This week, Epic added a new deliberately chill game mode called Party Royale to Fortnite-a new island just for hanging out with friends. Should i play in party royale tonight…? /PQHmkrnF9X And Fortnite’s team is cleverly iterating on its already-good ideas. Of course, other games get this right too (Minecraft comes to mind, of course, and others) but timing is everything right now. If you can talk a friend into downloading an app, you’re in business. Sure, Fortnite is fun and addictive, but lots of games are fun and addictive-and Fortnite is much harder than a lot of those games.Įpic’s real innovation is its buttery-smooth social layer that seamlessly connects players across platforms. There’s a reason that Fortnite, like Animal Crossing, brought non-gamers into the fold. This is something that Fortnite maker Epic Games has been doing right for a while now. Video games, or more specifically video games as platforms, seem to be resonating right now, even among the kinds of people who wouldn’t identify as gamers. The pandemic is showing us that the sweet spot of mainstream virtual presence might be something more than a Zoom-like video conference but less than a full-on virtual reality experience. It was super lovely to talk to and meet all of you from all around the world <3 /G9a8SNTFe0 Thanks to everyone who came out to yet another Suhoor. Plenty of players are using Animal Crossing for more intimate get-togethers too, like celebrating Ramadan and Passover last month or just gathering far-flung friends or family together in one place. Much like a normal conference, “ Deserted Island DevOps” boasted speakers, moderators and even talks to be uploaded to YouTube after the fact. One of the writers from Rogue One just made his own in-game Animal Crossing talkshow, complete with its own tiny guest couch and cityscape view.Ī developer in New York even launched a dev conference that took place entirely on an Animal Crossing island. These experiences are happening on an individual level, but also a collective one-and people are getting creative. It felt different than signing out of a video chat or dropping out of a conversation via text. When I left her island I felt a pang of sadness at leaving her funny little physical manifestation, running circles around my own. And those constraints made it more special, for some reason. In spite of the interface’s few emotes and harsh character limits, her weird sense of humor managed to bubble up through the game’s limitations. The last time I genuinely laughed and could not stop was visiting my younger sister’s Animal Crossing island right after the game launched. In Animal Crossing, this is truly a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts experience.
But the gaming world has understood this for years. Socializing spatially, as it turns out, is something we probably took for granted. With flat screens, we have little sense of our physical selves in relation to one another. (And for those of us lucky enough to be working from home, visiting friends after work with the same tools we use to do work stuff doesn’t always feel great.) More often than not, we sit, stationary at our designated video-chat-spot, trade reports from self-quarantine and maybe drag in a cat or a kid or two.īut even untethered from our desks with more playful video chat apps or innovations like Facebook’s Portal and its roving eye, there’s still something else that doesn’t get conveyed.
Even with Zoom and other more casual chat apps, video chat can feel sort of flat. Especially the kind of hanging out where you’re not really doing anything in particular, not talking about any one thing-just kind of being.Īs we continue to stay physically distant from one another, it can be hard to feel socially present with the tools we have. During these long, mundane physically-distant days, stretching on into an uncertain future like an ever-lengthening beigeish corridor, it’s impossible not to miss hanging out with friends.
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