Fortnite is Great and I Hate It — But Why?
So I downloaded Fornite on my Switch a week ago, and I hate that I like it.
There are a lot of memes going around saying that battle royale type games are the next big thing, and that everyone is going to get in on the new trend. Riot Games had to come out and say that League of Legends: Battle Royale wouldn’t be happening, and before E3, every franchise from Mario to Fallout was getting a surprisingly well-made edit with the words ‘Battle Royale’ under the title.
Although they weren’t the first games to make use of the mode, Fortnite and PUBG are doubtlessly the biggest names in the Battle Royale scene, and with the chaos of 100 players all running around at the same time, it makes sense that the game mode would become popular. The frantic, frenetic frenzy of ‘gotta get guns gotta get ammo gotta build a hideout’ has taken ahold of people all over the world.
Me included.
I downloaded it merely a week ago, and even though I don’t have a burning need to play, it’s always in the back of my mind that I could. The large amount of players tempers any rage I could have; rather than pressing myself to be better than a team of six, I think, “Well, there’s 100 people here. I can’t beat all of them.” And since there’s always a game going thanks to the prodigiously large playerbase, I never have to wait long for a match.
The gameplay itself is fun and engaging, yet simple. The controls for building ramps and walls on the fly are intuitive once you get the hang of it, as is the weapons system. The storm keeps people from simply hiding the match away, and also provides a hilarious punishment for people who get distracted.
It really got me focused on cringe culture.
It started with Minecraft. If there was a game before it, I haven’t heard of it. It enjoyed a wildly successful intro into the world of games, but as more and more players started joining, it became obvious that the most avid part of the playerbase was the 8–17 year old demographic.
Next came Undertale, a fantastically nuanced yet enticingly simple game that had more in the way of audio than graphics, yet managed to capture the hearts and minds of millions nonetheless. The trick of having a backup save that could detect when you restarted or even deleted your main save made eyes widen in shock and fear, even though logically it had an explanation.
And now it’s Fortnite. The children have found their fixation, and the hecklers come. For some reason, anything that’s enjoyed by someone not legally allowed to drive is automatically labeled unimportant, and if you like it anyway you’re pathetic.
Obviously, I’m not immune to this. I started disliking both Minecraft and Undertale after I’d played a bit, and realized cringe culture was in full effect. It didn’t help that I found Minecraft uninteresting and already finished Undertale (and like most people, never opened the game again after achieving the true happy ending).
I didn’t even give Fortnight a chance though, not until I wanted to find some more things to play on my Switch and thought, “Why not?” And for that, I will never forgive myself.
Not because Fortnite is terribly great, but because letting other people’s opinions of something dictate MY opinions of something is a terrible thing to let happen, especially if I haven’t played that thing myself.
