The one thing that many Fortnite fans probably saw with delight during the recently concluded FIFA World Cup was players on the field celebrating with the dances from Fortnite when they scored a goal. The dances, which are in the game as emotes, and are actually themselves inspired by hip-hop music moves, have become extremely popular in the wake of Fortnite becoming the most popular game in the world– and it makes sense that football players, many of whom are young and probably play video games, have been exposed to them, too.
EA Sports actually wants to include these dances in FIFA 19. See, they try to keep their games as authentic as possible, as close to the real thing- and if football players on field celebrate with Fortnite dances, then EA wants its in-game players to also do that.
“We’re player first and authenticity first. If you’re seeing it in the real world, we would ideally like to see it in the game. It’s in the game. You know, that whole thing,” Creative Director Matt Prior told Okay Cool in a recent interview.
Prior did admit that licensing issues could complicate the whole thing, however- meaning that players shouldn’t necessarily expect FIFA 19‘s players to break out in the Fortnite dance upon scoring a goal.
“We have seen celebrations like the Fortnite one going in. There might be licensing issues around them, but we are always looking at the real world of football and trying to replicate it as much as possible. Specifically to those ones, I’m not sure if there are licensing issues around that.”
I do hope this is something EA can figure out, because it would be cool seeing those dances percolate through multiple games this way. That said, given how popular Fortnite is, I can’t imagine licensing them would be cheap, even for FIFA…