The left hand of Bartness.

Image credit: Eurogamer

The first time I really, properly rolled my eyes at egregious in-game crossover content was, to no-one’s surprise, in Call of Duty. Back in the days of Ghosts - over a decade ago now, in 2014 - Activision crowbarred a voice pack from Snoop Dogg into the multiplayer facet of the game. Costing a modest £2.79, the voice pack simply let you have the iconic rapper narrate your experience, praising you for headshots and chastising you for getting ganked. It was the beginning of the end, in many ways.

There have been other, more bizarre, crossovers, of course: there’s Ariana Grande-Butera, (or simply Ariana Grande, if you will) who is now officially part of Final Fantasy canon thanks to her ludicrously over-powered appearance in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, where she appeared as a gacha roll back in 2017. There was the appearance of Nicki Minaj in CoD, too, parading around as a skin that the most toxic players in Modern Warfare used to great effect in 2023.

Celeb cameos and Bevis and Butthead-like cross-brand promotions are part of our new reality now, whether we like it or not. And, generally, I’ve felt immune to this nonsense: even Goku appearing in Fortnite didn’t appeal to me that much, despite how much I wanted to go and harangue children playing the game by yelling “it’s over 9000!” at them as I wiped out their squads.

The Homer they fall. | Image credit: Epic

But, being 33-years-old, there is one gaping vulnerability I have in my capitalist armour, and it is The Simpsons. It’s a special interest: I have Simpsons tattoos, I have been to Simpsons-themed pub quizzes, I am in multiple group chats about the show, and it is my dream to interview some of the original showrunners of the series and write something about Homer and Karl’s kiss in Season 2 (which was, for many people, the first time they saw a man give affection like that to another man on mainstream TV). The Simpsons has a special, donut-shaped place in my heart.

And that’s why it’s the thin end of the wedge that Fortnite has prised open in me. I don’t care about Fortnite. I have literally got my name in published books talking about the game, I’ve been playing it in some form since the pre-battle royale days, and I understand it’s one of the most important cultural things that’s happened in my lifetime. But I don’t like it. I never have. I think it represents some of the most cynical aspects of late-stage capitalism, and has done irreparable damage to the games industry by modelling how live service churn can work for publishers that are too big to fail.

So why did I re-download the game today? Simply put, to go visit Springfield. I’m treating the map more like a sightseeing experiment than I am a battle royale. But between the tomacco farm, the power plant (complete with iconic crow caw when you’re in the vicinity), the Lard Lad statue, the Burns Manor, Kamp Krusty, and the houses of Evergreen Terrace, I just can’t stay away. It’s appealing to something young and curious inside me, and in some perverse way, even feels like an unofficial sequel to The Simpsons Hit and Run.

It’s the little things that make this particular Fortnite tie-in feel smart. You can ‘release the hounds’ via a button in Burns’ office. You can make your own couch gag (as I did in a team of Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, Goku, and Bob from Bob’s Burgers, somehow) when you visit the family’s home. Nudge the Jebediah Springfield statue in the town square and his head falls off - a throwback to Season 1 of the show, and a very important teachable moment for Bart. You can prank call Moe. In the tire yard, there’s a buried Mr. Sparkle box. Blinky the three-eyed fish is swimming around in the ocean. You can eat steamed hams. You can grumble to yourself (over and over again, if you please) as you step on rakes in the town square.

Not pictured: Mrs. Eisenhower. | Image credit: Epic Games

I can’t get enough of this. It’s lowest common denominator stuff, sure, but god, it’s clever. I think it might be the most complete and thoughtful tie-in I’ve seen in Fortnite to date. I suppose if you’re going to make the whole map one big Simpsons love-in, you have to put the work in, and Epic really has. But as gorgeous as this virtual recreation of Springfield is, there are parts of it that leave a sour taste in my mouth.

Take the theme song. We all know it. Danny Elfman’s iconic music is probably baked into the cortex of anyone between 20 and 50, at the very least, at this point. It’s in the game. Except it’s not. Not really. What *is *in the game is a non-union re-record of the theme song, assumedly because Fox and Epic don’t want to pay royalties and deal with the licensing issues of using the actual music. Little things like that sour the experience and remind me that whilst it is nice to have my nostalgia glands gently massaged by the hands of our megacorp overlords, nostalgia-bait like this is still designed exclusively to empty my pockets and filter me as a metric of ‘engagement’.

Rumours abound that a certain school-based wizard franchise will come to Fortnite soon, and I lament that characters from my childhood obsession will soon be rubbing shoulders with a brand that is inextricably linked to a hate movement. As much as I want to engage with Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Homer and Marge as they wreak bloodless havoc on whatever brand gets crammed into Fortnite’s overstuffed hellscape this week, there’s this niggling reminder in the back of my head that this is the endgame: a sausage factory of regurgitated content designed to make me go ‘ha, yeah, I remember that!’ whilst siphoning money off me and fuelling the live service machine for a company that has no qualms about laying off hundreds of staff to stabilise its bottom line.

I fear my moralising about business decisions I have no control over makes me sound a little like Lisa at her most iconoclastic, but, hey: I guess that’s what happens when someone like me grows up with Lisa being the voice of reason in a world that feels increasingly cartoonish and nonsensical.