The Guitar Hero generation and the average Fortnite demographic see little crossover, but the introduction of Fortnite Festival proves rhythm games can still have their moment in modern pop gaming.
Fortnite Festival is the franchise’s take on Rock Band, as its developer — Harmonix — collaborated with Epic Games to bring it to life. It features new songs daily, and many are from the music scene’s most viral artists, including Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar, Hatsune Miku, Green Day and, most recently, Sabrina Carpenter.
The game rode the coattails of phenomena like Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which reinvigorated people’s interest in the live music industry worldwide. One could argue Fortnite’s timing couldn’t have been better.
Many developers have used Fortnite as an inspiration for their gameplay and other mechanics. Its pervasiveness in modern pop culture could reignite interest in rhythm games in the style of Rock Band or old franchises like PaRappa the Rapper and Dance Dance Revolution.
Bringing guitar-based rhythm games with bespoke controllers back from the dead also connects people to music in an intimate way. These games allow the player to slowly become more comfortable with the hangups of early musicians, like strumming and chord progressions, in a fun and low-stakes environment. It is what drew so many gamers to titles like Guitar Hero in the early 2000s, and Fortnite capitalized on this community-building element to strengthen Festival.
Fortnite’s impact on gaming has not come without controversies. Excessive microtransactions, toxic community culture and controversial artificial intelligence use have become synonymous with the intellectual property (IP). Each purchasable song costs the equivalent of $4.50, or 500 V-Bucks. While Fortnite Festival’s exact sales are unknown, total revenue exceeded $3.5 billion in 2023, or 80% of all Epic Games.
Its prominence suggests future rhythm games could incorporate these elements because Fortnite is the precedent. In an interview with Harmonix founder Alex Rigopolous, he hinted why it is such a successful title, saying Fortnite is ”... a universe of games, and it's a universe of games that are all connected with each other in this way that has never been done in gaming before.
“… If you acquire music to play in Fortnite Festival, well, you can also use that music in the jam system, which you can take anywhere through the ecosystem. Or, in the future, we're going to be empowering creators to make their own music games that can also access the music that [is] in players' collective libraries.”
Rigopolous asserts here that future rhythm games could only achieve Fortnite Festival’s level by establishing a strong identity and metanarrative first. Without the dedicated fanbase and malleability of the Fortnite IP, it is uncertain if Festival would have resonated with audiences.
Fortnite Festival may cause developers to dip their toes into more rhythm-based gameplay, but it is difficult to tell if it will extrapolate what makes it an addictive gameplay loop or what will earn it the most money.