I know what you’re going to say: I’m insane. How could a skin of Kim Kardashian, reality TV star and socialite, be one of the best skins in Fortnite when it’s largely just…a woman wearing outfits? Well, stay with me here.
I’m not talking about the design. I mean, it’s fine. It looks like her. Epic now appears to be dipping its toe into visible cleavage for the first time (the horror!). But that’s not the point. Rather, the reason this is a good model for skins going forward is the level of customization it has, far more so than we’ve seen with any other collab.
It’s true that Fortnite has had custom styles for skins in the past, switching out bits and pieces and what have you, but true customization for collab/crossover skins in particular is limited to select alt styles. Here, there are way more combinations, even if the options in question are not terribly thrilling.
You can mix and match different styles and even materials of outfits with different colors. You can turn on and off accessories like gloves and sunglasses. There are at least three different hairstyles. The point being, you’re playing Barbie here. You can make your Kim your own.
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Do I care about being able to customize Kim Kardashian to this extent? I do not. But I would about a number of other skins I’ve bought, as 99% of the time, the amount of customization you can do on the actual skin is zero, where you’re just mixing and matching back bling and mining tools.
Epic has largely stayed away from full-on custom skins, certainly in the style of a traditional “create-a-character.” The fear there, I imagine, is that if you have the freedom to make your own skin via an actually vast number of customization options, you would be less likely to buy the ones Epic makes through its own original productions or its infinite amounts of collabs. But within those collabs? Yes, I think Kim is probably the best of the bunch here in terms of the breadth of customization, and this kind of thing should be implemented in other skins in the future, celebrity stars or otherwise.
Kim Kardashian enters Chapter 7 here during a “Hollywood” themed season, so players are now wondering what other celebs might show up as themselves. Usually, when we do have stars hit Fortnite, they’re in character as a Marvel hero or Star Wars character or what have you. Will Smith is in the game, for instance, but as his Bad Boys character. I think Kim also may be the tip of the spear in celebrities realizing that no, Fortnite is not going away, and you may in fact want to be one of the first stars included in its IP metaverse as yourself. We’ve seen this with musicians and athletes, obviously, but I’m not going to rule out, say, a Tom Cruise or Glen Powell or Sydney Sweeney Fortnite skin in the future. We’re in a whole new frontier of publicity here.
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