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Comment by vineyardmike | Hacker News Reader

Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World - just available to everyone on the planet instead of those with enough money to visit a park IRL. Disney has a great flywheel where their IP drives content, toys, and experiences. This is just the latest experience, and it’s something they can’t build themselves.

I bet you can expect more content on fortnite to be with Disney IP; skins, events, maps, everything. It’ll be a great way to promote new movies/TV shows with cross-platform events. Fortnite has already had great luck with this sort of thing, so it makes sense for Disney to want access to it. Maybe you’ll even see IRL Fortnite experiences in theme parks or a Fortnite IP based movie or TV show.

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> Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World

This is what everyone said about Lego, and a bunch of other collabs that came before. It was never true and it's not true now. Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.

A bunch of the collabs have been super successful. They don’t need to build a permanent Second Life type metaverse BS. Look at their concerts in Fortnite’s universe. Very successful at attracting eyes and money.

“Virtual Disney world” doesn’t mean VR roller coasters, it means Disney themed digital experiences (eg fun games). Disney and Epic have a decent track record building fun and profitable experiences for people.

To be fair, you did mention replicating the “Disney park experience IRL”, so yes it does mean VR Disney rides since that’s the closest that you’ll get to that experience. A flat screen is not going to come close to it.

Turns out people never ask about metaverse, and no one cares that it's gone and never talked about again

> Turns out people don't want a "virtual world", they want a fun game.

Arguably, there are people who want a "virtual world" -- and they currently just play Roblox to get it. Enough of them like it, that every major retailer stocks "Robux" gift cards

Sort of. Roblox resembles a game collection. Fortnite is increasingly similar.

Roblox is a lot more than just a game collection. The social aspect is a massive part of what made (keeps?) Roblox popular.

Steam has a ton of social features too, and that helps keep it popular. Is it a "virtual world"? I don't think anyone would define it that way.

The primary thing you do in Roblox is pick a game you want to play, which is largely isolated from the other games. Plenty of people will never touch the social features.

lego, as in Minecraft? Roblox? nobody wants that.

Just for context, there are ~26,000 people signed in to the LEGO version of Fortnite right now, and it's 11pm Pacific/2am Eastern (there are ~179,000 people on the standard Fortnite). At primetime, there are typically 100,000+ people on the LEGO Fortnite.

Which FYI puts it in the same league as War Thunder and Team Fortress 2, ie, a profitable free to play game, but not exactly important in terms of redefining culture or being The Next Big Thing.

Hell, RUST is an old, mediocre, "Cursed runes" survival MMO crafting-them-up and it has 100k people playing right now, despite tens of better versions of the exact game formula having been released since.

100k players mid-day is "has-been" multiplayer video game territory. It's "also-ran" MMO territory.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 has 30k people playing right now

All these options are more than the people playing Cyberpunk lol

https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed

No, Lego as in Lego, Fortnite has a game mode that is a Lego survival game a la Valheim.

Some of the most annoying cash grabs I've seen were the ingame music festivals attempted by several video games in 2019-2021.

It turns out that when you can't even get audio synced up so that everyone is hearing the same music, the vast majority of the artists bail or drop a pre-recorded set because they weren't informed how a hypothetical live playback mechanism would work, and you don't even have the rights to the game it's based on... you don't have a polished experience, you have a metaverse scam.

Disney has had access to it, there were a lot of Fortnite Avengers promotions. It obviously worked well enough for them to want to invest.

I've expected a Fortnite movie for awhile now. The current storyline would be perfect for someone like J.J with his histroy of mistique.

Nit: It was all of Marvel not just Avengers and I think they did Star Wars too already.

I've played fortnite on an off since there were seasons. I have no idea what the storyline is, there are some cut scenes when there is a new season but it make no sense. Claiming there is a storyline is a stretch, I think it is just cover for changing up the map/gear to keep it fresh.

I'll agree. My partner plays and I play a little. There seems to be a story but it matters little and doesn't seem to make sense (i guess the plot points that change the map matter)

There is definitely a storyline going on if follow the cutscenes and pay attention to the map. Ever in the earliest seasons they were doing map-based story telling. For example, trucks showed up and started moving shards to one of the towns on the coast. Random updates would move the trucks. Many plot elements develop this way over time.

The core plot is asking "Why are we stuck in this loop?" It does get convoluted, but it's there.

Various agencies are involved, the Zero Point (which causes the looping behavior) has manifested as many things over the seasons. Aliens and inter dimensional being seek after it.

Maybe you had to be there, but the first batch of seasons and even chapter 2 had many online theorizing and trying to guess what's next.

It's like a digital Lost.

> "Why are we stuck in this loop?"

Its because its fun to shoot things in video games, and wreck cars, and building forts and demolishing entire buildings and trying to keep up with my kids.

Why are spiderman, darth vader and predator there? Money. There's no coherent story telling, which is fine, the game is still fun. People play it for the fun factor, not the story.

>Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World ...

I miss Unreal and Unreal Tournament.

This, so much.

Unfortunately all we get is content now. Even games have started to become pure daily content.

> Epic games has the potential to be the virtual Disney World - just available to everyone on the planet instead of those with enough money to visit a park IRL.

How? EPIC doesn’t have a VR platform at the moment.

The deal still makes sense though. Disney needs to control a video game platform.

1.) Unreal Engine can be used in VR...

2.) Virtual worlds don't need to be VR

Unreal Engine isn't a VR platform, it's a tool that can be used to create a VR platform.

"The Platform" in this context is a position that allows you to collect ~30% fee of revenue generated. Unreal Engine's position is much much smaller. Using my definitions Epic gamestore technically counts as a VR platform, but isn't positioned to become market leader.

You're correct but being overly pedantic. Not only is Unreal one of the biggest engines chosen for use with VR games but it's also one of the easiest and most effective for modders to retroactively inject the ability to use a game in VR.

Unreal is just an engine just like Valve’s source engine. It’s a tool for developers and it’s not a destination for consumers. I’m right in pointing out that you guys are confusing a game engine for a video game platform. They are two very different things, and I’m not being “overly pedantic”.

As someone else already mentioned, Unreal isn’t the Epic or Steam platform. SteamVR != Source engine

> Virtual worlds don't need to be VR

Yes, but flat pancake games are even poorer at simulating a Disney theme park IRL than VR. It doesn’t even come close to a substitute, especially for the rides.

You’re taking it too literally.

Virtual worlds as in a digital experience built around Disney’s cinematic universe. Like video games.

Fortnite is playable in VR.

The "Fortnite creative engine" is roughly a Virtual Worlds editor / generator along side the Fortnite Virtual Worlds marketplace.

Both are doomed with the advent of generative AI.

I see huge potential for NFT integration as well. Imagine buying a Mickey Mouse skin in Fortnight and being able to use it in one of Epic Games' other games too. Lots of possibilities.

No one thinks NFTs have a future anywhere anymore, least of which in gaming. Nothing you described needs NFTs or crypto in any way either.

And most importantly of all, game publishers do not want you to be able to use something you buy in Game A to decorate your character in Game B, because they want to skim more money out of you buying a new artificially scarce item in Game B.

Hell, Valve literally already did this with all CS:GO skins carrying over to CS2, it required zero blockchain, doesn't actually give you "control" over the item, and was only done because players have spent literal tens of thousands of dollars on skins and Valve needed to throw them a bone so they would be slightly less upset about CS:GO being essentially memory-holed.

Oh man, remember NFTs? Glad that’s over.

NFTs are doing just fine

[Citation needed]

As in "existing" sure, as in "having any value" not really.

Oh honey…

> use it in one of Epic Games' other games too.

That neither needs nor is easier with NFTs.

Disney had a group looking at NFT and metaverse initiatives, but as far as I have seen, they all got canned in last year's layoffs. manager and everything. The company is huge, so it's not impossible that other group like that might remain employed there, somewhere, but at the very least the interest have waned.

You can already do this in Fortnite and Roblox, and half a dozen other gaming platforms no NFTs required.

Nobody cares. The NFT thing never made sense as anything but a receipt.

I have a receipt from Walmart for an Xbox game, that will let it play on a PlayStation, right?

;)

Time travel confirmed; this person has clearly just arrived from 2021.

This is basically just fortnite. When they wanted to make a racing game, they did it in fortnite. When they wanted a rhythm game, they did it in fortnite. Fortnite is a game browser and engine, not a set of mechanics.

Also if the intention is to limit the use of the property to epic games, why not use a plain old database? Nft seems like overkill

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