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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/error521 on 2024-02-12 17:45:36.
With the heated political (and literal) climate that the world finds itself in these days, people more and more find themselves wanting to take up the role of an activist, and try to make a real difference in the world. This kind of thing always tends to come and go in waves, and the Trump administration definitely brought into full force. The pandemic only exemplified this, doubly so when the 2020 BLM protests kicked off and every company on the planet was pressured (…I guess?) into posting a black screen on Twitter and removing episodes of sitcoms that had vaguely satirical uses of blackface.
Before those protests eventually settled down once they achieved their ultimate goal of getting Cleveland’s voice actor on Family Guy replaced, one company that decided to throw their hat into the activism ring was Epic Games, who decided to address it within their uber-popular multiplayer game, Fortnite. I’m sure anyone reading this has at least heard of Fortnite, but for those who only know it as “that thing all the kids are into these days”, well, I’ll give some context.
Fortnite is an enormously successful online…well, it’s a lot of things, but nominally it’s a “battle royale” third-person shooter where 100 players are dumped onto a map and have to gather weapons and loot to be the last one standing. It’s got a fairly distinct, cartoony art-style, no real gore or blood, and all those darned Twitch streamers swarmed to it like flies, meaning it is enormously popular with kids and young teenagers in particular. Naturally, Epic has heavily captailzed on this by including things like popular dances (which has caused no small share of controversy) and crossovers with popular IPs - both trendy and vintage - like DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Rick & Morty. So if you ever wanted to see, Darth Vader, Rick Sanchez, Catwoman, and Iron Man get into drive-bys while Eminem plays on the car radio, you know where to look. Besides GTA modding, anyway.
However, that doesn’t do justice to just how much of an insane, surreal fever dream Fortnite actually is. The game radically changes every other week with new modes, weapons, features, and radical map changes. You can go away for a month and come back to a game with a completely overhauled map, new weapons, and about a million gameplay changes, most of which will, again, completely change within the next month. The game constantly gets new events, including ones with the aforementioned crossover IPs, but also weirder stuff like in-game screenings of movies (including screenings of the Christopher Nolan films Batman Begins, Inception, and The Prestige), digital concerts with artists like Marshmello, Ariana Grande, and Travis Scott, and occasionally splashy, promoted events where they find some elaborate justification for nuking the entire map. If you remember that “Metaverse” shit companies were hyped about a few years ago, Fortnite is arguably not far off from what they were trying to accomplish.
So, with the plans to broaden what Fortnite could really be and a want to help in some small way to improve society, Fortnite decided to make a big statement by…removing police cars from the game. Which…okay.
Anyway, after this truly monumental step, Epic decided they weren’t done. They decided they were going to host a discussion viewable in-game, titled “We The People” starring Killer Mike of Run the Jewels fame and Van Jones, Jemele Hill and Elaine Welteroth of “I think I saw them on my Twitter timeline once” fame.
You can watch that here and putting aside all political opinions, it’s really hard to ignore that this event was extremely dull, especially for the theoretical kids and pre-teens who would be watching it. It’s such a dry, uneventful conversation, there’s nothing to make it more interesting or interactive than just watching a YouTube video, and it’s not at all presented in a way that would be easy for kids to understand or relate to. Do you really think the 10-year old who begged their mom to buy a Stormtrooper skin is gonna be deeply invested in the conversation about what percentage of products at retail should be from black owned businesses? But you did get an emote for signing in when it was on, so at least there’s that.
Anyway, as you might expect, instead of sitting their white asses down and listening, players instead just literally threw tomatoes at the screen and spammed emotes and pings everywhere to disrupt the experience. You could get mad at them acting like a bunch of 12-year olds, but, well, most of them were probably literally 12. And I believe all that happened during the aforementioned movie screenings as well, so it wasn’t exactly exclusive to this or something Epic couldn’t have anticipated.
There was another event later in the month talking specifically about voter suppression that I can’t find any footage of, which probably tells you about how much interest it gathered. Regardless it’s clear that this whole approach needed a rethink, something more interactive, something easier for kids to get invested in. And one year later, Epic…tried a lot harder, I’ll give them that.
So Martin Luther King Jr. Did civil rights, had a dream, not a fan of capitalism, got shot in the head by someone who may or may not have been working for the government. So, in August, out of the blue, the world was greeted with a Fortnite trailer elegantly titled “Celebrate MLK: TIME Studios Presents March Through Time in Fortnite”. It’s a trailer of these goofy cartoon characters walking through protests and a MLK museum while dramatic music and the “I have a dream” speech plays. It’s almost impossible to take seriously, and as you might expect the general reaction was bafflement and disbelief.
Can you imagine a world where kids see MLK and are like “Oh yeah! that’s the guy from Fortnite!”
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the amount of Victory Royales they have.
He’s turning in his grave so fast he could power a city
Pouring out my chug jug in solidarity
It should have been Malik instead, not only he was for armed resistance… he was a camper too
That said, while it was largely met with mockery and derision, there were a few defenders. After all, despite how silly it may seem, maybe it could still be a great way to teach kids about race. So let’s talk about the actual event itself.
As the title implied, the event seemed to largely be spawned by TIME Magazine apparently inspired from when they did a similar thing as a Virtual Reality experience, with some of Fortnite’s community map makers being roped into it. It was also pushed by Epic in-game quite heavily, so they were clearly enthusiastic about the idea.
Whoever it was that was most involved, it was clear that they did genuinely learn a lot from Fortnite’s last attempt to tackle racism - it’s much more interactive and engaging. Instead of just watching a boring video, you explore a map filled with all sorts of historical landmarks, footage of MLK Jr. giving the speech, lots of little bits of information and trivia to read, plus quizzes and puzzles to complete. It felt like actually exploring an interactive museum instead of the equivalent of your teacher pulling up a YouTube video while she goes outside for a smoke.
Overall, while we can question if Fortnite is an appropriate platform for these kind of heavy topics, this event overall went over much better, and was considered a respectful and educational tribu - Nah, I’m kidding, it was a fucking mess.
The most obvious problem was that Fortnite is a game that has a lot of crossovers, both with real-life celebrities and fictional characters. And, shocker, a lot of those crossovers come off as hilariously out of place when contrasted with such a serious, real-life topic. Like, you ever thought you’d see Rick Sanchez and the Xenomorph solemnly reading about the civil rights movement?
Oh, and how about those emotes? Now, Epic had some foresight here, and disabled some of the ones that could most obviously used to be offensive like [facepalming and laughing emojis](https://www.reddit…
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