Fans of Fortnite and M. Night Shyamalan's latest horror movie, Old, are in for a bit of a strange treat. A custom Fortnite map has been made to promote Old and yes, it's based on the beach that makes everyone who steps foot on it age rapidly. Although the map is far less sinister than that of the one in the film, it does seem to present players with the challenge of escaping it.
Fortnite has been used to market films before, it's becoming as much of a platform to advertise products as it is a standard video game. Whether or not this is a good thing is up for debate, but it's rather surprising major studios and industries are looking to gaming to help promote its content. Fortnite's youthful and massive audience surely makes it more of a target than children's programming on TV nowadays, and it's also more creative and inventive.
The marketing team on M. Night Shyamalan's latest mind-bender clearly saw the potential in this and found a way to utilize Fortnite to its advantage. It seems as though this isn't like when Fortnite helped promote Star Wars but instead the film recruited Fortnite creators Team Unite to make the map. The map takes place on the small beach from the film and players must find resources to escape before the clock runs out, similar to the characters in the movie. It's unclear if players can use the same strategy as seen in the climax of the film or if it's a bit more traditional, but it's a fun idea nonetheless.
Old has been dividing audiences since it was released this past weekend, something that's rather expected with Shyamalan's films at this point. Still, the basic concept of the film is certainly an interesting and compelling idea for a small-scale game like the one Team Unite created. It's incredibly interesting to see all the ways Fortnite has been used for cross-branding, from screening trailers and movies to making in-game ARGs.
It seems likely this will only continue as the game grows in popularity. Old has shown that creators don't even need to leverage the help of Epic Games itself to help market its product, so this will surely continue to be a worthwhile marketing tool for films, shows, and possibly other products. Clearly, Fortnite has become more than just a simple game and it'll be interesting to see how it gets used in the years ahead.
Source: Official Old Twitter account