Making a Metaverse That Matters

CHAPTER 5Battle Royale for the Fortnite Metaverse

Official Fortnite User Base Snapshot, Early 2023:

• Roughly 50 percent of time spent in Fortnite is in creator-made experiences developed by the Fortnite community and third-party brands.
• As of 2022, Fortnite has 400 million registered accounts.

Data courtesy Epic Games

Years after the avatar known as AM Radio had moved and inspired the user community of Second Life, the avatar's real-life owner, Jeff Berg, received an intriguing invitation to see a new art installation in another virtual world.

By then, nearly all of AM Radio's works had gone away from Second Life, largely dematerialized due to the high cost of virtual land.

In the interim, Berg had lost another essential, more tangible part of himself: his marriage. And as he and his wife grew apart, they also moved across the country. Their teen son Cary went to live with his mother on the East Coast, while Berg himself remained in the Midwest.

So when Cary reached out to his father, it was through an Xbox that Berg had bought for them to play together online.

One night, Cary casually IMed him: “Hey check this out.”

And so Berg did.

Cary had re-created some of AM Radio's most beloved Second Life works in Fortnite Creative.

There they were on a Fortnite island on an expansive desert lined by soaring mountains, beneath a gold and purple sky. A radar array pointed out into nothingness; an ancient farm house stood alone in the wasteland, where rocking chairs were tossed ...