Sorry, Zuck. “Fortnite” Has Always Been The “True” Metaverse.

Virtual offices. Floating bodies, without legs. The Mark Zuckerberg VR. I was also skeptical of metaverse like anyone but Fortnite got me out of this disillusionment. It showed me that not only is the metaverse already here, it’s already great — whatever dystopia Zuckerberg is trying to sell you.

I don’t know what did this. This may be the part where Goku is from Dragon Ball Z box hit the grid. Or maybe it was the time someone killed me as I fidgeted trying to figure out the firing controls, then spent several minutes taming a boar in a nearby bioluminescent forest. After that, my virtual assassin flew off using one of the machine sentries of The matrix as a portable glider. It was a dizzying display of bizarre stuff that suddenly came together and left my jaw on the floor as I watched it play on my TV.

One thing is clear: Fortnite is not really a video game. It’s a virtual meeting space with a video game happening around and it’s more accessible than anything that requires a VR headset, like Meta’s Horizon Worlds Where VRChat. It’s totally free and available on every gaming device and phone on the planet.

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It is as if Loan player one it was good

People seem to have forgotten him Fortnite was originally a game about build outposts to survive hordes of monsters. Since having a battle royale mode (where 100 players drop onto a map and battle until only one remains) in 2017, the game has been a bit of a conundrum to me. I blinked and all of a sudden this weird game that came out with little fanfare and got a trendy mode became massive less than a year later. I played it for a little while in 2018 because it was free and I had nothing better to do, but I just thought it was a decent video game. I never thought it would become the leading internet dating destination.

And then it started. In 2018, developer Epic Games briefly added Marvel villain Thanos as a playable threat in Fortnite and the cross barrage began. Over the past four years, like a snowball that triggered an avalanche, friends of mine that I have never the thought would be Fortnite people have become…Fortnite people, including our dear former Mashable gaming guru Adam Rosenberg. My social feeds eventually became full of frankly hilarious screenshots of Thanos’ dabbing and videos of things like a virtual avatar of Hollywood wrestler and muscleman John Cena riding the titular dragon of DBZ.

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Once the avalanche completely consumed me and I relocated Fortnite on my PlayStation, I finally started to realize that everything that happens in the battle royale part of the experience doesn’t really matter that much. Of course, winning is good, but it’s secondary to see Goku, John Cena, Darth Vader and street fighter‘s Ryu does two-year-old TikTok dances before or after a lightsaber duel.

You can simply explore the vast map (which includes towns, islands, the aforementioned glowing forest, deserts, and more) and do quests to unlock more skins and goofy accessories. You can go “fishing”. You can hop in a car with a working radio station and just take a ride through the landscape, or do the same with a boat in one of the map’s huge lakes. It’s not enough as social as something like VRChat; you can’t just voice chat with anyone (only friends you’ve added to your party), which means a lot of the socializing takes place in the form of dancing. But, honestly, talking to strangers online can be a drag anyway, so I don’t mind that much.

Epic adds new items to the map several times a year and updates the in-game store daily with new skins for purchase with real money, which is the only part of Fortniteis the wild metaverse that I don’t like. Having to spend a few bucks to be Goku was a bummer. There was even a Balenciaga haute couture collab with brand skins for sale. But Epic did $9 billion in revenue in just two years, so I can’t blame the company for doing things that way. And the good news is that you can access every part of the map and participate in the real Game part of Fortnite for free, without any restrictions.

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And that’s not to mention the crazy concerts they gave with artists like Ariana Grande and Travis Scott. Everything works because the ultimate goal is to enjoy, no matter what you choose to do. No one claims that Fortnite is going to revolutionize dating or exercise, or work meetings, like so many VR apps (both from Meta and otherwise) have promised to do in the past. However, if someone held meetings in FortniteI would be impressed.

Regardless of whether Fortnite doesn’t have the best shooting controls or anything; there is simply no other game or app that offers this experience on each game console or mobile device you could possibly own.

But Meta always wins in the end

Well, all devices except the one Meta is banking on to spread the word about its version of the Metaverse. So far, Fortnite has taken over every gaming ecosystem except VR, but rumor has it that that may soon change.

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A tweet from Fortnite Leaker HYPEX said there was language in a recent game update that indicated support for Meta Quest headsets sometimes on the line. As much as I would like to position Fortnite as a good version of the (perhaps unfairly) much maligned Horizon Worlds app from Meta, it would definitely be a hit if Fortnite got support from Quest.

Even though I and others have complained that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to force us to wear VR headsets for work, it’s a no-brainer to get Fortnite in the Quest market. Heck, that would probably even be fun to play, since Fortnite is a fun and goofy time no matter where you play it. Added VR support for Fortnite would only cement it as the only true metaverse.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have Vegeta dabbed after crashing a speedboat on a fishing pier.