How Fortnite Crossovers Corrupted the Industry - Extra Credits Gaming
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
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Are games losing their creative edge in favor of pandering to nostalgia and IP recognition? With examples like Skeletor in Call of Duty and Marvel sets in Magic, we explore how the industry's focus on brand recognition is eroding the depth and immersion of gaming worlds. Fortnite's success in blending diverse IPs has set a dangerous precedent, where profit trumps artistic integrity but it's not too late to push back against this trend.
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This could not be a coincidence gdc unreal talks just ended
I was just in uefn from 12am to 6am then watched gdc about uefn now your talking about fortnite
Destiny 2 just recently dropped a Ship Sparrow and Ghost shell themed in the Ghostbusters style.
At first I laughed, but then quickly rolled my eyes in annoyance.
That's also the reason why indie games are so successful these days. They are taking these very risks which large companies don't take
Wasn't that one of the earlier extra credit episodes? That's insane how they inspired game theory and they are still right about that
Agreed
@@minestar2247ikr, now he’s more popular than them. Crazy.
@@minestar2247game theory?
True but still they lack marketting and they will mostly go under the radar
5:37 the image of non-copyright-infringing-Aang-alike holding an AK is really jarring, considering that one of the core elements of Airbender culture depicted in ATLA is pacifism.
Which I suppose is on brand for the subject matter of the episode.
But it is fine consumer he has “energy bending projectiles” they just fall asleep
But in all seriousness 100% agreed
Plus, it helps that non-copyright-infringing-Aang-alike is clearly _not_ happy to have the AK.
And now we have ATLA coming to fortnite
@@Tsupek yeah lmao how ironic
We already have something similar. It is called Legend of Korra.
This didn't start with Fortnight. Maybe Fortnight brought it to the world of videogames, but I have been noticing this going on with Lego products for years, escalating and escalating until what you have now: almost NOTHING but licensed themes sold more for adult collectors than for kids to play with. Lego used to make really unique themes that really sparked my imagination in the 90s and 2000s, from Rockraiders to Bionicle. Lego makes nothing like those anymore, only Marvel, Disney, Harry Potter, Star Wars, all the same crap on the other toy shelves. When MTG started doing this recently, I realized that they are going the same route as Lego.
I got some ads for Lego recently which weren't themed. Like, just generic "Lego City stuff, have fun, no branding" and it was a genuine shock! Hopefully this will be a continuing trend, but I won't hold my breath!
Rock Raiders sold terribly, and most kits these days are too damn expensive for kids. They're going where the money is.
I think Lego in the very least made some degree of sense. As a kid you'd buy a bunch of different lego sets, sometimes ones that were unrelated or licensed for a movie/series you liked and you'd mix 'em together, have fun with 'em. It's the plot of Lego Movie and it worked that way.
Fortnite just feels like it's doing that scene with Iron Giant from Ready Player 1.
They haven’t stopped with the original themes, they’re just less prevalent.
@@Sprionk My understanding is that Town/City never went away. And there are Ideas and Creator sets that are geared more to adults that don’t have an IP. Every year they make a new entry in the modular line which is for a normal city street, and the different buildings can be rearranged in a modular nature. Bookshop, assembly square, jazz club, etc. Plus, Ninjago is still going strong, and they make a new IP to focus on for a few years (Chima, Hidden Side, Monkey Kid, Dreamzzz). So they do still make other stuff. Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and Harry Potter certainly are big; I’m not denying that. And them and Ninjaga make classic themes like Space and Castle obsolete, so they are making an impact. But I don’t want you walking thinking that Lego has completely abandoned their own concepts. Dreamzzz has some imaginative builds if you want to see what Lego is creating on their own.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm an MtG player and I've been watching in dismay as the game I love keeps following crossover after crossover, and even more dismay as people excitedly demand for more. I expect the full UB brigade to come round and excoriate the video, but you are right on the money.
there were a couple cool ones. I support crossovers like D&D and LotR since they're inherently similar to magic...but they should be like, this cool thing you look forward to seeing once every few years not what's going on today where they'll collab with anything with a pulse
As a primarily Yu-Gi-Oh player I think it's kinda interesting how we can have Deck themed around Dante's inferno, Star wars/the wizard of Oz, and deserts in the same game with wizards and dragons and warriors and it not feel weird but when magic just adds IP to the game it does
I play Pinkie Pie and attack!
I block with Optimus Prime, and tap my Steve Urkel card to boost his defense.
I was interested in mtg because of the crossovers. We have to be careful with not overdoing it but magic is getting a lot of new players because of the crossovers. Still it should be non canon only for fun decks, put them on unlimited
@@johnblunt6693 I think the difference is that Yugioh does its own takes on those instead of just putting the exact characters in. The Dragonmaid cards aren't the specific characters from that dragon maid anime, they just took the inspiration of "maids that turn into dragons" and did their own thing. That's why it still feels like Yugioh.
There's also the fact that in Yugioh "lore" it's still a commercial card game, whereas in MTG it's supposed to be literal wizards casting actual spells and not a card game. Having quirky cards in a commercial card game isn't that weird, but having an immortal wizard from a fantasy land summon the actual Optimus Prime and the actual Godzilla is bizarre.
My friend, when he was going through the PS5 store while I was looking away:
"Ugh, a Nicky Manage bundle? I'm so glad I gave up Call of Duty."
First time I heard of this outside Fortnite.
I love The Masters of the Universe movie. The Skeletor actor (Frank Langella) was phenomenal. Man, I haven't watched that movie in forever. I'll have to put it in the queue.
Something that annoys me when younger kids see a character who was featured in Fortnite. Then the kids will say “It’s ______ from Fortnite!!!” Not recognizing where they are actually from.
This will be everything in a few dozen years. Without any new IP or any care for world consistency, all media will be just an endless cycle of existing familiar characters from the 50's, 80's, etc remixed into new content over and over. We're falling back into the age of mythology where everyone knows who Batman is and several stories about him but they're disjoint, sometimes mutually inconsistent tales.
I mean, you can't particularly blame them if that's the first/ only time they've seen said character. Though I do like to think that most players know when a character is a crossover character. Even if they don't know where exactly it is from.
It's not just children that do this and it drives me crazy. I am of the firm belief that our endless parade cameos, sequels, spinoffs, and reboots actively prevent people from engaging with the source material that they draw from.
@@AmpersanderpAren't Sequels and Reboots just meant to be more of the source material though? You're not going to forget where Shrek is from just from watching Shrek 3 or whatever. It's Crossovers and randomly inserting them into other franchises they have no reason to be in that's a problem.
They need some media literacy
The thing that I think separates Fortnite from it's predecessors in IP collaboration is that almost at the very start when it fset up it's first collab, they'd already set the goal of being a pre Metaverse playground experience, something which they are expanding even more on currently. And I have to give the devs some credit into actually putting in the effort of trying to make their cosmetic collaborations not just be cosmetic collaborations going as far as having events, or taking the collabs and making the game's own lore (yes fortnite has lore) work with these collabs an (The Fortnite island actually be this omniversal pocket reality controlled by a secret multiverse spanning society.
We all know the meme "it's the thing from Fortnite" and the fact that so many other AAA games have tried to mimic its methods, but despite all that, what makes Fortnite still so successful in what it does with it's IPs is how much effort is actually put in to make them actually feel special and worth experiencing even if you don't purchase any of the collab's cosmetics (You definitely will tho).
Not everything should be a Fortnite, but you have to admit, when Fortnite does it's thing it's darn sure good at it.
You do have a point. It is weird for Batman, who has a strict no guns policy, shooting guns in Fortnite.
It's Frank Miller's Batman.
I feel that a step was missed here. Yes, they would stop EVENTUALLY if the money from the crossovers slowed down. However, first they would go "it's not making us enough money. QUICK, DOUBLE DOWN ON THE CROSSOVERS!" making it worse for a while.
Dude, that Skeletor impression was top notch!
deus ex: human revolution really changed my life. it made me see the problems in something that i previously thought was purely positive, and it made me understand that a wrok of art can be great, even without taking a stance, hell, it actually showed me that you can present an idea and bring forward in the public consciousness, without necessarily supporting it.
the game jsut said "here are all the stances on the issue, now you decide which one you believe in"
I haven't thought enough about this to explain my reasoning but I feel like the phenomena of guest characters in fighting games is completely different. Homelander in MK as an example really doesn't help your point any more than arguing Akuma in Tekken hurt the game or would bringing up the existence of Marvel vs Capcom.
Like Idk man, MVCI bombed hard at the near height of the MCU and the apparent resurrection of "Capgod", despite being mechanically satisfying and fans still shout "whens Mahvel" and I can't believe that the general public wouldn't love another opportunity to smash those dolls together.
Would it be nice if those dolls came from series close in theme? sure I guess but otoh everyone wants their fave in Smash.
Guest characters in games go back to the late 90s, and that's arguably where this trend started.
You think the Corporates will stop just because there's already one Fortnite?
Oh, my sweet summer child. Remember what Bobby Kotick did to guitar hero and the music game genre?
This is the future where the money people, not the creatives, are making the decisions, damn the consequences.
Sadly yes, probably, but much like what happened with Netflix and streaming sites, everyone will want their own streaming site so companies will rush to make poorly designed and ill-thought-out services that no one asked for. When they turn out to be garbage they'll inevitably fold and layoff hundreds of people and the survivors will conglomerate into two or three sites because that's all market demand can support and the only winner will be Netflix/Fortnite because they started the trend and, surprise, are the only ones who know how to make money off of streaming/live service.
What Happened to Guitar Hero?
Or games like it?
All media companies have 2 halvs: the corporate half, and the creative half! The corporate half is the cold, calculating, profi-maximizing machine part of the Company that only Carls about short term expexted profits! Meanwhile the creative half is the innovative creative and Human half of the equation, that just wants to make High wuality art that helps people, while also giving a great time! This trick comes from the corporate side of the Industry! And for the most part the agreement seems to have been that corporate side handles the marketing, while creative side handles the produce itself! But maybe the creative side putting a Human face on the marketing, and some frugalness, to stop Human fallacy from maling costly mistakes!
The under lieing issue is that if it makes money it’s what companies want , which leads to an inherent conflict of interest
1:14 ermm aktually..john wick does include his pencil...just no keanu 🤓🤓
all jokes aside this was an amazing video and i really enjoyed the thorough breakdown of unfortunately, what many modern games look like now, great work! :)
Not going to lie, Starscream getting the Ring of Power sounds awesome!
Peter: oh my god, it’s Robert Walpole!
Universes beyond absolutely killed my interest in Magic after decades of playing it. One crossover at a time I just stopped caring about the setting, since clearly the creators didn't care either.
The one time the Genshin community really did unite was in its outrage over how immersion breaking the one and only cross over character(Aloy from Horizon) was
Lets start capping microtransaction to 10 dollars
6:18 "It would be vapid and devoid of meaning", aka why I dislike "Ready Player One".
This would fix itself right? Because if uniquely created media is reduced, or it's quality at least, then that means the demand for the skins for those watered down worlds will be less valuable and companies less likely to make skins for them.
Damn, that Soul Calibur II. I was online at the time and it's crazy how many copies were sold thanks to that Link.
Soul calibur II sold well because it had some of the better mechanics from the souls franchise. That's ultimately the reason why SC fell off, they make the game sluggish and simplified in future iterations. At the end of the day cross-overs only generate temporary hype, longer term the actual game is most important.
I don't mind seeing Count Dooku vs Saurman vs Dracula.
I think that the Payday 2 Crossovers are more tame in comparison.
100% and none of the tie ins were done as a flash in pan they all had recurring story tie in and were done in a way to make a version of their world fit in payday.
Long before Fortnite, you could play as Yoda in Tekken
I have to say, I think it's a bit weird that you noticed this in Call of Duty. I've never really thought of those games as being particularly serious, or artful.
Lord of the Rings featuring Transformers sounds like a pretty fun fan fiction, which is the only place I would want to see that type of story
Whie I agree with the overall point, I really dont think just expecting everyone to boycott is viable, both due to scale and also because these things are designed to prey on our physcology, its really hard to resist. No, if we wanna deal with this porblem, and many other issues in the industry, we need to work to put the power over making games back into the hands of game devs rather than cooperate executives, this means helps devs form unions, this means those of who are devs forming new studios that can function as say worker co-ops, and yes this mean pressuring law makers when needed. We've been trying this personal responsbility method for the past 40 years, and things have only gotten worse, we need to do something else.
I love that Walpole made an appearance!
As much as I love a good cameo, the fact that it has to be a GOOD cameo really limits my options. LotR + MTG? Final Fantasy + Monster Hunter? Sure! Those styles fit close enough imo. But MTG + Fortnite? Yeah no shot that feels right.
Fortnite begins to remind me of the Oasis of Ready Player One
So basically it’s I want this $70 game because of the fomo, but I want this $20 game because it has a very interesting story and mechanics
The fortnite-ification of MtG has been divisive in the community. It was fought against during the initial Universes Beyond announcement, but eventually we've come to grudgingly accept that there is no fighting it as WoTC and Hasbro see $$$, fans of the crossover series don't know why the community dislikes the cards and unless everyone actively boycotts the products, there's no way to get a corporation to listen.
To be fair, John Wick fits the theme of Payday.
The Ultimate Showdown of The Ultimate Destiny of Media
I have been saying much of this for the longest time: every IP that is touched by Fortnite is that much worse because of it.
they explained the john wick thing
it was like
planned
Funny how both Lord of the Rings and Transformers are in Magic the Gathering
Ready Player One warned us of this
Huh?
Less warned and more broadcasted that it was Ernest Clive's dream to have something like the Metaverse, given the deal he made with Futureverse.
It’ll be interesting what gen z nostalgia bait will be. All the new IP seems to go to things to hook kids, ideally well enough for them to buy skins of those things 30 years later
4:55 and that is EXACTLY why even as a CHILD i thought it beyond dumb that people would PAY to wear freaking billboar- i mean clothes with clear branding.
Mate you just paid 50 bucks to Nike for the right to advertise to others.
I figured that as a child the adults were in on something i didn't yet get.
Been waiting nearly 30 years for the other shoe to drop.
Turns out people are just idiots.
immediately wondering if someone's written the fanfiction of Starscream getting a ring of power
Okay lesson learned I buy everything in crossover skins and co because I want more of them.
I like that everything belongs together. Marvel and dc main comic continuity are connected to fortnite where the origin of everything is.
Thanks ❤️
❤️
Not so sure I agree on you lumping cameo characters in fighting games with this problem
What I get is "how casuals ruin hobbies"
I don't think gamers actually sustain this business model
companies be like pop ip if it ant brok dot fix it
There's a motorcycle in breath of the wild.
I blame fan fiction. In all seriousness though, I had been out of buying new Magic for financial reasons, but thinking about dipping my toe back in, now I'll probably never go back.
yeah I as a person really have it weird with the Marvel MTG I'm a big fan of both franchises and have nothing against the rest of Universes Beyond arguing that it was kind of the original deckmaster plan.
but we're it's bother me is I have seen far too many other fantastically quirky games Love Letter, Munchkin, Smash Up, Dice Throne lose their soul and quirkiness to Marvel so I am afraid this will also happen to MTG, it sucks.
Personally, I do love crossovers in games, but they must flow well with the lore, story and theme of said game! Fortnite gets a pass since it deals with alternate universes, and it honestly does have its own original stuff despite it seeming like an excuse for collabs! And to be honest, while yes, there's microtransactions and FOMO, it's much tamer than other f2p live-services, and they actually do add extra content to the game relating to their collabs (such as weapons and items)!
Although I do love Fortnite collabs, it has been a concern for many years that it would deviate from its original storyline to favor collabs with IPs, but Fortnite still tells its own original story despite having may collabs, since usually, they flow well with the game’s artstyle, and also the season's theme! Right now, there's this limited time event relating to a very important lore character returning after 4 years and rising to power!
I've also seen talk about "live-service = bad", which is also not entirely true. While it could propagate FOMO under the wrong hands, it can be done in a fun way, just like how Fortnite (it may have problems, but the content updates every 2 weeks keep the game fresh), Splatoon 3, Sea of Thieves, and Deep Rock Galactic do it! (Obviously though, they're not perfect, and we need to acknowledge that.)
If a live-service is done right, it will make people want to play more due to the fresh content, but not because of FOMO!
TLDR: Collabs can be done right if they fit with the game’s lore or theme, and live-services can be executed in a non-predatory way to make the game always be fresh.
Very Gepetto designer there.
The same thing is happening with Lego, they've been buying into so many IPs that the core of Lego is diluting to a point that it's hardly worth it....
nah... Kingdom HEarts did it.
Then Soul Calibur & Mortal Kombat.... Fortnite is soo much younger
Who came first, Fortnite or Ready Player One?
Where did it start?
I’m definitely pretty sick of the Magic the Gathering’s universes beyond stuff. LOTR fit well, but now it’s just getting weird. I love Doctor Who, but it doesn’t mix well with MTG in my opinion.
I stopped buying video games with guest characters when Yoda and Darth Vader were in soul calibur. Never again. Except for the Mercedes karts in Mario kart 8.
Even Smash Bros? I feel like that game does their third party characters very well, for the most part
@@kryzethx I'm not bothered by smash brothers; crossovers are the core conceit. Having video game characters in a crossover video game isn't nearly as egregious to me as having characters from unrelated media (film, TV, books, etc.).
@@nahumgardner What about Sora
Don't forget Ariana Grande in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
Fornite has become the Funko Pop of the industry.
Seeing Aang holding a gun.... felt so...... incredibly wrong... wow....
I appreciate your disclaimer that this is just a practice which is too widespread, rather than a wholly negative practice. I love the Smash Bros series but it and other crossover fighting games are only one step removed from this practice, at least by putting in the effort to make their crossover characters feel like those characters rather than themed skins over a default character (Mii Fighters notwithstanding lol). I really love that series, both for its own mechanics and how it feels like a love letter to the games industry as a whole, but I agree that if every game tried to be Smash Bros we wouldn't have an industry left to celebrate.
I feel like they slightly jumped the shark when they stopped being purely Nintendo characters, but I do think that you're right in that Smash created a world in which this makes sense. *They're not skins, it's a crossover.*
The fact that the Marvel X Capcom and Smash Bros series are so popular is because this is what people want. So complaining that you **almost** purchased a crossover cosmetic but didn't due to some kind of moral highground is beyond self-righteous since every developer wants people to play their games and will jump at the chance to work with popular IPs so having this homogonisation of pop culture in gaming actually becomes a win/win for developers and players.
Where it doesn't work is when it's mindlessly shovelled into a game that wasn't intended or doesn't naturally fit but that is the fault of studios selling their creative control to corpos rather than staying true to the valuew and goals that the studio was founded under. Making games doesn't require hundreds of millions of dollars but too many devs put their greed ahead of their games.
there's a difference between having a bunch of characters from different ips in a game and having a whole slurry of ips tossed at a game just to see what sticks
I think one thing to mention is attention to detail. Smash actually makes the effort to faithfully adapt the characters it includes regarding how they fight in behave (though there are a few it arguably fails to do justice, like Sonic and Ganondorf.) For the most part, Smash’s characters FEEL like the originals.
Fortnite’s crossovers are JUST skins. Like, you really think Thanos or Optimus Prime would run around shooting people with human weaponry? As he said in the beginning: Skeletor has no business being in CoD, and he’s not. You’re not playing Skeletor in that game, you’re playing some schmuck dressed as Skeletor.
@@KryyssTV it's only a little self-righteous when $25 is near half the price of a new game. I gotta decide if it's worth the $25, will I actually play the game that I'm sinking money into, or am buying a digital shiny that I'll forget about.
Finally someone else has mentioned it! This isn't just an issue in gaming but all creative industries. Creativity is risky, therefore businesses don't make the risk. Look at hollywood, they rarely produce anything original, especially if it's live action. It's either book adaptation, anime adaptions, comic adaptions, etc. George Lucas thought Episode IV was going to fail, that he would lose money. Instead he created an amazing world that is star wars. But nowadays does Hollywood ever produce anything truly original?
Creativity is risky. There's no getting around it. But creativity is rewarding in and of itself. Even if nothing is published or sold, the creator still benefits and enjoys the act of creating.
Businesses, of course, can't survive off employees enjoyment. The only question any creative company will have is "What's the least amount of creativity (e.g. production time) that guarantees the most amount of profits?"
It also places the blame on the consumer for supporting these things, instead of the companies for making them. That's something very often missing from debates on why companies do these things.
George Lucas wasn't the only one who thought episode IV would fail. He turned down a $500,000 payout for exclusive merchandising.
I'm not sure how much Disney paid for those rights, but I know it was more than half a mil.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme playing over and over in the Street Fighter lobby was so unbelievably invasive.
Especially because I hadn't bought or earned any special extra lobby music so my choices. (Meaning I could only listen to the default lobby music which was in this case the TMNT theme over and over and over.)
Like "I already payed 60$ for this game, you're gonna charge me to not also be advertised to in-between matches? Gross."
Atleast it wasn't baby shark
I miss the days when cameos were so effectively rethemed and inserted that it was a nice bonus if you knew the source material and thus could spot them but you wouldn't realize that they were cameos otherwise.
My experience with Kingdom Hearts. I never knew what Final Fantasy was for a while before I realized they were different characters. Even the Disney characters don't feel out of place.
Like when soul caliber had Darth Vader in one of the games lol
This kind of reminds me of my interest in mods for games that are "lore" friendly and the dichotomy with funny meme mods. They can be fun, but usually the novelty wears off VERY quickly
Yeah. Having a mutated wrestler drop on you from the sky, screaming about Slim Jims, is funny exactly once.
@@insaincaldoI mean… if you add it secretly to a friend’s game…
That’s the main reason Ready Player One never clicked on me, everything feels so… soulless?
RPO is precisely a dystopia about a corporation owning everything; Oasis is a Gmod-esque game, the crossover characters are pretty much part of it. That's pretty much its lore.
@@Gelatinocyte2Yes, but at the same time I saw a LOT of people and my friends saying "I love a game like that!!!", "That's the future!!" and dreaming about a game like those... and here we are... with forknife and roblox being the greatest things ever created... it's a little scary
@@Gelatinocyte2 That is exactly why a couple of years ago, most companies wanted "THE metaverse". If you forgot about it is because companies want you to forget tha fiasco it was... but in escence, Super Smash Brothers is that, Fortnite is that, Roblox is that... companies are just learning how to exploit it and sell it different enough that we don't associate it with Meta and Zuckerberg. That WILL work. People WANTS that.
Oh yeah. Ready Player One is what you get if this doesn’t stop.
Optimus prime transformed into a semi-truck, bidding Gandalf to drive. The fellowship safely tucked in the trailer, Gandalf put the pedal to the metal, as Optimus drove forward. Gandalf, with one hand on the wheel and the other brandishing his sword through the door's window, lead the charge with a shout. ''YOU CANNOT PASS!'' The Balrog stood fast but was no match for the might of Optimus Prime and Gandalf, as it fell to the abyss and they rolled out of Moria.
The lord of the ring, Fortnite edition
Gandalf shouting "Fly you fools" to the Aerialbots does sound nice.
@@random27 Nice! Can't wait for the full release, where Megatron falls in the lava with smeagol, screaming that he's been foiled again as Starscream claims leadership (again) just to get blasted by UniSauron
@@mattdarrock666 are we saying Headmasters / Targetmasters with orcs and hobbit? And Sauron becoming the head of Scorponoc?
@@random27 Yeah! This book is writing itself!
Then Galactus reaches his hand forth, snatching Optimus from Middle Earth, devouring his spark as well as the Matrix of Leadership. Surprisingly sated by the tiny morsel, Galactus fades away seeking other worlds to devour.
I started playing Fortnite pretty early on in the game’s life, and the thing that bothers me the most is it’s loss of identity.
Skins were just the random default characters in wacky costumes or didn’t show their faces, but they all shared a mostly uniform aesthetic.
Fortnite went from “that battle royal with building mechanics” to “that game with all the characters and sometimes real life people in it.”
As someone who's also been playing Fortnite for a relatively long while. I do understand the whole "It's all crossovers" now thing. But at the same time, gameplay speaking, Battle Royale is STILL mostly original content. Most skins I see are non-crossover ones. Epic still makes plenty of original skins and the vast majority of locations, items, lore, etc. in Battle Royale is still non-crossover content.
Of course, there was that Marvel Season and now there's 3 new game modes primarily built on other IPs. But for the most part, the game has never had a MAJOR FOCUS on it's Crossovers. That's really only happened with the Playerbase...
The fact that you’ve just categorized the game evolving as “loss of identity” just completely shows how little you’ve touched this game
This game has had more of an intense identity than it has before
@@IronLug It always confuses me how people seem to be surprised that a game that has had weekly content updates (plus big ones every couple of months) for over 6 years would stay the same after that much time and changes. Even more confusing when in that same breath they'll also complain about how "little" the most recent update(s) add or change... Which is it? The game is too different or too same-y?
In my opinion, a more accurate description would be that the game's identity has CHANGED. The identity it has now is significantly different from how it was before. This is coming from someone who started playing in Chapter 2 and only experienced Chapter 1 via Season OG. There IS a different vibe with Chapter 1, but saying that the game has NO Vibe now is a lie. Especially since it seems like MORE people play Modern Fortnite than during Season OG...
Personally i feel like chaos is its identity now, and the devs put really good work into executing it
@@IronLug What is the game's identity now? I don't play fortnite myself, but the impression I got as an outsider is that it's a revolving door, something that changes every few months or even every few weeks as new seasons come and go. If that is the case, I'd argue that it's still fair to say that the game has lost it's identity because there's nothing there for you to be attached to in the long-term. It feels like fortnite is trying to be the "everything" game, or a flavor of the month game that you come to specifically because it's always changing.
I think the distinguishing factor for whether a crossover is appropriate is whether it adds nuance to both IPs. That is, the existence of the crossover adds fresh perspective, whether by exploring a facet of a character or by exploring how they would react to the situation.
This is a vanishingly small proportion of crossovers I've seen, but they are also the vast majority of the ones anyone actually cares about. Most of them are pointless exercises in marketing that could be removed without having any real impact on your perception of anything involved.
The worst ones to me are the ones that *could* have been the former, but instead wound up being the latter. The Street Fighter 6 Ninja Turtles collaboration for example. The Ninja Turtles and Final Fight (and thus Street Fighter by extension) are 100% the same genre, neither one is out of place in the other and there's fun chemistry to be had between the Turtles and Luke or Ryu, Akuma or Oro and Master Splinter: A Ninja Turtles X Street Fighter comic would be amazing.
But instead we just got a bunch of overpriced cosmetics for world tour avatars and some obnoxious music playing in the battle lounge.
Indeed. A big draw of crossovers would be how characters from different series would interact. It's not *just* that Master Chief and Doomguy standing back to back as they mow down waves of covenant demons would be awesome, it's that that's totally something they would do! As opposed to something like Master Chief and Homer Simpson, which might be funny but only because of how little sense it makes and it doesn't really have substance beyond that.
Speaking of fresh perspectives, reminded of the Witcher 3 crossover in Monster Hunter World which was incredibly done.
@@kevingriffith6011
Speaking of the Turtles: State of Survival currently has an event with TMNT. Which really, really doesn't make any sense. You can get those characters, even Splinter, as your own, some of them probably not without using any money. But still, it really feels pasted on and just wrong. They could have made it make sense, with a little work, but the developer apparently didn't want to do that work. Surprise, surprise.
@@kevingriffith6011
To be fair, they did have something better in the SF X TMNT comic book prior to the game collab, which had more of a storyline with interactions. But since they blew it in the collab, it’s more likely we’ll get a Nick Vs Capcom where both IP are present, but they’re not given the fullest coverage, and they’re alongside less-logical match-ups from each company’s other IP. (Mega Man vs SpongeBob makes very little sense on its own and would only exist to facilitate the crossover game)
Same with Capcom vs SNK. Originally, it was a “best fighting tournament ever” sort of deal due to both companies having a catalog of traditional fighting games; but in today’s market where both Capcom and SNK have active grounded fighters to support… not so much, the result would more likely be a game with less sensible crossover picks, notwithstanding that SNK’s non-fighters are usually less memorable.
This is what happens when art is treated as industry.
the "videogame industry" would kindly push back in that statement and keep looking on ways on how to raise profits and dividens for investors while reducing production costs.
Unionize
And when the larger economic system treats perpetual and exponential wealth extraction and accumulation as the only legitimate reason for anything to exist.
@@MarcDize Yep, and Yep.
@@hestiathena4917 Unfortunately true.
This is what happens when idiot customers spend real money on trash. You get more trash. This should really surprise nobody.
I remember whem Smite started introduced crossovers, given that all the characters were based of gods in religions (with some of the religions were still actively being practised), it felt kinda disrespectful since the the Avatar and Stranger Things characters were now implicitly on the same level gods from the 3rd biggest religion in the world.
well KSon is the Saint Patron of Vtubers so...
/joke
@@Artista_Frustradono no you are onto something
To me, one key difference between a thought-out, interesting crossover and a cheap cash grab is how much effort is put into integrating the incoming characters.
On the good cases, you get Marvel vs Capcom, Soul Calibur 2, Super Smash Bros, Broforce... In those games, each character is designed to be unique, and they spice up the gameplay somehow. They add variety to a game or genre.
Now on the bad ones, popular characters just become skins for existing ones. And in some cases, it actually hinders gameplay, like in Rainbow Six Siege. If someone is not aware of the crossover skins and comes across one, they will not know who the character they're seeing actually is. And I'd say knowing who your enemy is on a hero shooter is pretty damn important
4:17 do you know what that badly-put-together planet reminds me of? Supreme Executive Chairman Drek's refabricated planet from the first Ratchet and Clank game. he essentially wanted to build a whole new planet from other existing and vulnerable planets to replace the world his Blaargian kind was living on due to it being overpopulated and extremely toxic to live on without an O2 mask.
did i mention that he polluted the previous world and this is his business model all along?
so i'm not surprised the suits are into that :/
While unthemed worlds are indeed a problem if they start becoming widespread, I'd like to point towards an example of "Themeing the unthemed" in a way.
The Super Robot Wars franchise of strategic RPGs are, on paper, an example of an unthemed world. A bunch of different mecha franchises from Japan with no real connection to one another exisiting all in the same game. From Mazinger through Gundam and Macross, Code Geass and Voltes V. These are worlds that, on paper, would be hard to make connect. But the writing in Super Robot Wars games serve the purpose of creating links between these different universes in a way that makes it believable that all of these different plot threads could exist in the same world (with no "oh yeah multiverse colliding" marvel cop-out most of the time). It puts you into a world where it makes sense for Mazinger's fight against Dr. Hell can happen at the same time as Getter Robo's Dinosaur Empire's invasion of the surface, all the while the Titans from Gundam are trying to take over the world governments.
TL;DR I highly encourage people who DO like to see a bunch of stuff they like interacting with each other to check out the Super Robot Wars games as an example of how to Give a Theme to an Unthemed World.
And since a lot of them are in Japanese only and will never be rereleased, sail the high seas to find those fanmade English Patches for these amazing games, believe me they are worth it.
SRW is such a great multiverse series, I wish more games would do something similar, not that I trust many companies to write well enough to do it.
To add to this, the Project X Zone games went to very great lengths to somehow tie all those Capcom, Namco, and Nintendo characters together. Like it's not enough that Phoenix Wright and Heihachi Mishima are in a game together, Phoenix Wright is there because Heihachi hired him for a defamation case against the Mishima Zaibatsu. I love stuff like that so much!
I have the same opinion as you do with how much I like the IP being entirely separate from how much I like the crossover. I’m a massive fan of fallout, I love 40k, but seeing fallout characters and necrons on a magic card just makes me sad. I love those franchises, and I used to love mtg, but mixing those has made me fall out (heh) of love, and stop playing.
Does it dilute the brand?
@@bobodo45Yes
Yeah, one of the things I always admired about Magic is the amount of world building they managed to do in the text light format they had. I fell out of the game for a long while but was getting the itch to jump back in to it a few years ago - but then saw that their release pipeline was filled with crossover after crossover after crossover... and my interest in jumping back in totally died.
I mean, I *love* many of the IPs they were crossing over with (especially 40k!), but it made the appeal of MtG feel suddenly bland and pointless, so I will stay retired from that game.
@@bobodo45 “Dilute the brand” is a very corporate term for what I’m feeling. I’d say it’s more like the intrusion of these unrelated properties has spoiled the appeal and diverged what magic is now from what I liked about magic. If I wanted to use a literal interpretation of “diluting the brand” though I think that would also apply. There’s more than a few trading card games specifically designed around crossover fights, and if magic starts involving too many other IPs it will stop feeling distinctly magic, and merge into that kind of nebulous space where the card game is lost amidst a focus on mashing different action figures together.
Dear artist, I really appreciate your super accurate Nagant M1895 that came outta nowhere at 2:31 lol
Fun fact: the reason why Goku isn't in Smash is *specifically* because Sakurai had a rule of "only put in characters original to videogames". Even Sora's Smash rep was specifically cleansed of anything Disney. Minecraft, Dragon Quest, Sans, and Banjo-Kazooie were absolutely insane DLCs but they didn't really feel out of place beyond the initial meme value.
What about Sora's Mickey Mouse Keychain?
@@Linkopoopthere is a Mickey game
@@Robotmudkip99 Mickey wasn’t an original game character. I still thing the key blade is fine just because it is nigh impossible to remove that without seeming stuck up. Plus it’s just a symbol and not the character itself.
I think there is a big difference between Fortnite and something like COD because while COD becomes an unthemed world, Fortnite has been building a world themed on all these things coming together. From the start, Fortnite was focused on being a much more silly and less serious game than most as well and it has a whole story that spaned over about 5 years that even has comics that tie the Marvel and DC characters into the storyline. The summary is there is a time loop and the bad guys are travelling the multiverse to bring characters to the Fortnite island including even cinematics of this tying these characters to the lore of the game. Fortnite has a lot of other IPs but there are still many more original skins being released than crossover skins. This is also why Indie games are blowing up as AAA games get bad reviews because as you said so many of them just feel like cashgrabs.
I liken this to cooking. Taking a nice bowl of mac-n-cheese and just throwing a big glop of M&Ms and lemon-slices
We put the peeps in the chili pot and stir them all together....
@@twigcollins8785 Ehh, that's just sugar and gelatin
I love the "silly idea" of a LOTR big crossover... which is literally just The Lego Movie. It was pretty good, actually, but your point wasn't bad.
But what makes that movie work? The overarching idea of the story being in a child's imagination. In fact, I don't think any of the LEGO movies would work without it.
Thank you! I've been sick of crossover culture for years, and I'm so glad somebody else says it.
I love dedicated crossovers but when this stuff happens in a supposedly standalone product, it just makes it feel like the creators aren't confident in their own work, and don't care about the integrity of their settings.
crossovers used to be novel and exciting. Now I see a crossover and just think about the suits shaking hands and snickering at people who're paying for them to cut costs in creativity.
The last decent crossover was… The Lego Movie? Smash Ultimate?
Its smashing the action figures together. Its fun but fleeting, until you buy more toys. Then the cycle begins.
Very funny that i never played with my toys as the characters they were "supposed" to be, i always made up my own identities and stories for them.
The ""fun"" part is that a lot of the thinking that leads to stuff like this becoming more and more popular is also a driving factor behind AI/LLM generation. Artistic expression and the risks of creativity are irrelevant to that process; all that matters is that something is output that can be sold. It doesn't matter that it's the essence of twelve other things, slapped together via greatest-common-denominator algorithms based on loose prompts and riddled with hallucinations and inconsistencies. It passes the 'fun' test at a quick glance, and people who don't look closer can be convinced to pay for it.
This hits the nail on the head on why it upset me when CoD started doing crossover skins. I didn't know how else to explain to my friend that I didn't like the cat heads and other stuff in CoD. All I coulda say was that the "military theme" isn't there anymore, that those skins feel more in place for Fortnite.
Thank you for saying this! Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy when I see how many people are supporting post-modern mish-mash of unrelated IPs into game worlds vs. those that favor organically expanding the original world of the game. Back in the 90s I never once thought that Final Fantasy VI would be better if I could just shove in some of my favorite X-Men, for example.
Sure it was sometimes cute when we got free cameos from related IPs in some games back then (like Street Fighter 2 characters in Final Fight 2 or Cloud a little later in Final Fantasy Tactics) but for the most part the game worlds felt mercifully self-contained.
Im going to play devil's advocate with Fortnite for a second here.
Well yes, fortnite does include a lot of third-party crossovers as skins and emotes. It still has a lot of original content and story.
shoutouts to Ready Player One jumping so hard into the deep end people got burnt out on mega crossovers mid movies
I still haven’t forgiven you, Fortnite for co-opting the reveal of the big bad of Star Wars and forcing me to get footnotes in the actual movie.
My issue is Fortnite never delivered on what they promised at the outset. The Team of players vs growing zombie hordes game.
@@Babbleplay I know right? I genuinely enjoyed the tower-defence rougelite it was originally, but basically no one remembers that anymore.
@@dolphinsniper It was supposed to be the actual game. They just got sidetracked by the explosion of fame the Battle Royal got. I could understand that, but, it's been years. They've had enough time and money to hire more people to actually provide the Team Vs Zombies game they promised. THAT was why I had interest in the game in the first place
@@Babbleplay I mean, they have the money for it. But that would mean spending money on something that might not even sell (as I don't think it did well until its transformation) and they are best game in the world, so why bother?
... I want it so bad, but I can kinda get where they are coming from sadly.
@@Babbleplay Yeah, as someone who was quite interested in Save The World for the years before it released, it's a shame to see what was essentially a new "Orcs Must Die" kind of title go down the shitter
You know, what you’ve said here might also be why Fan fiction is hard to get right and is often frowned upon.
Gonna quote "Design used to be more important than bizdev" out of context all the time, thanks
Now EC can say how it breaks immersion for random stuff shoved into a setting when it has no reason to be there, but ask them if wheelchairs belong in D&D or is having forced diversity in every single historical setting where it would never be there make no sense, and watch them spin like the dickens to shift positions and then say the exact opposite thing because "reasons."
It's sad to me that games with strong narrative worlds are also falling into this stuff.
My normal expectation: Single player sanity with a consistent story. Multiplayer as a hallucinatory stew of possibility. If done very well, a third space with consistent reskin combining the mechanics of the game with the feel of the cross promotion.
...Reminds me of Metal Gear Online. You have the stories in singleplayer, while the multiplayer is just turning the wacky mechanics up to 11. Turns out it has a stupid high skill ceiling
I love Fortnite and I agree, at least with Fortnite, i can understand why and how the crossovers are happening in a narrative sense (even though they are slowly stretching it with some IP)
But I always prefer Fortnite's original characters and there little storylines like Jonsey, because it really showcase the creativity and heart of the game despite it being an BR
Everything else, like Call Of Duty? Yeeeeeah, its werid and strange
It's a shame because i used to love crossovers, like that Jimmy Timmy Power Hour
If I made a TV show, i wouldn't mind crossing over with my fellow creatives and artist, just for fun and exploration of our commonailty and highlights are differents
even if it's just advertisement at the end of day
But now with these are getting out of place and overabundance of these are, I'm slowly getting hessiant on ever doing one myself
Same here! I do love Fortnite, although I do kinda prefer its original characters! To be honest, I think they've been focusing more on it this season due to Midas returning, although they _may_ be playing with our nostalgia, but I don't think that's tha case lol!
Personally I'm fine with crossovers as long as it fits within a game or season's theme well!
@@pls_stap_ It's Also invested on Rescuing a Banana Mascot named Peely.
@@conradojavier7547 Ehhh...that was just for a season that happened right after a soft story reset.
Also, that's not just a mascot, Peely's an actual banana‼️
There are a lot more captivating stories, such as the Shadow vs Ghost feud, and also Loopers VS. (Some) Greek Gods [which is this season as I'm writing]
Man.. This really just emphasized my current disenfranchisement with Magic the Gathering... I've been deeply involved in that game for well over a decade, but their recent deluge of crossovers and rapid releases and gimicky worlds (To a new, superficial extreme.) just left me feeling.. Empty. I would have been fine with it if they kept their crossovers with a distinct silver border, playable but something players opt into and agree to do, not the default....
But no, it's so deeply engrained now, that you have to take great efforts to opt-out and agree not to engage with, and that's something few groups I've seen are willing to do. But hey, I guess in some ways it's good for me.. One less thing that I'll be spending my money on..