Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment

As audiences have embraced on-demand video services, algorithmic feeds, and an ever-growing number of digital “things to do,” our collective attentions have become hyper-fragmented. Yet we know that audiences actually love shared live experiences. Jeopardy is more fun watched with others. Movies are funnier in a packed theater. It’s hard to enjoy sporting events that happened hours earlier .The durability of this appeal spans generations: Boomers watched the moon landing together, Generation X witnessed the end of M*A*S*H, and millennials recently collectively viewed (and complained about) the ending to Game of Thrones. Each generation might prefer different content, but we all love to watch it together and live. There’s no better proof of these two points than the recent #FortniteBlackout. The collapse of Fortnite into a black hole represented the natural evolution of video gaming into a more viewer-driven medium. This event, which served as a sort of TV finale, was witnessed with surprise by tens of millions of the world’s youth around the world simultaneously. Esports personality and consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau noted 4.5 million viewers on YouTube and 1.5m viewers on Twitch, and there are perhaps millions or more who watched in-engine.