The gaming industry wouldn’t be where it is today without the powerful popularity of Fortnite. We’re talking legendary runs in fields like stream culture, competitive gaming, and most importantly, pop culture collaborations.
Bringing in a little bit of every likeable category across the boards: TV shows, movies, going through the forbidden door with other gaming titles, rezzing classics back into relevancy, and establishing newcomers as quickly as they hit the shop. People like to joke around about “everybody getting a collab”, when reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s a very methodical, maybe sometimes quid pro quo, approach. Whatever intellectual property or person of interest’s likeness makes it to the game will bring eyes to the IP/person and the game. But what happens when so much becomes too much when it comes to diversity?
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Just as the year was coming to a close, Epic Games decided to drop a nitrogen bomb on social media, announcing through their Icon Series member’s X account the newest collaboration plus skin reveal. This was for none other than Kim Kardashian.
It would take seconds before the internet was set on fire, with debates flaring between skin worthiness, character values, and lifestyle choices, some conversations steering far away from the gaming genre.
With that in mind, and just like with every big reveal in Fortnite, we can establish that it doesn’t matter who or what they bring to their platform; it’s theirs to expand. And whoever is on the other side of the collaboration shouldn’t be burned at the stake for getting a huge opportunity like being featured in arguably the most influential game of all time.
That being said, however, let’s talk about timing. Not weeks, mere days after the Kim Kardashian debacle, purchase, and inevitable backlash, Epic Games then released their Holiday protagonists for their yearly Fortnite Winterfest.
Somehow, someway, we landed right back on SpongeBob SquarePants. Don’t get it twisted, I love me some pineapple under the sea just as much as the next guy, and it isn’t like this is the first time our yellow buddy made their way to The Island. What really catches me off guard is the timing.
Most Fortnite collaborations are somewhat curated through popularity, relevance, impact, and/or morality filters, so as not to truly fall under the “everyone gets a skin” trope. And while I’m not one to judge other people’s past, it’s impossible not to shake my head when I heard Kim Kardashian’s controversial reveal was followed up by one of the most popular cartoons of all time on children’s most important holiday of the year.
Coming from the world of reality TV, a second-generation public figure with as much heat as Kim K getting a Fortnite skin shouldn’t be a big deal because of her trajectory in the public eye.
But when you try to sell me on coincidences, marketing her as real-life Barbie and “the most customizable Fortnite skin ever” in a latex suit with four colors, including Natural Nude, then quickly launching your Christmas campaign mostly targeted at your youngest audiences doesn’t come off as a whoopsie-daisy, it comes off as a very weird strategy.
Even if it just happened to align this way, I would love to take a peek at Epic Games’ calendarization. Just like they time yearly occasions, maybe try to “tune” the months’ content releases, linking them and piggybacking one off the other by genre or category.
But the more I think about it, I feel more certain that they like it this way. The random and spontaneous nature of it all, the shock value. Maybe Fortnite collaborations were never about star power and draw power. Maybe the collaborations were the friends we made along the way.
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