I swear to God I was going to write something like this a few months ago. My title would be “Disney should make their own Fortnite”, where I’d talk about the importance of investing on the digital space and bringing Disney billion-dollar IPs to videogames that are played by billions of people worldwide.
Fast-forward to early 2024 and what happened? Disney isn’t creating their very own Fortnite, but they are actually investing heavily on the game and creating a world based on their popular franchises right there. I should have published my article in 2023 instead of letting it rot in a sea of drafts. Nice move, Bob Iger, hacking my PC and moving that idea forward.
Just kidding.
So, what is Fortnite?
Well, let’s just say that Fortnite has become a juggernaut in the world of videogames in the last few decades. Is it even a videogame anymore? Fortnite started as a very basic concept of a survival game, before it took heavy inspiration from another title – Player Unknown’s Battleground – and became a genre known as a Battle Royale. Have you watched the Hunger Games? The idea is similar: dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of players drop on an island, scavenge for items and weapons and then they fight each other until only one team remains.
Fortnite became a huge success in a really short amount of time. We are talking about a billion-dollar franchise that is much more than a simple Battle Royale nowadays. There are even virtual worlds inside Fortnite where live shows take place and you move around as an avatar. We are talking about big names like Billie Ellish and Eminem doing live reveals inside Fortnite. There was even a teaser trailer for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker that took place inside Fortnite only! Crazy.
Batman vs John Wick vs Patrick Mahomes
Not only that, Fortnite is huge when it comes to crossovers. Family Guy, Star Wars, Dragon Ball, Indiana Jones, DC Comics, Marvel, it’s all there. You can play as Han Solo firing an AK-47. Scratch that, you can be Lewis Hamilton holding an AK-47 and firing at Naruto and Lady Gaga. Isn’t that absolutely, mind-blowing insane?
Recently, Fortnite has been expanding their collabs and creating worlds inside worlds. The most popular example is their collab with Lego, where players can control blocky avatars, build their bases and just chill and have fun in a game-mode that is completely different from the traditional Battle Royale. Imagine something like Minecraft, but a bit simpler, at least for now.
Can you finally see how Disney might be interested in something like this?
It’s not a small world, after all
We still don’t have Mickey as a playable option inside the main game, and I don’t think Disney would like to see their mascot firing an AK-47 anytime soon. But I can definitely see how Disney would want their franchises inside a world similar to what Fortnite is doing with LEGO now.
Can you imagine a huge virtual world that you can play with your friends, featuring every single Disney IP you can think of? A game that evolves with time, with new updates every month and tons of content. Not only that, this world could also be used by Disney to promote their new movies through trailers, or even live shows and interviews featuring voice actors and directors. This could be huge.
It’s fair to say that reaching the precious Gen-Z can be very, very hard. TV has lost the war against games and streaming services like Netflix, and there is a good chance that a lot of kids nowadays watch Twitch more than anything else. Videogames are huge. More so than movies. Disney is right in trying to reach them out by investing heavily into one of the most popular videogames of all time, and we can’t blame them for that.
I would really like to see something huge being created inside Fortnite using most of Disney’s characters. There is, in fact, a game that uses a similar idea that wasn’t released that long ago: Disney’s Dreamlight Valley, which is a mix of The Sims with Animal Crossing. Disney could take that idea and just make it way bigger, using Fortnite’s installed player base and their deal with Epic Games to create something truly massive.
Can you imagine what this virtual world could become? I’d love to see something resembling the old World of Warcraft. I don’t expect Disney to create any sort of complex combat options inside their game, but a massive world separated into different universes, full of quests to take and adventures, would be amazing. Traveling from Arendelle to meet Elsa all the way to the bottom of the ocean to get quests from Ariel and so on, the options are endless. Would this take time and a lot of money? Sure, but we are talking about Disney and Epic Games.
What about you, what would you love to see from this new partnership? Any character in particular that you’d love to see being features in a massive world like this? And what Disney character would you love to see in the main game mode of Fortnite?
