The hype cycle in tech and advertising has always moved fast, but nothing has so dramatically soared and then crashed to earth as quickly as the metaverse. For roughly 18 months it was all anyone could talk about, before being proclaimed as ‘over’, as the herd shifted to espousing on generative AI instead.

Hold on though. While the columnists may have moved on from the metaverse, it’s quietly been developing in the background, particularly in the space where it was always already in existence: gaming.

At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last month, one of the few brands that was still openly talking about the metaverse was Epic Games. The brand behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine was on stage at the festival to talk about its forthcoming collaboration with Lego, and also unveiled a new immersive experience created with Nike, titled Airphoria. Both projects signal new directions for the Fortnite platform, and hint at how brands will mix digital and real worlds in the future to exciting effect.

“I don’t know why the hype is diminished,” says Nate Nanzer, vice president, global partnerships at Epic Games. “I have conversations with brands, and they say, ‘when is the metaverse going to become real?’ It’s real right now. If you look at the combined audiences of Fortnite and Roblox and Minecraft, it’s hundreds of millions of people who are doing this every day. In some ways, I don’t mind at all that it’s not as hypey as it once was. I think we’re still very committed to the strategy.”

The strategy for Epic Games is to expand the Fortnite universe into a platform that you visit for a wide range of entertainment experiences, and not simply for the Battle Royale game that it built its name upon. “It has to be accessible to everybody,” says Nanzer. “There’s more that we can do as an industry to break down those barriers for people to jump in.”

All my friends are there. Gaming is one of the things that we can do. But there’s a whole host of other activities that we can get into as well

One of the barriers that has sprung up by associating the metaverse so strongly with gaming is that brands can still have a tendency of seeing gaming as a niche activity, even if billions of people would beg to differ. Plus, there is such a wide variety of games in existence, and not all of them offer the element that Nanzer deems as crucial for a metaverse experience: the “social layer”.

“All my friends are there,” he explains of the difference. “And we’re making decisions about how we want to spend our time – gaming is one of the things that we can do. But there’s a whole host of other activities that we can get into as well.”

Fortnite has been creating this “social entertainment” for some time. As CR reported on last year, the platform has collaborated with brands, creators, artists and musicians to create absorbing and unexpected experiences that complement its core game. Nanzer points out that 40% of hours spent in Fortnite are on activities or experiences that were not made by Epic Games but instead by the creator community. Despite this though, the brand still feels like an experience aimed at a teenage audience, who would have come there in the first instance to play with their friends.

The collaborations with Nike and Lego signal how the platform could develop beyond this, however. What is crucial to both is the recently unveiled Unreal Editor for Fortnite, which allows brands and creators to custom build experiences for the platform. Whereas in the past, those creating on Fortnite had to adhere to its art style, it is now possible to create a bespoke look, which paves the way for a much wider range of experiences.

This allowed Nike to include signature design elements of Nike Air Max in the Airphoria experience, which “enables players and their friends to explore a meticulously crafted Air Max–themed universe”, according to Nike. Fortnite players can also purchase the outfits showcased by Airphoria characters in the Fortnite Item Shop, while Nike will release a limited Airphoria-inspired collection on nike.com in North America.

“Traditionally, if you built in Fortnite Creative, it looked like Fortnite,” says Nanzer. “But now, and you’ll see this in the Nike world, it looks very different than what you would expect Fortnite to look like. Then what’s really exciting over time – if you think about the millions and millions of assets that creatives are building in Unreal Engine 5 to make a film or a 3D billboard, all those assets over time become usable inside of these playable worlds.

“That’s the big unlock,” he continues. “If brands are thinking about going into these spaces, it’s like, how do we build a thing that feels like our brand and that’s authentic to us? And brings our brands to where the players are, meeting them where they are. That’s a huge opportunity.”

Traditionally, if you built in Fortnite Creative, it looked like Fortnite. But now it looks very different than what you would expect

The scope for this is even more apparent in the Lego partnership, which has no official release date but is “coming soon”. The platform aims to offer the chance for kids to “play seamlessly across digital and physical worlds”, says Epic Games’ president, Adam Sussman.

Again, Unreal Editor for Fortnite is key for this, allowing Lego to create digital assets that exactly match their real-life versions but also allowing the brand to be far more agile, using the system to create ads and experiences – and even assets such as pack designs – and be more responsive.

At its heart, the Lego partnership wants to offer the chance for kids to be creative. “We truly believe that the immersive digital world of tomorrow will be a tremendous opportunity to develop creativity,” says Julia Goldin, global chief product & marketing officer at Lego.

“In particular, creativity for future generations. We believe that kids – and adults – will be able to engage in ways that they have never been able to engage before. We want the metaverse to be accessible to all by design – internet 2.0 was not designed with children in mind and yet they’re all there. We want to create the right world for them from the outset.”

We truly believe that the immersive digital world of tomorrow will be a tremendous opportunity to develop creativity

This involves creating a “safe and positive environment” for kids to hang out in and create worlds, which comes with parental controls built in, but also a space that is “fair” to kids and creators. “We want something that is fair and transparent,” says Sussman. “Fair to creators and players alike. We believe the metaverse isn’t going to be built by a single company, it’s going to be built by the power of community, by the power of human-generated creativity.”

Nanzer reiterates this commitment to creators, pointing out how Epic has recently “revamped the economy around creators” to reward them for creating work that drives engagement. “A lot of the creators in our ecosystem are seeing a pretty significant increase in the amount of money that they’re making now, which is great,” he says. “Hopefully that creates more investment, more experiences, more brands coming in.”

As to the future opportunities for Fortnite and other metaverse platforms, it is easy to see how this “social entertainment” experience could progress further into “connected commerce”, where, as Nanzer puts it, “I buy a thing in the digital world and a physical version shows up at my house”.

The challenge for brands is to understand the opportunities on offer, which are vast, but also the difference in approach that is required in these worlds. This, in simple terms, means thinking about your audience in social terms, rather than as an individual.

“The way that I think brands should be thinking about these spaces is, whatever works on YouTube, or Instagram, or wherever else you’re advertising, that’s not going to work in a gaming environment,” says Nanzer. “It has to be authentic to your brand, but also has to be authentic to the experience ecosystem that you’re activating … what makes these game worlds so sticky is that social layer.”

epicgames.com