Extra Credits
Уровень B2· 878 слов
A few years ago, millions of people logged into Fortnite and went to a concert. And not in the like watch a live stream on an in-game monitor sense.
They went to the concert. Their avatars stood together in a giant surreal dreamscape while Ariana Grande performed overhead like some kind of impossible theme park attraction. Heck, I was one of those avatars and the experience was so surprising to me, I ended up writing a whole episode about it. You can check
that out here. Now, I imagine for younger players, none of this felt strange. Of course Fortnite hosts concerts. Where you been, Unc? But for a lot of other people, especially non-gamers, moments like these were when Fortnite stopped looking like a video game and started looking like a place.
And that's why our studio director Jeff wasn't especially surprised when he heard a juicy rumor that to me at first sounded a little bit wild. Disney might buy Epic Games. But that's crazy, right?
I mean, what would the house of the mouse even do with Fortnite that they haven't already done? Give Spider-Man two machine guns? But then we dug in a bit and oh boy, turns out it's not just about Disney or Epic, but rather a different company they're actually competing with who is an existential threat to Disney's
core audience. Yeah, turns out this tale is full of fascinating facets, big and small, that all led us to one inevitable conclusion. I don't like it, but I'm calling it now. Disney will in fact try to buy Epic. Don't believe me? That's okay. Would you mind checking back in about 13 minutes?
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So, this exploration into predictive mergers actually started as a design club episode where Will and Jeff deep dove into this for an hour and a half.
And I would urge you to check that out after this episode for additional info, nuance, and Will's patented anti-corpo fire. Yeah, And on that note, let's have a moment of clarity right up top. Just because we think this is going to happen does not mean we think it should happen.
I personally believe the level of consolidation we are seeing today in media is one of the most poisonous things to video games as a whole. Oh, and if I had my druthers, I would go full necromancer, dig up Roosevelt, and let zombie Teddy trust bust the heck out of this monopolistic hellscape. But,
sadly, that isn't the world in, and my wand is in the shop. So, since my fanfic of vengeance will not come to fruition, let me set the real world stage instead.
When most people think about Disney competitors, they think about companies that also make movies and television.
