Ariana Grande's Fortnite Concert - Extra Credits

you know sometimes a topic comes in so fast in the gaming industry that there's just not enough time to write a script about it so that's when i take off my narration caller [Music] oh man i can just talk like a normal human being for a second hi everyone uh this episode is going to be a little bit different i'm going to lean on my podcasting routes and talk a little bit off the cuff about the roller coaster of emotions i experienced during the ariana grande concert that happened in fortnight and actually why i think it might be my most transcendent gaming moment i've had in recent memory i know i was i was shocked too [Music] hey curiosity stream thank you so much for supporting this channel so first and foremost a couple disclaimers right out the gate i am not a huge ariana grande fan i don't dislike her or her music but it's never been something that's spoken to me and the same could really be said for fortnight i've had a fun match here and there but i've never really resonated with the game in general though i do like

watching people play so maybe there's something to that and i know that the concept of fortnite concerts are not new i mean you could go down the list of the people that have done this before travis scott got something like 12.3 million viewers and raked in like 20 million dollars in merchandise sales which is just mind-boggling so these concerts are not new nor was i surprised to hear that ariana grande was doing one but the thing that got me here was most of these concerts uh with the exception of travis scott and a couple i think beforehand uh i'm not a fortnite historian i apologize were just sort of like screens of either pre-recorded or live shows shown in like a broken rift box mortise thing in the fortnite space but when i read about this concert including a bunch of actual gameplay elements something struck me like really hard and it was that this wasn't just a sit back and watch a cg ariana lip-sync to her own music this felt way more interactive so i looked up the times to see if i could make a show and yeah much like a normal irl concert this could only be experienced at certain times during one specific

weekend and as luck would have it the very last performance was going to happen a mere hour after i discovered this was the thing so i thought heck let's just play it experience it maybe even stream it on twitch i got everything set up and i actually couldn't because uh by the end of it i was like oh the dmca takedowns are going to be brutal speaking of which i do want to give a quick shout out to my audio editor mac right now who's going to have to turn this rant into something that is remotely entertaining and i also want to really thank him for his restraint for not playing any ariana grande tracks so we could avoid said takedowns of course i'm sure he just added something there mac please don't do that again thanks buddy so i decided i was gonna do this i was going to take my first step into the infant stage of whatever metaverse entertainment seems to be heading toward and i logged into fortnite for the first time probably in six to eight months i don't know i only have one skin it's one of the psychos from borderlands with a

claptrap backpack and then i got put into a hub world for about a half hour like on top of a ufo complete with like a giant countdown clock in the sky and i gotta say that was pretty boring it was just a bunch of avatars running around dancing doing all the emotes there were some little mini games you could play like put ice blocks on your feet it all seemed very silly and innocent and once the show started stuff starts getting weird to summarize what i would say the opening act of this experience was you do a bunch of baseline fun little activities all time to music tracks there's like a splatoon half pipe that felt right out of a sonic game then you end up in a like susian world bouncy forest for another track and then finally you fight like a boss monster i think the storm king or something on a plane with three other actual players to the track by wolf mothers these are like all opening tracks and while i was doing this i was thinking to myself the game mechanics are all simple there is no question the actual actions i was performing sliding bouncing shooting on rails those are things that are always present in games but there was something

weird and special about this and i don't know if it was the limited time aspect of it i don't know if it was that i was experiencing it with other people that you were sort of like part air quotes partying with in the beginning doing all of these activities with you i haven't even heard a lick of ariana grande yet and neither should the audience right now mac you are walking on the nice mister and by you i mean our claim of fair use in this video but okay just no more all right please please thank you where was i um oh right yeah the moment that this turned around for me was after you beat the storm boss and you fall down and your plane crashes there is a pre-rendered but gives you the feeling of actually having your own interactive moment where your avatar gets revived by another avatar and i don't know if it's a computer-controlled you know npc that's resurrecting me that's reviving me but it did have the skin of someone that i was partying with previously meaning it gave my brain the good juice chemical of ah a fellow concert goer is

helping me then you look to the right as the camera pans that way and you'll see another character in a similar skin who needs to be revived and it just sort of hangs there and i got this weird sense of camaraderie the actual emotional pang of helping other people at a concert i don't know if you've ever been to a concert or if you've ever been in a mosh pit or anything like that but it's all about sort of taking care of each other and this video game just gave me that same emotional response yeah it was um it was something and then the woman of the hour arrives and ariana grande rises from a weird little water bubble and the concert starts in earnest and this flies through a bunch of different stuff flying through the sky in like bubbles and rainbow pinatas there's a moment where ariana grande starts brandishing a giant crystal hammer and likes walking up these huge m.c escher stairs and you have to like

follow on a different track and wait for the beats to hit and you're following her up all the way for her to smash a a crystal roof or something and she comes through the top of it and you're in space and she flies through the sky and there's a whole bunch of stuff look what i've just described is ridiculous it is a pop star a cg rendered version of her performing a 20-ish minute mix of music for however many groups of 50 or 100 that the fortnite servers can handle and it shouldn't work in my eyes there's something about it there the cynical part of my brain the part that i realized you know you know fortnite is just a money-making machine and there's various problems all that jazz i know that in those moments of doing this thing it kind of all melted away and i don't know if that's a good or a bad thing but i will say this it is effective i again not a fan of ariana grande not a fan of fortnite what have i been doing since i did this i've been listening to ariana grande i've been playing games of fortnite and having fun

uh they haven't gotten any money out of me but there's no question that this type of event at this point is going to become more and more ubiquitous with fortnite and gaming and i was trying to pinpoint down right why is that and i think i have it but i'm not sure i would love to read in the comments what you all think about this but i think my resonance with this comes from the fact that this is the closest thing in both the categories of good things and bad things that felt like a concert like an irl concert that wasn't a irl concert i had to be there at a certain time i had to wait in a air quotes line the experience itself was limited just like you can't go see your favorite band play live whenever you want they're only there for us like at a certain time you know and while the digital space does allow us to sort of transcend that there is something i think it's a human condition where we feel special when we get to experience something we know is limited also it's done with other people

this is nothing new to the gaming space but like when you combined that with sort of the actual other feel like i was with other concert goers more so than just like jumping up and down and using emotes in front of a screen we were on a musical adventure together and so i think that's why it worked it felt to me like an actual physical event but i experienced it at my computer and i know things have done stuff like this before i've tried them before and it has never hit and i don't know what it is about this particular thing maybe it's the the the psychologically programmed ability of pop music to get in your head maybe it's the uh you know flashy candy coatedness of fortnite maybe it's all of these things that can be considered sometimes homogeneous like using algorithms to figure out the venn diagram of the most possible people that will come and enjoy and use and spend money in your product maybe it's all of those cynical things but for 20 minutes i didn't care i was having fun i was doing this with strangers i felt connected to people

that i didn't know in a game i'm not familiar with watching an artist that i couldn't sing more than a bar of one of her most popular songs so i think the point is this this was just fun and in a world like of all of the things that i described earlier the corporatism of the gaming industry the abuses in it the toxicity in some communities all of these things every once in a while i like a reminder as to why i still play games and why games matter and you can see them in a lot of different ways a lot of different places this was a place i did not expect to get that feeling and i'm thankful for it that's such a strange thing to say so what does this all mean for me am i going to start listening to ariana grande on a regular basis am i going to try to rank up in fortnight i don't know it's been two days since i watched and experienced this thing and i don't know if the feeling is going to last but like all technology and like whenever we decide to integrate it with the interactiveness of human beings social structure there are good and bad things

with that but i will say this was a experience in the game space that will keep me thinking for a long time and that i will not forget heck you might even say when it comes to ariana grande and fortnite this even had me switching them positions okay mac you can play the track [Music] but what do you all think about this am i reading too much into this event that is an obvious corporate shilling to just get more money into the epic machine or has it transcended that and become an emotionally resonant experience for not only people that are fans of these two genres mashed up but possibly other people in the game space as well and beyond let me know what you think in the comments because i think this is a sliver a tiny glimpse of the metaversal concept that is to come in our favorite medium so hey everyone thanks so much for letting me sort of rant a bit thank you again to mack for cutting this together in a way that might make sense and thanks so much to our artist scott who's making all of the pretty pictures for all of this uh this

lunacy that i am uh spitting off the cuff and uh yeah we'll see you with a more structured episode next time i promise this was just an experiment uh also you know like subscribe patreon i don't know what do youtubers say i'm normally a cartoon speaking much more succinctly than i am now so just pretend like i just did a whole episode and now will end like this because in the game space you never know what type of world you're going to experience next all right let's get out of here zoe i don't know if this worked but you know my smile is beaming my skin is gleaming the way it shines you know i've seen it i watch all the shows on my cellular of course you know i'm talking about nebula wait what just happened i blacked out for a second thanks to nebula we're able to offer a ton of extra credits extra history and extra mythology episodes all ad-free on their platform as well as a few nebula originals such as the extra extra history tipu sultan tiger or tyrant and my episode of their working title series where i get to jam about the opening

sequence of cowboy bebop yeah i promise i don't butcher yokocano's iconic theme over there we love nebula because they're a bi craters for craters streaming service featuring original content from some of our favorite educational entertainers on the internet such as renee ritchie tierzoo and princess weeks and you know who else loves independent educational creators curiosity stream so much so in fact that they've teamed up with us over at nebula to offer a phenomenal two-for-one deal meaning sign up for curiosity stream using our link in the description and they'll throw in a matching nebula subscription for free sorry sorry if you're new to the game curiosity stream is an online learning platform where you can watch thousands of amazing documentaries and award-winning original series one doc we just finished was the emoji story a curiosity stream feature that chronicles the rise of these tiny pictographic poops and asks who if anyone is in charge of this new global digital language so head over to curiositystream.com extra credits right now to get both of these amazing resources for only 14.97

for an entire year and that's 26 percent off the regular price not to mention you'll be helping out our channel in the process thanks space cowboys sorry not sorry a huge thanks to our legendary patrons oh reals one kyle murgatroyd joseph blame dominic valenciana casey muscha alicia bramble and ahmed zion turn [Music] you