The song was designed to sell ‘skins’ – in-
game costumes that players could buy – but
it also rose high on the pop charts, showing
an appetite for crossover experiences that
combine music and game culture.
In February of this year, Epic Games,
developers of game phenomenon Fortnite
(2017), staged arguably the most ambitious
live music performance in a virtual world to
date. Fortnite Battle Royale invites 100 players
to drop from the sky and fight to be the last
person standing in an ever-shrinking level.
Players can construct modular structures
with which to access new areas or hide from
enemies. The best players are good at both
shooting and building. The game is tied to
music culture through in-game dances that
encourage players to ‘emote’ to others. Most
of the dances reference popular culture:
examples are Snoop Dogg, Irish jigging, Sein-
feld and Scrubs. Fortnite dances have become
iconic; various footballers at the 2018 FIFA
World Cup performed them in celebration,
including Frenchman Antoine Griezmann in
the tournament final.
The integration of music and dance
continued with the announcement that
US-based DJ Marshmello was to hold a live
in-game concert – to be broadcast across
Fortnite’s servers, reaching millions of players.
When the event arrived, however, the venue
seemed somewhat unremarkable, typical
of stages erected in parks every summer
and nothing like, say, one of Mark Fisher’s
famously exuberant set designs. But this was
a video-game world, and games regularly play
with space in weird ways. As the concert date
approached, players built floating structures
to gain a better view and practised their dance
moves. When Marshmello appeared, they
found themselves in a ten-minute-long per-
formance that comprised stage, crowd and the
world itself. The intensity of the virtual space
steadily grew along with breaks and rises in
the music. The world performed in tandem
with the DJ – all made possible by game tech-
nologies that excel at incorporating different
types of information into one environment.
A game like Fortnite is a layered space
of programmed logics, art, 3D-modelled
architecture, written narratives and interface
design. Sound sources must be positioned
and physics simulated. Objects are assigned
‘colliders’, invisible boundaries that prevent
the player from falling out of the world. Epic
and Marshmello manipulated each element
in real time for over 10 million people at
once. The implication is a form of all-encom-
passing spatial performance that festivals of
the future could embrace. Such responsive,
layered, virtual environments would have a
huge reach, provided the digital infrastruc-ture, which many games already have, is in
place. Fortnite’s recent launch of an island
dedicated to American rock band Weezer
suggests music will continue to be part of the
game’s development.
Performances in games and virtual
spaces have been around for some time. In
2006, American singer Suzanne Vega released
her album with a live concert in Second Life,
an online world that has hosted many such
performances. Duran Duran Universe, the
British band’s private island within this
world, features a lipstick-shaped skyscraper
and a cinema for the group’s music videos.
Second Life was a particularly suitable host,
given its user-driven attributes. As a sandbox
environment, a free-roaming world with few
restrictions, it lets players add self-built 3D
models, code and design events as desired. In
a more contemporary context, the DIY spirit
is best embodied by Minecraft. The building-
block game has become a piece of design
software in its own right, forged by the
creativity of over 90 million regular players.
Unsurprisingly, some of the largest and most
experimental virtual music events have taken
place on this platform, many lasting longer
than ten minutes.
The largest Minecraft-based music
event to date was Fire Festival, which was held
over two days in January. The team behindFortnite players could build floating
structures to gain a better view of DJ
Marshmello’s virtual concert.
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