How Daft Punk Became Fortnite’s Newest Stars
On February 22, 2021, after 28 years of creating hits, Daft Punk announced their split in an enigmatic and moving video. Standard-bearers of French Touch electronic music, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo had become icons of pop culture. A sign of the timelessness of their music is that the French duo has remained very active even since then, through album re-releases, remastered music videos, and sharing previously unseen archives online.
Fortnite is always exploring possibilities for unexpected artistic collaborations and Daft Punk will join the world of one of the most popular video games today on September 27 at 2 p.m. Eastern time. An immersive experience paying tribute to the duo’s musical and visual legacy, “The Daft Punk Experience” will allow players to explore and revisit the work of one of the most spectacular and inspiring musical acts of the last 30 years.
GQ spoke via Zoom with Cédric Hervet, creative director for Daft Punk, and Alex Rigopulos, senior director of Game Development-Music at Epic Games, to learn more about this unique partnership that pushes the boundaries of both video games and music.
GQ: In recent years, Fortnite has been inviting more and more musical artists into its universe. What made this the right moment to work with Daft Punk?
Alex Rigopulos: Fortnite has a long history with musical artists, including Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Metallica, Eminem, and Snoop Dogg, and players have been asking us for years to bring Daft Punk into the game. They’re one of the most unique and innovative musical duos of the last 30 years, so we had to take the musical experience up a notch with them. In the past, we’ve put on amazing concerts that lasted 10 or 15 minutes and then they’re gone. For Daft Punk, we wanted to do something bigger, deeper, and more lasting. Something that fans could come back to again and again.
The world of Daft Punk has often intersected with other art forms besides music, notably film and animation. Why were you interested in exploring the world of video games?
Cédric Hervet: Back when Daft Punk was still active, we often tried to create work that could become part of pop culture. Fortnite is part of that. When you see people recreating dances from the game in real life, you understand its influence on the collective imagination. Epic Games came to us with the idea and we were intrigued by the creative aspect of the collaboration. I didn’t know much about Fortnite, but the possibility of Daft Punk being part of the game seemed like a lot of fun. I think players are going to love wearing Daft Punk outfits in Battle Royale!
How did you manage to strike a balance between the visual worlds of Fortnite and Daft Punk?
Rigopulos: As Cédric was saying earlier, we wanted to include Daft Punk’s outfits in the game from the outset, so that players could use them in Battle Royale or any other Fortnite mode. The robots’ identity was central to our thinking. Cédric, who has been Daft Punk’s creative director since its early days, joined our project early on. He knows the duo’s visual universe inside out and every detail of the robots’ appearance. That was a huge help in staying true to their identity.
How did you create the outfits and accessories? Did you draw inspiration from the duo’s archives, or did you want to come up with something new especially for the game?
Rigopulos: We see this project as a love letter to Daft Punk. It’s a celebration of their music and the universe they created. We chose moments, outfits, and film clips that left a lasting impression and that we wanted to bring back to life in the game. We didn’t create any new outfits for the occasion; it was more a case of selecting ones that best represented Daft Punk. And they have so many cool outfits that it was difficult to choose among them. We finally opted for the leather biker outfit, which we often saw them wearing during the Alive 2007 era, and the sequined costumes from Random Access Memories.
