Fortnite Festival Creator Wants To Eventually Allow Players to Make Their Own Music Games

The developer of Fortnite Festival, Harmonix, has big aspirations for the new game mode. Fortnite began as nothing more than a tower defense game that didn’t really gain a lot of traction upon release. After the Gears of War series concluded for Epic Games, the developer moved on to Fortnite and the core idea of it didn’t really seem to catch on. Thankfully, Fortnite pivoted to battle royale and changed the gaming industry essentially forever. The game’s entire structure changed and it evolved even further as more of a platform rather than a standard game, allowing itself to become a part of the so-called “metaverse”. It has become one of the biggest games in the world and shows no signs of slowing down.

Earlier this month, Epic Games surprised fans with new experiences within Fortnite such as a new racing game called Rocket Racing, a LEGO-based survival game, and a music game a la Rock Band called Fortnite Festival. They’ve all become big hits and the latter is arguably the most interesting and different for a game like Fortnite. There are big plans for the future of the mode, such as the ability to use music peripherals from Rock Band and plans for how the game will change. When speaking to Game Informer, Harmonix head Alex Rigopolous confirmed that they eventually want to empower and give the tools for players to create their own music games within Fortnite, whether that be a rhythm fighting game, a shooter, or something else centered around the core ideas of Harmonix’s game design.

“[We want to] continue to deepen the toolset to empower the world’s creators to beat us at our own game. Let the third-party community make an even better music game because we’re giving them the toolset to do so. […] Yeah, [we want people to make their own music games in Fortnite]! Or a music shooter. Or a music parkour game. Or a music fighting game. Or a music puzzle game. There are so many possibilities that we might not even dream up that some creators are just going to have some cool ass idea, and they’ll have the toolset available to build it.”

Given Harmonix has been a music-based video game developer for years and it was hard to see what they’d do in a post-Rock Band world, it’s great to see that Epic Games has given them the opportunity to keep making new and interesting games. Whether or not the larger aspirations come to fruition remains to be seen, but it’s clear there are big plans for the music side of Fortnite going forward and it could spawn some really creative games.