Story of a Story… Fortnite: Battle Royale
THE CREATION OF “FORTNITE: BATTLE ROYALE”
What is Fortnite, how did it start and what was the purpose for its creation?
Fortnite was developed by Epic Games and originally started as a player vs. environment game (releasing on July 25th, 2017), where the player would complete challenges and do certain tasks to progress through the game. The game got relatively positive reviews after its release but Epic Games was keeping an eye on how PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) were doing having released around four months before. PUBG is an online battle royale style game, meaning 100 people are dropped into a map and it is a fight to be the last one standing. Fortnite saw the success that PUBG was having and decided to create a Battle Royale style mode as well (which released September 26 that following year), making this mode free to play, the only money required to play is if you want to play “Save the World” or buy in game emotes, dances or clothing for your character. “I think it’s a combination of a lot of things, the fact that it is free to play is super huge and it’s already across all the platforms. Xbox, Playstation and PC, they just released their mobile version on IOS, which is very difficult to get done,” says Tyler Blevins (a.k.a. Ninja) who is a professional gamer and breaking Twitch.tv’s streaming records. Blevins goes on, “…just the accessibility and how friendly the game really is, they [Epic Games] are just hitting every mark perfectly” (cnbc., YouTube, 19 Mar. 2018).
Fortnite: Battle Royale is not only a game to be played solo, there are options to play with team of up to four. This is another reason the game is doing so well. We have seen an incredible amount of recognition around the game since its release in late September, 2017. To be able to play the entertaining game with your freinds make it that much more enjoyable. The social aspect of the game has had a huge hand it the hype revolving around the game. Who wouldn’t want to fight to the death with their friends?
THE IMMEDIATE IMPACT OF FORTNITE: BATTLE ROYALE
What did Fortnite’s immediate impact look like?
What were the beginning results? As of March 2018, there were more than 40 million players across consoles and PC and the game is still growing currently at a very fast rate. After its release, reviews were pretty good to the original PvE type format of “Save The World” but Epic Games wanted the game to grow and have a bigger following so it moved from focusing on its “Save the World” mode to a free play mode,“Battle Royale”, after noticing the success of this format in a different Early Access game “PUBG”.
Similarities between the two games didn’t go unnoticed however and the newest Battle Royale style was slammed by PUBG CEO Chang Han Kim for “replicating” their game. Three months after Fortnite: Battle Royale’s release, it matched PUBG numbers of 30 million players (December 2017). The game also received “Multiplayer Game of the Year” that same month, beating out any competition there might have been. Fifteen days into the new year players increased from 30 million to 40 million, and just four days after that on January 19th it increased from 40 million to 45 million. A big surge in the new players in those four days was most likely due to the map update a day earlier. On February 8th, the amount of concurrent players raised to 3.4 million users, while the same statistic for PUBG fell from 3.26 million to 2.93 million.
Is Fortnite truly free?
As a reader or someone who is new to this scene you may be asking, “Well if the game is truly free how is the company who developed this game making enough to stay in business?” The answer is simple, by making the in game purchases so desirable. Epic Games have started to change the video game business and with the Battle Royale style, they decided to go against the status quo of charging $40-$60 a video game and instead making it free with in game purchases. This is genius as a developer, you automatically get more people to play the game because it is free thus allowing a bigger audience to compete and not to mention more customers to browse the item shop. With the game being free it makes players not feel as bad when they spend $20 on an updated skin/emote/accessory package. This thought process mixed with very cool accessories typically results in multiple occasions where a person buys in game purchases, racking up to be even more expensive than a regular video game. What makes it even better is the player is never forced to pay any money to enjoy this game, spending money is completely up to him/herself and yet the large audience is spending insane amounts of money. Epic Games in March of 2018 alone made an estimated $223 million from in-game purchases, according to Joost Van Dreunen at research firm SuperData. (Lee, Jane)
What is this game worth?
Publisher Epic Games is now worth roughly $4.5 billion dollars. There has been noticeable drops and loss in rival video game developers such as Activision Blizzard, who has a hand in creating games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, due to rise of Fortnite. Online viewers of live streams for other games also has taken a large blow due to people being more interested in Fortnite live streams over any other video game live stream. This increase of attraction to the game has forced people that live stream other games to switch and try out Fortnite instead. I personally watch YouTuber “NepentheZ” play and talk about FIFA 18 and I have been able to see him talk about the decrease of interest in FIFA 18 and rather an increase in Fortnite. This has forced him to make some videos playing Fortnite to make sure his content is still interesting to his viewers and that he stays relevant.
Tyler “Ninja” Blevins
We wouldn’t be talking about Fortnite if we didn’t talk about Tyler Blevins. Tyler is 26 years old and he is a now world famous professional Fortnite player. He goes by the name Ninja and he is known for not only his goofy streams but for the entertainment in his games. Blevins started out playing PUBG funny enough, but after Epic Games fixed a couple accuracy issues and some other minor changes to game play he quickly made the switch to Fortnite: Battle Royale. Since his switch and after some successful months of gaming, he has been consistently reaching 100,000 concurrent views in his February Streams. In March, it increased to 130,000 concurrent viewers and he recieved an income of around $350,000 that month from just Twitch alone (concurrent meaning those viewers are all watching his stream at the same time). He does his streaming through Twitch and Twitch has seen a massive increase in popularity over the past months. Due to his success and the level of his play and entertainment, there has been a rise of big name celebrities playing the game with Blevins, among those some are Drake, Lil Yachty, Harry Kane, Travis Scott and Juju Smith-Schuster.
What makes Blevins worth watching?
Blevins has appeared on talk shows and the game has been mentioned countless times on news channels. In March, Blevins did an interview with CNBC where he talked about making roughly $500,000 a month and how he spends his big paychecks. “I think that I offer a combination of high quality gameplay, like high tier gameplay that they really can’t get with a lot of other content creators. It’s very difficult to be the best at any video game or at anything at all in the world, and I also think I offer — I mean I’m very goofy if you’ve ever watched one of my streams or my YouTube videos, I do impressions and stuff like that all the time… its like hybrid [of both high tier gameplay and entertainment] and it’s just really fun to watch and a pretty positive environment as well” (Tyler Blevins for an interview with CNBC). Blevins is a great player and entertainer but he also does a lot of charity work for suicide prevention and other charity involvement in order ot try and help others out as best he can.
THE LONG LASTING IMPACT OF FORTNITE: BATTLE ROYALE
Fortnite is a big deal right now, but how is the game going to leave a long lasting impact for years to come?
Some of the biggest reasons this game is going to be around for a long time are aesthetics, appealing to younger viewers with the concept of creativity and free world play, keeping up with and referencing pop culture and full control over your gaming experience.
Some standout strengths are the use vibrant colors and cartoon style characters rather than blood and gore, as well as pop culture references and constant updates.
Vibrant colors: people love the graphics in this game. Realism is always a high point when talking about quality of video games but the way that this game is set up is fantastic. When comparing Fortnite to PUBG, PUBG is a lot more realistic and the graphics are very good. However with Fortnite you get a much more user friendly game for all ages.
Blood and Gore: Instead of using blood and gore as an incentive to eliminate the oppostition Epic games have made it exciting to see the loot explode from the player you eliminate along with the amount of damage you have done to the opponent, as you can see in the next couple screenshots from gameplay below…
As you can see in the above screenshots and video clip to the left, there is no blood and gore or anything to make it seem explicit. Fortnite is very user friendly and simple to learn no matter your age.
Constant Updates: Fortnite constantly updates their game/content. Adding new limited time game modes (50 v. 50, explosives only, etc.) creates excitement to play with your friends in a new way not regular to normal gameplay. With the addition of new weapons, there generates excitement over new ways to eliminate others. With updates to the map, there generates new excitment to look for loot and elimante people at those new locations. Updating the item shop is so big for the game and yet it does nothing to help you in the game except give you some customization and some character. They also add a lot of pop culture references into the game which is why it is such a standout game.
Another way they keep their audience entertained is through the “Battle Pass”. The Battle Pass is a purchasable item under the challenges tab that costs around $9.50. This feature is so great though because it allows the purchaser to unlock exclusive items and XP through playing the game. Each week, the Battle Pass owner recieves seven challenges to complete during that week, and if you do you earn XP and Battle Stars to increase in level and increase in tier. There are 100 tiers and a max level of 100. This feature keeps the player coming back and adds another incentive to play the game. Fortnite is very aesthetically pleasing and they have managed to keep excitement revolving around this game consitently.
Enjoyment of playing with friends: Whether it’s a famous celebrity tweeting about getting a win in Battle Royale or just you and your friends, the common reaction is pure excitement. You can see this in the video below.
Going mobile: Fortnite recently released the game on IOS. This not only allows you to play the game on your IOS device, but more importantly allows you to play it on the go.
Meteor Strike: During Battle Pass season 3, there was a lot of talk revolving around what season 4 would look like. Season 3 was spaced themed and during season 3 there was an addition to a meteor in the sky. The gaming world went crazy, starting a lot of conspiracy theories about what the meteor meant. There were also an addition of shooting stars and telescopes placed around the map and they all pointed to one central location. The amount of conversation that these little details stirred up was unmatched, almost all revolving around thinking one of the locations, Tilted Towers, would be struck and destroyed by the meteor. Towards the end of the season there was allegedly morse code embedded into the vibrations in the player’s controls mentioning S.O.S., and actual tiny meteors striking the map during gameplay. All of my social media had people talking about the phenomenon and the talk around the game was at an all time high. I had fellow students talking to me about the meteor and what they thought it meant but they didn’t even play the game.
SO WHAT? WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
The big deal is simple, Fortnite has changed the game. This game has changed expecatations for games to come in the years. Fortnite has set a new standard of entertainment and enjoyment. They have changed the way in game purchases work, they changed the way feedback should be taken and they changed the way the community plays. An article goes on to say, “So when people say the future of online gaming looks like Fortnite, they’re not just talking about the battle royale genre, which won’t feel so shiny and new a year from now. They’re talking about the blending of every good idea from the last decade of online gaming, from both the East and West” (Statt, Nick). Statt goes on to say, “All of these aspects will inform the way games are developed, marketed, and make money in the future. And Fortnite is leading the pack by illustrating just how to make this combination of genre elements, business model innovations, and raw fun factor have influential, industry-changing staying power.” Fortnite is paving the way for what future gaming will and should look like.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES:
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Statt, Nick. “Fortnite Is the Biggest Game on the Planet Right Now Because It’s a Living, Breathing World.” The Verge, The Verge, 6 May 2018, www.theverge.com/2018/5/6/17321172/fortnite-epic-games-biggest-game-living-breathing-world-mmo-rpg-battle-royale.
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cnbc. YouTube, YouTube, 19 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXuM-LpVD50.