Fortnite's evolution is delivering on metaverse dreams | Opinion

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On paper, a company announcing – in effect – that they're upgrading the modding tools for their online game should not be an industry-shaking event.

Sure, it's made more interesting when the game in question has generated revenues of around $30 billion in its five-year lifespan; any change at all to a behemoth on that scale is automatically of interest, after all. But even acknowledging that Fortnite is one of the most commercially successful games in history, it can be easy to miss just how important the link Epic just forged between the game and its Unreal Engine tools actually is – and the extent to which it could reshape a whole segment of the industry in the years to come.

It's hard to overstate what a cultural phenomenon Fortnite has been within its target demographics. Thinking of it as a hugely commercially successful game actually misses a lot of its success, which lies in its ability to evolve and develop in ways that go far beyond conventional definitions of a game.

Many people mentally file Fortnite away as simply being an immensely successful Battle Royale shooter, separated from similar rivals like Apex Legends or other online shooters like Overwatch simply by its success and ubiquity – but those comparisons miss out on key elements of what Fortnite has become to its creators and to many of its players.

Epic's 'metaverse' stands to make it not just one of the industry's most disruptive players, but one of the world's most important tech companies

Of course, all the high-profile experiments – like premiering movie trailers in the game, or hosting virtual concerts from major artists – doesn't change the fact that the Battle Royale