Largely so I could check it out for my 8 year-old son, I’ve been playing #Fortnite - which has been fascinating for numerous reasons.
Some thoughts in an (inevitably long and rambling) thread...
Some thoughts in an (inevitably long and rambling) thread...
Fortnite clearly began as an attempt to compete with Minecraft. The decision to pivot and copy PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds instead was the key to its success. Yet even that was basically classic Death Match play scaled to MMO player sizes, albeit quite cleverly.
More than any other game I can think of, Fortnite is a game of luck - very much in the vein of Caillois’ alea. Being skilled improves your performance, sure, but even new players take down pros in an unlucky multiple encounter.
I won two of my first half dozen games cluelessly.
I won two of my first half dozen games cluelessly.
Psychologically, Fortnite is all about the bear miss effect. Die at the start? You can do better, try again. Die in the middle? Room to improve if you try again. Finish second? Got to have one more try... Even slots don’t leverage near miss as well as the battle royals format.
Fortnite is one of very few games I’ve played with a leveling system that is *utterly irrelevant*. Seriously, you gain nothing but cosmetic tat but it makes a fuss about it like it *really* matters. Why? Clever monetisation masquerading as rubbish game design.
The Battle Pass system in Fortnite simultaneously trades upon that nagging sense of lost opportunity (“look at how much useless tat you would have won!”) and playground peer pressure. Just as kids ‘have to have’ Nike trainers, so they ‘have to have’ a cool Fortnite skin.
But the endless treadmill of content production that feeds the Battle Pass system in Fortnite has a substantial cost in file size. The install has ballooned from <40GB to 70GB - and it will continue to grow and grow because the spice must flow.
The funniest thing about Fortnite is it’s claim to be ‘early access’, despite having already had a dozen seasons and a total overhaul at Chapter 2. Seriously, after taking in billions of dollars over a couple of years, don’t you think we’re a little beyond ‘early access’...?
‘Near miss’. Silly iPhone autocorrect. I like ‘bear miss’ as a term, though! 😂
Oh, and after years of player communities spontaneously declaring by fiat that ‘camping’s bad, m’kay?’, finally a game that permits camping, and designs around its inevitability. This I greatly appreciate, and the bushes are nicely balanced for doing it too.
