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Nobody knows what the metaverse is. The term, which has become one of the most popular fundraising phrases used in boardrooms across the country, is notoriously puzzling. Can the metaverse be defined as a social space where gamers hang out? A multiverse divided into several tracts of land, ruled by ruthless capital laws? Another extension of the questionable NFT gambit? Ask a million game developers and you’ll probably get a million different answers. You could argue that we’ve been living in the metaverse for decades – after all, I spent much of my childhood outside of the Ironforge auction house in World of Warcraft. You could also argue that the metaverse is a distant dream that can only be realized through wistful futuristic technology; we’re all transporting to a digital utopia using the star trek holodeck. Perhaps it’s better, and fairer, to think of the metaverse as something studios create on the fly, rather than a concrete ideal we strive for. In that sense, Fortnite must be considered the torchbearer for this strange new frontier.

I’m a career Fortnite skeptic. When the game’s battle royale mode hit the scene on September 26, 2017, just two months after its core Save the World mode launched, I was happy to write off Epic’s latest gamble as a tense, desperate attempt to cash in. earn from the dashing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds boom. Months later, when Fortnite had left all of its competitors firmly in the dust, I still viewed the game as a quirky, short-lived fad; a flavor in the month, sure to be inundated by the influx of world-conquering Infinity Ward and Respawn interpretations of the genre to come. It did – Warzone and Apex Legends are both huge hits – and Epic countered those raids by… adding a load of interfiction skins to their video game. That probably wouldn’t work. Fortnite was a glorified mod that got lucky; it parachuted into the absolute prime of the white-hot battle royale revolution, and the ability to take control of, say, Thanos, certainly wouldn’t prevent it from falling back into obscurity. When Tim Sweeney started talking about Fortnite as a lesser game and more of a decentralized social experienceI thought Epic had officially lost the plot. How the hell is anyone going hang out in a video game where the main way to interact with your fellow players is through the barrel of a gun?

Years later, I’m willing to admit defeat to my anti-Fortnite prejudices. Epic has doubled and tripled in the belief that their product can transcend all the established limitations of a video game – transitioning into a self-proclaimed metaverse – and I think it’s officially undeniable that they got it done. Alex Perry, at Mashable, has a good summary of the copious ways Fortnite has achieved escape velocity with all its eccentric gameplay experimentation. A round of battle royale still has winners or losers, yes, but in Fortnite you can also “explore the expansive map and do quests to unlock more goofy skins and accessories,” he writes. “You can go ‘fishing’. You can get in a car with a working radio station and just joyride through the landscape, or do the same with a boat in one of the huge lakes on the map.”

All of this, of course, is filtered through a nothing short of amazing catalog of custom pop culture costumes that enable true Ready Player One-esque wish-fulfillment. Thanos, introduced in 2018, was just the tip of the iceberg. Now anyone in the expanse of Fortnite can transform into John Cena, Spider-Gwen, or the Demogorgon, just to name a few. The skins that officially won me over? Introducing the Dragon Ball Z cast. I saw Goku shoot a Kamehameha across the map – securing Victory Royale – and realized this was exactly the kind of video game fantasy I dreamed of as a 12-year-old. Fortnite keeps getting bigger and weirder, and that’s all I really want from whatever the metaverse should be.

I can say with confidence that the metavers must be a vector for huge fits of laughter. It should feel like anything is possible.

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There’s a pervasive negative aura when game studios start talking the metaverse. We’ve already witnessed revolts from Ubisoft fans and Square Enix fans as the bosses of those two companies moved closer to a crypto-heavy, trans-reality future. It’s pretty easy to diagnose where that negativity comes from; the bulk of most metaverse pitches depend on massive NFT integrations – despite the fact that no one has proven with any certainty that gamers are interested in, say, auctioning off a weapon skin encoded on the blockchain. Some of the model’s biggest proponents, such as Facebook, have proven to be unreliable actors in our private and public lives, and now we are expected to forget their reputation and live in their world? Buying and selling digital material under their watchful eye? You are not wrong for being suspicious. I am too.

“There is a fear that the [crypto] influence will deplete good design principles, creating an environment where video game experiences are increasingly differentiated by financial barriers, creating a negative experience for consumers,” I wrote in a story about the metaverse for Vox earlier this year. “Until now, publishers have been unable to allay those concerns.”

I think that’s what makes Fortnite such an outlier, and why gamers seem so much more optimistic about its metaversal potential. Yes, of course, Epic is a for-profit company and the skins sold on Fortnite all come with a price. But those assets aren’t being wasted in some sinister, blockchain membership program, which is why we don’t feel like we’re being sold a bag of goods. You don’t buy the Goku skin because you think it will one day be a good investment when you send them to a potential buyer for a windfall of sweet, sweet Ethereum. No, you buy the Goku skin to simply be Goku. That’s the same priority in the nascent Fortnite metaverse; all the decisions Epic makes with the game seem to hark back to a loose, lively gamer-y joy. This isn’t metavers disguised as a Ponzi scheme or a work-for-hire program; you come to Fortnite to have fun, and with the many ways Epic continues to expand into what’s possible in a multiplayer match – from Ariana Grande concerts to the Infinity Gauntlet – the metaverse suddenly seems like something worth getting excited about. to be about.

So do I have a better understanding of what the metaverse should be now that Fortnite has won me over? No not really. At its core, Fortnite remains a battle royale game, and no off-beat minigames or crossover events will change that anytime soon. But maybe the vagueness could work in Epic’s favor; perhaps they will be the company that sets the expectations players have for any publisher that welcomes players into their own metaverses. I can’t judge the finer scientific points of the concept, but I can say with confidence that the metavers must be a vector for huge fits of laughter. It should feel like anything is possible. It should allow us to see our friend dressed as Dr. Strange from the sky, while we ourselves are dressed as John Cena. If we’re all enjoying ourselves like this, Epic might be right. We will all one day get caught up in the metaverse, without ever realizing it.

Luke Winkie is a freelance writer for IGN.