The economy of attention is dead, but Fortnite could hold the solution

The economy of attention is dying, and it is not beautiful; there is very little time in the day to pay attention to things and as a society we have reached the limit. (By things I mean announcements.) Fortnitehowever, has managed to maintain its cultural relevance and even to grow since its launch in 2017 – which is unusual. And that's because its creator, Epic Games, figured out how to get people to stay alert.

"Paying your attention" was a sentence before it became literalization, before wise people realized how much time was money. The advertising industry – and therefore the sectors it supports, like the media – is based on the idea that if you've heard of something and have a positive connection to it, you're more likely to buy the product or experience. And that's not wrong: people make decisions for unfathomable reasons even for themselves All the time. It makes sense to monetize the fundamental irrationality of humanity. (Sucks to the economists who peddled the model of rational consumer's microeconomic behavior!) But the basic assumption that the entire building is built becomes unstable, because what happens when the attention of society is completely monopolized?

A recent report by media and technology research firm Midia underlines this point:[E]Management has declined across the sector, suggesting that the economy of attention has peaked. Consumers simply have more free time to focus on new digital entertainment proposals, which means they have to prioritize between them. The trend, she writes, has been going on for a while and now promises only a slowdown in revenue – as indicated by the disappointing quarterly results of some of the major game publishers. "It can be said that earlier than most players in the gaming sector would have thought." As Karol Severin, a researcher at Midia, says, "the competition within the attention economy is now more intense than ever."

The problem is that the attention is not to scale. There is only too much time in the day to be announced; The ads themselves are becoming less effective because they are now everywhere. When was the last time you consumed something that did not try to sell you something or collect your personal data to sell you things better?

Enter Fortnite. As the most popular game in the world, or at least the best known, it is an important part of the economy of attention. Fortnite is ubiquitous in people under 18 and its microtransactions have raised billions of dollars in profits for Epic Games. One can not really exaggerate how popular the game is among young people: it has become a shared culture, with all the jokes, references and the coded language that it implies. If you are around two or more children, the chance they make a dance of the game increases. astronomically.

But the true genius of Epic lies in the way he addresses the young audience: Fortnite is above all a place to hang out with your friends. That's why it's not strange that Weezer is playing unpublished songs on an island of the game and that no one is bothering when DJ and producer Marshmello gives a concert in a virtual park.

The immense popularity of the game and its status as a favorite place worries its competitors in the economy of attention. Last month Netflix mentioned in its 2018 results report that "we compete (and lose against) Fortnite more than HBO. Polygon Netflix considers that gambling is its "most severe competition" because, for the streaming giant, the most valuable parameter for the consumer is the time spent in front of a screen. If people play Fortnite, they can not watch Netflix.

This means that advertisements (and groups, it seems) have arrived. It's not hard to imagine Fortnite becoming a place where commercials are unobtrusive but ubiquitous, as in the hallucinogenic cyberpunk movies of the past. The game has already been promoted for the Disney release by Ralph breaks the Internet and introduced Avengers Thanos, the villain, has few complaints from the players. This may be because the collaborations were limited in time, did not bet much and did not affect the game, unless you wanted it in the case of Thanos.

FortniteThe model of this type also allows this type of otherwise invasive changes. Every two months, Epic publishes a massive update that reorganizes the map and the elements presented. Epic calls them the seasons, just like television. And each serves the same purpose: bring the players back for a little longer and avoid the competition from other games at the Royal. FortniteThe latest update cribbed at least two main features of Apex Legends, the first royal battle of the EA publisher. (Mountain peak managed to find 25 million players in just under a month, after a surprise and non-promotional release; it is currently the only real competition Fortnite "It's not that it's particularly better or worse for the economy of attention than others, but it touches the ropes with generations, which usually have more time to allocate, which is why they are doing so well in the world. attention economy, "says Severin. "I think it's more a matter of changing culture from generation to generation: Fortnite is one of the first to have built a truly successful business model that consists of selling digital items that do not allow players to advance in the game. They are just cosmetics. "Twenty years ago, people defined themselves by the clothes that they wore and by what they listened to. "Today, the personal image of consumers is much more widely defined in the virtual world."

That Netflix even recognizes Fortnite as a competitor is important because it means that digital media companies are starting to admit that growth is not infinite and that they are changing their ambitions accordingly. Netflix will not release a Royal Battle Game. (Probably.) But I would bet that they will continue to experiment with interactive tools – like Black mirrorThe last episode, "Bandersnatch".

While Black mirrorThe audience is mainly composed of adults. It is no coincidence that the company offers interactive offers for the youngest members of the same demographic group. Fortnite captured. Netflix has partnered with Telltale Games, now gone, for an interactive cartoon version of Minecraft: Fashion History. A Strange thingsAn inspired collaboration was also in preparation before Telltale closed, and Netflix said it was still "evaluating other options for Strange things the universe to life on an interactive medium ", according to Polygon.

FortniteThe eighth season began just a few days ago and the island has changed again. This time, there is a volcano with lava, shooting guns and a pirate theme; familiar locations have been replaced by new locations that players will take hours to master. When I logged in the other day, the other players seemed better, one way or another, as if they had just come back from another game and they wanted to come back to that which was familiar to them.