Fortnite needs to do better with its female skins
Following the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or as the cool kids say, PUBG), you couldn’t go a month without a new battle royale game being announced. Many of these failed to gain the player base of the former and some even caused their studio to fold (looking at you, Radical Heights).
The most notable game to come out in the wake of PUBG is without a doubt Epic Games’ Fortnite, releasing first as “Fortnite: Save the World”, a co-op PvE zombie shooter (think Minecraft , but later pivoting to “Fortnite: Battle Royale”, a PvP battle royale a few months after PUBG’s launch.
It was in Save the World that my partner and I first started playing Fortnite. We enjoyed its mixture of third person shooting with simplified RUST style building. As a couple, we enjoyed playing cooperative games and Save the World scratched that itch for us.
For those unfamiliar with Save the World, players could pick from one of four classes. Outlanders excelled at finding rare crafting materials, Soldiers excelled at damage output, Ninjas excelled at mobility, and Constructors could fortify a base. Different classes were suited for different missions types, and a mixture of classes was often ideal.
These original skins (or heroes as they were known at the time) consisted of three body types, and a variety of skin tones. Outlanders and Ninjas have a thin body type, Constructors have a thicker body type, and Soldiers have a muscular body type which became the standard body in Fortnite: Battle Royale. Each of these classes also had a male and female skin of White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic ethnicity.
Special skins for heroes became the norm on a seasonal basis, usually coinciding with events like Halloween, Christmas, Chinese New Year, or Valentines Day. A limited time event would occur, and skins were given as quest rewards.
These early special skins augmented a pre-existing hero, keeping their abilities and powers, but giving a fun new visual. Tank Penny became Catstructor Penny. Rescue Trooper Ramirez became Ghoul Trooper Ramirez.
When Fortnite: Battle Royale launched on September 26th 2017, only the soldier heroes made the transition, removing the body diversity that existed in Save the World. None of the heroes or skins owned in Save the World carried over either. Players would be assigned one of eight default soldier skins when they entered a match.
Now funded by a free-to-play model, Epic Games started to introduce skins that cost “V-bucks” to purchase (The V is short for “VinderTech”, an in universe company from Save the World). Early skins like the Renegade and Recon scout were simple clothing colour changes, or small accessory additions like a helmet or bandana. But over time these skins have become much more.
If you play Fortnite in 2020, you will notice that there are a lot of skins. No really, there are over 800 skins in the game now. Hop in a game and you will be greeted by banana people, a surprisingly high number of Disney owned skins (Marvel, Star Wars), robots, military personnel, and even the occasional cute axolotl person.
This brings me to my first problem with Fortnite’s skins.
That initial decision to only bring the soldier hero has had a lasting impact on Fortnite’s body diversity. The overwhelming majority of skins feature the same athletic body type, While others, like the above axolotl, go for a thin body type. There have only been a few skins that feature different body types (about 1%).
It is important to note that all of these skins have been added in the last year with the oldest being added on November 22nd 2019. That means Fortnite: Battle Royale went for over two years without a single larger body type skin. Hopefully this is the start of a trend and we will see many more larger characters come to the game, but a lot needs to be done to fix that less than one percent metric.
My second problem, the one that actually inspired me to write this article, is the way that skin sets treat the female counterpart compared to the male. Time and time again, I will see a male skin with a fully covered face, and a female skin with no or partial face covering. As time went on, I noticed this more and more.
I’ve collected some sets below for you to look at:
Now I am not saying any of these designs are bad. None of them present women in a negative way or sexualise them, but there is a prevailing disparity going on. The only sets I could find that featured women more covered up than men had the men’s level of coverage optional (some skins have optional differences). There were also many sets that had the men and women in equal costumes. Just as many, if not more than the ones above.
And now my third problem, the Fortnite team won’t let women be monsters in the same way it will let men. Its October as I’m writing this and my partner and I are getting into the spooky mood, but if she wants to dress up as a monster, she has very few options, while I have plenty.
Male horror skins come in a wide variety of body horror and defamiliarisation of the human form. I can be a candy pink maw in a prison suit, a Headless Horseman-esque pumpkin headed killer, a terrifying rabbit man with white lifeless eyes. Female horror skins include a female clown, a witch, or a battle goth.
Again, there are some fantastic female Halloween skins, but their existence does not negate the fact that the Fortnite team seems hesitant to create female Halloween skins that are not sexy or attractive. I would love to see some more monstrous female skins.
I love Fortnite. I love playing it with my partner. I want to be able to enjoy the game and celebrate it for its diversity. The team has clearly made a lot of effort to move in the right direction and I applaud them for that. I just hope they can also take the time to address these issues.