This reads kind of like a RAND strategic threat assessment of the Polyarny shipyard circa 1973 - "Fortnite" the abstract entity, somewhere over there behind the iron curtain, where it may some day cross the Rhine and eliminate life as we know it. I've tried Fortnite. It ain't my bag. But then, I don't know anybody who plays Fortnite. If you know someone who plays Fortnite, it's a persistent cross-platform social space that you can interact with friends on any device anywhere you have signal. This is almost accidental to the game itself; Discord wasn't attempting to be a social space either but the gaming companies have discovered that "social" catches on better when it's not the thing you're monetizing. Epic managed to accidentally recreate Second Life for people who aren't 55-year-old Furries. If they can get deliberate about it they'll go far.
The author seems to be a techno-futurist judging by his tone. I've played Fortnite once or twice, really don't get it. But then I heard that they're making north of $300 million a month. That it's where essentially all teenage boys recreate. On the other hand, the techno-futurism was on display for WoW, Second Life, Minecraft... I don't really see Fortnite as any sort of terminus. Still. Almost half a bill' on skins. Fuck me.
Well, consider the source. Media ReDEFined has always been the un-Vice - they're not hip and aloof from what they observe, they're dorky and aloof from what they observe. Nobody has successfully made a persistent virtual space that attracts all participants. This despite the fact that it's been the Great Shining Future since Tron. Seriously - every cyberpunk book, story, comic or movie you've ever seen has some form of "jacking into the matrix" or some shit. It's as inevitable as the iPad was once Vannevar Bush drew a Memex in 1945. The fact that every technological innovation ends up popping social indicates how badly we want it... and the fact that none of them stick indicates that nobody can figure out how to monetize it. Maybe Epic will blunder their way there but for now, the space doesn't attract anyone who doesn't already have a reason to be there.The author seems to be a techno-futurist judging by his tone.
There's no physical space everyone wants to be in either. VRML and X3D were closer to something that could be generally useful to whatever degree VR is generally useful, but both came along too soon and were dead by the time actually doing something with them was viable.
It's an interesting distinction. The thing about virtual spaces is they're easier to separate and propagate than real spaces. And if you've got a protocol (kind of like how ReDEF really wants this to be about Unreal Engine) then you can shift from space to space.
Which was what VRML was designed to support, being a 3D analog of HTML. It was modeled on Open Inventor rather than a game engine, and never got good editors, but the idea was I make a space on my server and you make one on yours and we can link them together. Something like that is a much more likely to yield science fictiony ubiquitous 3d interfaces than the Unreal engine, even though the first try didn't work out so well.
Speaking as someone who has made nearly seven figures from television, I am reasonably certain that television will turn out to be a 'boomer phenomenon. The average age of network viewers goes up a year every year. The engagement of every age group but senior citizens goes down every year. These are not people who will suddenly start watching TV. It is dead to them forever.
I wonder how and when the hundreds of millions will trickle down to us. What do video game producers spend their money on? A quick look tells me that a Chinese conglomerate owns 40% of Epic Games. So the money might stay in China for a little while.