Fortnite: The Launchpad of Esports Talk
It isn’t easy for most people to understand — let alone talk about — competitive gaming. Many traditional media outlets talk about esports condescendingly, as though they still can’t believe that it is a serious career choice for many individuals. This is partially because people lack a point of reference; an example— something against which they can make a comparison. So, when a particular video game title appears in headlines on news sites like Forbes and TMZ, that game is doing something right. And that game is Fortnite.
Here are just a few reasons why Fortnite is dominating the esports conversation.
It’s Easy to Explain
First and foremost, Fortnite is relatively simple to both talk about and describe to an outsider. Compare it to something like League of Legends — arguably the single most popular game in esports — where explaining the game play to someone who has never seen it means going into what lanes are, when you should roam the jungle, and how to last-hit minions. The conversation is much simpler when all you have to say is “everyone parachutes in, competes for resources, and tries to eliminate other players while staying alive.” Or, even simpler: “Last one standing wins.”
The simplicity of the conversation doesn’t mean that Fortnite is a “better” game than League of Legends. Far from it. It simply means that the battle royale concept is prevalent in popular culture and has been for a couple decades. From the movie Battle Royale released back in 2000 to the more recent books and films of The Hunger Games, the idea of pitting a large group of individuals against each other exists outside of video games as much as within. This provides people with a cultural reference point since the game leverages patterns to which they’re already familiar.
It Innovates More Than it Invents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQIgwifI0co
Just like The Hunger Games was not the first battle royale-style film, Fortnite is not the first battle royale game. It is not even the only one on the market right now. The genre has been around in gaming for years, from a now-defunct mod for Minecraft to current titles like H1Z1 and PUBG. Yet where the latter two games are nearly identical to one another, Fortnite took a stylistic turn and toned down the violence to a cartoon level. There’s no blood. There’s no customizable body armor. What’s more, the characters look like something you’d see on Saturday morning television.
And while this game play similarity between games is not without controversy, it does make migrating to the game seamless; especially since players can shoot each other on just about every platform: Xbox, PlayStation, mobile, PC, and as of June 12th on the Nintendo Switch. Over the course of just six days, the game had been downloaded over 2 million times on the Switch. Shortly after Nintendo brought it to their popular platform, the total number of Fortnite players tipped past the 125 million mark. It doesn’t get much easier to jump into a game with your friends.
Or does it?
It Embraces Diversity
What better what to encourage playing than to give your game away. Fortnite’s Battle Royale game, you see, is free — unlike its biggest competitor, PUBG, which costs $29.99 on Steam as of this writing (H1Z1 was a similar price, but is now free to play). That doesn’t mean Epic is turning into a charity, however. Fortnite players can spend money on skins and special loot boxes that change the appearance of their characters, and they spend a lot of it. It was estimated that Fornite made $126 million in February alone. Lowering this monetary barrier to entry provides Epic Games the opportunity to bring tournaments like the recent ProAm 2018 to a much larger audience.
The ProAm, which ran for one evening during 2018’s E3 Expo, saw players compete for a $3 million prize pool to be donated to the charity of their choice. And while it was ostensibly a charity benefit, a more subtle achievement by Epic was showcasing the diversity of the contestants. Representing a multitude of ages and ethnic backgrounds, the event also highlighted some of the best women currently playing the game. It was easy to scan the seats on stage and feel represented in some way, be it via age, race, gender, or skill level.
It’s Fun and Funny
Finally, Fortnite is fun. Goofy, infectious fun. Sure, there will always be people who don’t like it because let’s just all agree right now that people have opinions, and those opinions are sometimes going to clash with yours. That’s fine. But it does raise a difficult point, which is that fun is subjective. It’s difficult to quantify the size of fun, no matter how many candy bars make an attempt.
I mentioned that Fortnite is on just about every conceivable platform there is: Xbox, PlayStation, PC, Mobile, Switch. Players of any age can download the game and play whether they’re at home on their laptop, taking a lunch break at work, sitting on campus, or being driven to school. The effect is that no matter where someone is located, the conversation surrounding the game is close at hand.
And the conversation isn’t just about how long a player lasted or how many kills he or she scored, silly stuff tends to happen in the game. Still stuff like the video above. It’s what memes are made of, those infectious ideas that keep us talking.
This is not to say that gaming in general, and Fortnite specifically, isn’t without controversy. Nor am I dismissing the valid concerns of others by claiming the game is “just fun.” Debates about whether gaming is addictive and what should be done about it are serious ones that should continue.
What I am saying, however, is that accessibility, diversity, innovation, and humor are four things keeping Fortnite on the tips of our tongues.
