Epic’s Long Play to Become a Hub is Epic

Cosa Nostradamus
3 min readDec 19, 2023

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(The Verge)

check that Microsoft OneNote…

Fortnite’s long-game: the original story crafter Colonel Mustard (aka Donald Mustard) has had this in the making for 6+ years, starting with this diagram.

What you see in Fornite’s latest releases is the vision actualized.

Releases that officially turned Epic from only Battle Royale into a “hub”

  • Lego
  • Racing Mode
  • Music Mode
  • No-Build Mode

Player Onboarding journey is perfect: Instead of downloading a whole new game, you just select a tile from the Fortnite menu the same way you would when you hop into battle royale. This frictionless experience is the platform’s network effect competitive advantage at work over insurgents pumping new games onto the market without an audience base ready to consume.

They know their audience: I think of Fortnite’s audience as greatly different from Activision’s Call of Duty and FIFA types. While Call of Duty and FIFA players run on adrenaline, gambling odds, and optimizing for battles, Fortnite is cultivating a social platform.

Fortnite players are curious learners and socialistas. Creating a hub that broadens the entertainment experience they can achieve within the Fortnite universe. This attention has been earned by delivering a superior world that’s enjoyable to inhabit, more than other games.

For instance, Fortnite’s gameplay rewards self-improvement behavior by teaching you exactly how to improve through skillmaps (pictured above), and incentivizing players to invest in and develop their characters in the right ways.

Epic becoming a hub is what the game allows, and what the players want, rather than a forced expansion. The reaction on Twitter speaks for itself.

Metaverse Implications Lego Crossplay: small step forward in metaverse ambitions

  • Epic says that, right now, more than 1,200 Fortnite skins have a Lego variant available (with some offering a higher level of detail), so players can take their favorite outfits across these experiences.

“The minifigs that we’re showing, and the idea that you can be different people in the metaverse, is really important to us.” — Persson, Epic VP

  • This is basically signaling they are testing their engine ability plus willingness of fortnite players to not dropoff between universes, and buy into crossworlds; if this is successful, expect other game cross experiences to come

Unreal Engine Implications

“The two companies are also using Unreal Engine to build digital twins for thousands of physical Lego elements, and are working to make these available for creators across the Fortnite ecosystem in both UEFN and Fortnite’s Creative tools in 2024.” — The Verge

  • Subtext: Lego and Unreal Engine can partner on other projects as well to expand Lego universe and automate parts of the design process
  • Signals potential M&A acquisition, if Lego can afford it?

Additional Factors: Regulatory Changes (NPR)

  • Tailwind: San Francisco court ruling against Google in favor of Epic, entitling publishers and developers to the fees they deserve. “Google acts like an illegal monopoly in the way it distributes apps and in how it bills within the app store.”
  • Headwind: the court ordered Apple to give people more ways to pay for things in its app store, not just through Apple’s own payment processor, which can take a fee of up to 30% of the transaction. But, this might not necessarily directly help Epic, the same way the Google ruling directly does.
Unlisted

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Cosa Nostradamus
Cosa Nostradamus

Written by Cosa Nostradamus

Facts, interviews & musings gathered in the course of my ongoing hunt for investments and product development in the gaming sector.