The Daft Punk Fortnite Experience: A Mixed Bag

Written By: Nolan Durand

Edited By: Cameron Green

Following the release of my previous article discussing virtual concerts, and how they’ve fallen from grace, Fortnite announced a collaboration with Daft Punk. The collaboration would bring a new “experience” for players, emphasizing that it wasn’t a concert like previous collaborations. 

As the collaboration came closer, more details came out about the experience. It mostly seemed to be a creative map, like those from previous collabs, but would allow the user to enter different rooms with various games, songs, and shows available. Considering the timing, I wanted to review this “experience” and see what flaws continue to plague virtual concerts as well as cover what the experience did right.

The Lobby:

While the experience is not a time limited event, and can be experienced anytime from September 28th to November 1st of 2025, Fortnite still treated the experience like a limited-time event. They had a lobby that was open 30 minutes before the release of the event at 2:00pm est, on the 28th. If you joined the lobby before the event opened you could walk around the Fortnite map– specifically the area with the giant monolith that used to promote the event. This monolith would play Daft Punk instrumentals and glow for the 30 minutes before the event was released. Once it was time for the experience to open, the monolith glowed with a portal opening up transporting all players to the experience. 

The lobby is a good aspect of previous concerts, and I liked that they brought this back even if it isn’t a time limited event. I think it helps give a sense of urgency to play the experience and gets more people to talk about it. The player count during this was about 1.1 million so it certainly worked to get more players on at once compared to previous creative map concerts. I believe this is something Fortnite should keep doing for future concerts even if they’re not limited-time events. 

Intro:

After being transported into the monolith, the experience starts with an intro. Even if you weren’t able to make it the pre-lobby, this intro was available to everyone once entering the map. It starts with your character floating in space watching Earth, with “Contact” from Daft Punk playing. After the intro to “Contact” is finished, a glowing diamond in space pulls your character into it, with [the character] Stella from “Interstella 5555” reaching out to you. Once you’re pulled into the diamond your character flies through various set pieces representing different eras from Daft Punk history. This culminates with your character crash landing on the planet from the band's retirement video, where you could either pick up Thomas or Guy’s helmet. After choosing the helmet you’re transported into the main hub of the experience where you can go and experience five different rooms all based around Daft Punk’s music. 

My recap of this intro doesn’t do it justice. These are easily the best visuals from any virtual concert and they highlight the benefits of having one compared to a live show. If you have the chance, check it out in-game or find footage online. It’s a beautiful love letter to Daft Punk highlighting their various eras with breathtaking visuals. It’s something that could only be done in-game, and offers something that hasn’t been seen in Fortnite before. That is everything I believe a virtual concert should be – something unique that will stay with the audience forever. It doesn’t make the same mistakes as previous concerts that were just revamped versions of an existing game. This is something new, just like what they did before with artists like Travis Scott. 

Alive 2007:

After putting the robot’s helmet on, you’re transported into the main lobby with the option to travel to five different experiences. The first of these experiences (and the most interesting) is a recreation of the Alive 2007 tour. With the iconic pyramid front and center, and the duo DJ’ing inside it, you'll hear all the hits from that era. 

With each song the environment around the duo changes. For some songs like “Around The World” or “One More Time” characters from those music videos would tower above the duo and the pyramid. Other songs would just have the dance floor transform with either structures rising out of it, jump pads forming on it, or grind rails spawning over the dance floor. 

While most of the set was just the models of the robot duo DJ'ing in the pyramid, I believe it was just as fun as other live events held in the past. Songs like “Around The World” and “One More Time” show the benefits of hosting these concerts digitally compared to real life with the characters from their respective music videos popping out, and the dance floor transforming to fit the vibes of the music. Even when the set was just basic it still offered something unique for many players as Daft Punk isn’t doing anymore concerts, and unless you’re in your 30s you most likely didn’t see the Alive 2007 concerts either. 

I think if Fortnite combined the intro with a few of the best songs from this set it would have been the greatest concert they have ever done. The spectacle of these giant set pieces with Daft Punk performing was there for a few songs, so if they just cut down to those few it would’ve been perfect. Have it as a time-limited event that lasts only twenty minutes showcasing the best of Daft Punk, instead of an open ended experience that lasts over a month. 

Robot Rock Arena:

The next experience available was the Robot Rock Arena. You enter through a computer terminal that transports you to a digital arena, where you play a horde rush style mode. Waves of polygon shaped enemies will come at you, with each enemy being red or blue. You can shoot these enemies with guns corresponding to those colors. When shooting, those guns would play a stem of a Daft Punk song. So if the background track was “Harder, Faster, Stronger” and you shot the blue gun you would hear the vocals, while the red would play the drums.

This was a fun side mode and I thought it brought something new to the horde rush formula. I liked that the guns corresponded to the stems of the songs playing, but there's only 6 songs and they get old quickly after looping for a while. It also didn’t help that Fortnite’s official Horde Rush mode returned a few days after the experience opened, and this time they completely revamped the formula to encourage more replayability. It made the only replayable experience in this mode obsolete, so it makes me wonder why this wasn’t a live event.

This experience could’ve easily been incorporated for a few songs during a live event. There’s no need for this experience to last a month, especially when their most unique experience (aside from the actual concert portion) is replaced in a few days by the actual mode it's imitating. This part of the experience highlights what I do and don’t like from these concerts. It did offer something unique and different from the usual Horde Rush formula, but once the real Horde Rush came back for the year, the Daft Punk experience felt like a worse version of the real thing.

Daft Club

This room was just a small dance club with music from “Random Access Memories” playing since it wasn’t made for the Alive 2007 tour. Models of the robot duo are at the top of the club slightly moving around. Players are encouraged to emote to the small selection of songs.

This room displays all my issues with modern virtual concerts. There is nothing unique here. What is different from emoting to Daft Punk songs on my own in the lobby? I could’ve done this before this experience on my own by just playing the songs through my headphones in one of the many party royale maps. This isn’t even something unique to the virtual world because if I wanted to go to a club, I would just go to a real club. Not a club in Fortnite of all places. This part of the experience was entirely unnecessary and offers nothing for the players. No unique visuals, no unique gameplay, and not even offering something unique from real life. 

Around The World

The next experience was a Lego version of the “Around The World” music video. Players were transported to a spaceship where they could gather different props and Lego characters to make the music video. After completing a few quests a short cut-scene will play with your custom Lego version of the music video.

This is also another lackluster experience. If I wanted to watch the “Around the World” music video, I would just do that. I don’t need to make a Lego version of that music video, and watch a short 10 second clip of my creation. This part of the experience is pointless, there’s no need to have this at all even if it was part of a live event. I’d rather watch the normal music video, not a watered down version of it.

Dream Chamber Studios

The final experience is Dream Chamber Studios. Here players are transported to an observatory where they can create their own remixes with various songs from all eras of Daft Punk’s career. Players can use a “Groove”, “Lead”, and “Extra” from various songs, then mix and match these elements for your mix. 

This is another unnecessary addition. It’s the same stuff you could already do in the game mode “Jam Stage”, which allows you to remix songs that you own with vocal, lead, bass, and drum stems. This experience should’ve been an update to the Jam Stage. They should’ve released all the tracks available here as Jam Tracks and make the map a temporary map for the Jam Stage. It’s a lackluster version of the actual Jam Stage game mode, and by not having all the Daft Punk tracks available here for use in that mode Fortnite is undermining both the experience and the Jam Stage. 

Final Thoughts

The Daft Punk Experience is truly a mixed bag for virtual concerts. It does some parts perfectly, even doing some parts better than previous live events. Then they had to tack on side modes that nobody cares about at the end of the day. The event ended up failing the same way most creative map concerts do. 

The experience should have been a limited-time event with the intro, portions of the Alive 2007 part, a short section for the Robot Rock Arena, and a finale that showcases music from “Random Access Memories”. Players do not need a month-long experience that is mostly filled with half baked versions of existing game modes or experiences. When the event ran at 2:00 pm on September the 28th, 1.5 million players showed up. This number would be even higher if it was an actual concert. Players don’t care about stuff like this after a week. Roughly two weeks after the initial launch of this event only 3.4k people are playing it. 

This experience gave players something both memorable and forgettable. Players will forever remember that intro and how awe-inspiring it was. Players will remember the Alive 2007 part as this was something that most of them couldn’t experience in person. Players will forget a fake virtual club that does nothing special. They will forget a Lego version of a music video they can watch at any time. Players will confuse a knock-off Jam Stage for the real thing, thinking it was an update to the mode for the band. 

Fortnite still needs to improve how they handle their modern virtual concerts. This experience was so close to being the greatest virtual concert held in this game, but the side modes they had to tack on are holding it back. Fortnite needs to go back to having limited-time concerts with crazy graphics to give players something truly memorable. Not forgettable versions of game modes that already exist in the game.