Attention economy is almost dead

But Fortnite may have a cure.

The economy of attention is dying, and it is an unpleasant sight; a person can turn his attention to something (here I mean advertising) only a certain amount of time every day, and our community has reached this limit. But at the same time, Fortnite manages to remain a culturally significant game and even has grown since its launch in 2017 - which is unusual. That's because its creator, Epic Games, figured out how to hold people's attention.

"Attention" [eng. paying attention - can be translated as "attention-generating income" / approx. transl.] was the usual phrase, until it became literal, until smart people guessed how much money could be made on time. The advertising industry - and, therefore, all the industries that it supports, for example, the media - is based on the idea that if you have heard about something and have built a positive association with it, then you are more likely to buy this product or experience. And this is not far from the truth: people make decisions for reasons that are unclear even to themselves. It makes sense to monetize the fundamental irrationality of humanity. Economists who promoted the microeconomic model of a rational consumer found themselves in the span. However, the basic assumption on which the whole doctrine is based becomes unstable, because what will happen if all public attention is monopolized?

A recent report compiled by Midia, a media and technology research company, emphasizes this: “Engagement has decreased throughout the sector, indicating that the economy has reached its attention limit. Consumers have no free time left to spend on offering new digital entertainment, which means they have to prioritize it. ” They write that this trend has existed for some time, and now it can lead to a slowdown in revenue growth - as can be seen from the disappointing quarterly reports of some of the largest game publishers. "It probably happened faster than most players in the gaming industry expected," said analyst Carol Severin, "but the competition within the economy of attention is high as never before."
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The problem is that attention does not scale. You can advertise a limited number of hours per day: advertising becomes less effective because it has penetrated everywhere. When was the last time you consumed something that did not try to sell you something or collect your personal data in order to better sell you something?

And here comes Fortnite. As the most popular game in the world - or at least the most famous game - it represents a tangible part of the economy of attention. She is very popular with people under 18, and her microtransactions brought billions of dollars to Epic Games. It is impossible to exaggerate the popularity of this game among young people: it has become a part of culture, with its own internal jokes, references and code language. If you communicate with two or more teenagers, then the chances that they will perform the dance from this game increase astronomically.

However, the main genius of Epic is how it advertises the game to its audience: first of all, Fortnite is a place to hang out with friends. Therefore, there is nothing strange that Weezer plays his unreleased songs on the island inside the game, and no one is surprised when DJ and producer Marshmello plays a concert in a virtual park.

The incredible popularity of the game and its status as a meeting place made its competitors in the economy pay attention. Last month, Netflix mentioned in its 2018 report that "we are competing with (and losing) Fortnite more than with HBO." According to the Polygon publication, Netflix considers this game the toughest competitor, because screen time is the most valuable metric for the consumer of streaming video. If people play Fortnite, they can't watch Netflix.

This means that an advertisement came up (and, apparently, musicians). It is easy to imagine how Fortnite turns into a place where advertising is unobtrusive, but ubiquitous, like in the most hallucinogenic old movies about cyberpunk. The game has already engaged in advertising the cartoon "Ralph against the Internet" from Disney, and introduced the villain Thanos from the Avengers, almost without causing complaints from users. Perhaps it happened because this cooperation was limited in time, and did not particularly affect the gameplay, unless you wanted it, as in the case with Thanos .

Model Fortnite also allows you to make these changes, otherwise they would have become too annoying. Every couple of months, Epic rolls out a big update covering the entire map and game items. Epic calls it the new season, just like on television. And each serves its purpose - to return the players for a bit more, and to prevent the emergence of new competitors in the royal battle style market. The latest update to Fortnite has stolen at least two main features of Apex Legends, the first game in the style of "royal battle" from EA. Apex managed to find as many as 25 million players in just a month, without any promotional release. Now it is the only competitor for Fortnite.

“It’s not that it was somehow much better or worse adapted to the economy of attention compared to others, but she finds feedback in the hearts of generations who have more free time, so she feels so good in attention economy,” says Severin. - I believe that the matter here is more in the cultural shift of generations: Fortnite was one of the first to create a truly successful business model for selling digital items that did not give players any progress in the game. They are just cosmetic. ” He said that twenty years ago, people identified themselves with the clothes they wear and the music they listen to. "Today, the personal image of the consumer is determined by the virtual world to a much greater extent."

The fact that Netflix even recognizes Fortnite as a competitor is important because it means that digital entertainment companies are beginning to realize that they cannot grow endlessly and change their strategies. Netflix will not release the game in the style of "royal battle" (probably). But I am sure that they will continue to experiment with interactive entertainment - as in the last episode of “Black Mirror”, “ Brandashmyg ”.

And although the Black Mirror is mainly viewed by adults, the fact that the company offers interactive entertainment for young people who fall into the Fortnite demography is not a coincidence. Netflix has teamed up with Telltale Games, which now closes, to create an interactive cartoon in the style of Minecraft: Story Mode. Before the closure of the company, there was a joint work on the topic “Very strange things,” and Netflix says that it is still “in the process of evaluating the options for reviving the universe of the Strange Affairs series in the form of interactive entertainment,” according to Polygon .

The eighth season of Fortnite began a few days ago, and the island changed again. Now there appeared a volcano with lava, guns, from which you can shoot yourself, and a pirate theme. Familiar places were replaced by new ones, the development of which players will spend many hours. When I logged in there recently, the other players behaved as if they had just returned from playing another game somewhere else, and were eager to return to their usual pastime.