Parks and Products Chief Josh D’Amaro, over a million people were watching along live in Fortnite (Disney would later confirm it was around 1.2 million). Those dire numbers compared to prior live events like Galactus destroying the island at the end of end of Chapter 2 in 2020 (approximately 15.3 million), or the in-game Travis Scott and Marshmello concerts before that (roughly 12.3 and 10.7 million, respectively), but part of the appeal of Fortnite‘s in-game events is the actual act of play around it—players are actually able to tangibly interact with and see impact on the game they play as part of these things, and what makes them huge draws in the first place.
Dropping in to watch people in casual business attire announce a series of crossover skins is a lot less exciting than a music concert or the status quo of the entire game being munched on by a giant planet-eater. And yet, that’s what D23 was, for the most part. As soon as the Fortnite announcements were over—crossover skins for Disney Villains, The Incredibles, and The Mandalorian, as well as the first trailer for Fortnite‘s new Marvel-themed season, “Absolute Doom”—the video display abruptly shut off, lest anyone outside the Honda Center dare experience a Disney Parks-related announcement in real time.
It’s no surprise really that the event was perhaps more brazenly corporate-minded than anything else: it’s just kind of what Fortnite is now, a “metaverse” as an excuse to overload its original content with an ocean of IP crossovers. The last time Fortnite had an entire season dedicated to a crossover collaboration it was like nothing the game had done before, now a Marvel season is simply more of the same. But as an early window into just what to expect from Disney’s latest foray into trying to make its properties stick in the world of video games, lining up Lucasfilm’s Dave Filoni, Disney Animation’s Jennifer Lee, Pixar’s Pete Docter, and Marvel’s Kevin Feige to announce Fortnite skins was not exactly a culture-shattering moment.
Of course, there’ll be more to come from the deal. Several of the Disney team on stage stressed that this was still all being worked on in early stages. The most tangible non-Fortnite element of the deal revealed this weekend was Lucasfilm’s continued work with Epic’s Unreal Engine to develop a new Mandalorian-themed ride update for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, but even that iterated on things the two companies were already doing.
Perhaps more of the same is a reflection on Disney and Epic’s current ambitions in equal measure, but you would’ve hoped that two of the biggest companies in entertainment working together in earnest could’ve kicked off things with a bit more pizazz. Alas, all that remained was an empty digital theater, filled with the bodies of aimlessly cheering NPCs, coins to collect, and the promise of skins to buy in the future as you quietly emoted to keep the cheer bar going.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.