Where We Dropping, Boys?

Fortnite takes a leap into the world of eSports with Summer Skirmish

Fortnite.

The cultural sensation has terrorized school Wi-Fi, raked in billions of dollars, and has worked its way into sporting events from the NFL to the FIFA World Cup. Even with such a staggeringly successful first year, the Epic Games-produced pop culture juggernaut shows no signs of slowing down.

Fortnite, a massive battle royale-style game where you and 99 other online players are dropped onto an island and the last person standing wins. Players hunt for weapons and materials then use them to help eliminate their opponents. The goal is simply to be the last player standing. Thanks to its slick design, instant sociability, and its low barrier to entry (the game is free to download), the game has become massively, mind-bogglingly popular.

The popularity of Fortnite has manifested in the absurd amount of money it has earned Epic Games. The company is now worth over $8 billion, they earned $318 million from in-app purchases in May alone, and the user base hit nearly 80 million players in August.

Now, the arguably biggest video game on the planet is looking to capitalize on more than just the Professionally Unqualified squad spending their paychecks on in-app emotes. For eight weeks this summer, Epic Games hosted the Fortnite Summer Skirmish Series, its first foray into the world of eSports. This first event for competitive Fortnite featured popular Fortnite streamers, rotating rule formats, and a total of $8,000,000 in prize money. With global eSports revenue projecting to hit $905.6 million in 2018 , it makes sense that Fortnite wants a share of the sponsorship, advertising, and merchandising revenue that can be earned in the eSports market.

But with every new endeavor come growing pains and the initial broadcasting of competitive Fortnite was no different. Much like when black-and-white soccer balls were introduced to improve television viewing, or when the 1st & Ten graphics system became standard during football broadcasts, competitive Fortnite has had to adapt to create an entertaining broadcast for viewers.

However, unlike the early days of sports broadcasting, we were able to see the adjustments made to competitive Fortnite broadcasts in seemingly real time. Each week during the Summer Skirmish Series, changes were made to improve the presentation and create an entertaining product for viewers. This showed spectators that Epic Games was receptive to making the best presentation possible. Epic Games took the feedback they saw on Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, and elsewhere and adapted Summer Skirmish each week seeking the perfect broadcast. They changed the format, altered how the action was shown, and tried out multiple commentary crews. Let’s look at how these three changes eventually led to the perfect presentation at the Summer Skirmish Grand Finals at PAX West.

The Format

As mentioned above, the goal of Fortnite is to be the last player standing. While eliminating opponents is what makes the game entertaining, victory can also be achieved by lurking in the shadows until the end — waiting until all the other players eliminate each other or get lost in the storm. Week 1 of Summer Skirmish honored the traditional format of Fortnite, but this lead to a frustrating experience for viewers.

Week 1 was a duos tournament, where 50 teams of 2 players played until either a) a single team won 2 games or b) 10 total games have been played. After the tenth game (assuming the tournament made it that far), teams would be ranked by their number of victories, followed by their average finishing placement, followed by their total eliminations. While the top 20 teams each would take home some prize money, the winning team received $50,000 while the team with the most total eliminations would receive $6,500.

Do you see the problem?

Players had little to no incentive to go for eliminations. The real prize money was in surviving, so players would bunker down while not actively seeking to get any eliminations. This clip of Team SoloMid during Week 1 shows how even the participants got a little bored with the format.

Week 2 incentivized eliminations, but experienced a new batch of format problems. During Week 2, players played 10 solo matches on public servers. A victory would earn you 5 points, each elimination earned you 1 point, and if you were able to get 20 or more eliminations in a single match you would earn $10,000 each time you could pull off the feat.

While eliminations were properly incentivized during Week 2, the “playing on public servers” aspect lead to problems. Popular streamers are often prone to “stream sniping,” where players watch the live streams of their favorite streamers, try to get in the same game as them, then hunt them down while watching their stream to gain a competitive advantage. To combat this, participants had to stream on delay.

However not everyone had the ability to stream on delay. While many of the participants in Week 2 were professional streamers, some of the participants were invitees who had played well during special in-game events. This led to total unknown iDroPz_BoDiEs winning while getting 20+ kills in 3 consecutive games. He did all of this without streaming a single moment live.

This led to several accusations that iDroPz_BoDiEs had cheated . There were allegations that he had used a keyboard and mouse but played through a Playstation 4 (earning a competitive advantage), or that he was having his buddies log on to serve as cannon fodder and feed him easy eliminations. Several participants ended up venting their frustrations in their respective streams. Epic Games had to publish a statement assuring viewers that the wins and eliminations were legitimate. Epic Games assured viewers that iDroPz_BoDiEs had eliminated only unique opponents and he did not use any technology that would be considered illegal in game, but the week had already been overshadowed by the questionable victory.

After the first two weeks the format stabilized. Eliminations and finishing positions were both properly incentivized while still allowing for weekly twists. In Week 3, duos were awarded 5 points for victories and 2 points if they were able to get 5 eliminations in a single match. In Week 5, duos earned 1 point for each elimination, a x2 point bonus in their next match if they were able to get 7 eliminations in a match, and a x3 point bonus in their next match if they earned a victory.

The importance of eliminations and finishing position lead to several great moments, especially during the Grand Finals during Week 8. During the Grand Finals, a victory earned you 3 points, 2nd and 3rd place earned 2 points, and 4th through 10th place earned 1 point. Eliminations were weighted similarly, with 7 eliminations earning you 3 points, 5–6 eliminations earning you 2 points, and 3–4 eliminations earning you 1 point.

One great game, with a high finish and several eliminations, could vault players up the standings. In one of the best moments of the entire series, popular streamer NICKMERCS had 0 points heading into the 5th game of the Grand Finals. Needing to move up the standings, he eliminated 8 other players and earned a top 10 finish.

Once the format was well organized so that players were seeking eliminations while also trying to survive, viewers were able to see the entertainment they were looking for. Epic Games realized the traditional format did not translate well to spectators and was willing to adjust for an entertaining spectacle.

The Action

In most sports, following the action is easy. You just follow the bouncing, flying, or rolling ball. You can have a wide shot showing player formations around the ball or a close up if an impressive play is happening. But there’s no ball in Fortnite and there’s 100 players. That’s a lot to keep track of. If the transitions are not smooth, viewers end up missing out on the action. So Epic Games faced a fundamental dilemma: how do you center the action? It’s not on a simple grid or a diamond, it’s on a sprawling digital island with deserts, mountains, skyscrapers, and floating hills where 100 players are each involved in their own skirmishes.

For the first few weeks, the broadcast featured several moments where the focus would change in the middle of a fight. The worst offender was this moment, where gaming superstar Ninja was in the middle of a 2-on-1 fight (that he won) and the stream switched to follow two other players who were only harvesting materials.

If you’re not familiar with Ninja, he is the most followed streamer on Twitch. He has streamed Fortnite with all sorts of celebrities like Drake, Juju Smith-Schuster, Travis Scott, and Joe Jonas. He was the first eSports athlete to grace the cover of ESPN Magazine and can currently be seen in commercials promoting the Samsung Galaxy. But even with that impressive résumé, the camera was not glued to him. If the stream had stayed put, audiences would have seen this excellent play from Ninja. Instead, only those that were watching Ninja’s channel caught the moment.

By the end of the series, the broadcast was much more comfortable allowing the stream to follow a single point of action. If a good fight is going on, there’s no need to turn away. The audience is much more interested in seeing eliminations than they are in seeing players survive. At the Grand Finals, audiences saw a lot of action between Aydan and NICKMERCS and they loved every second of it.

Aydan was a relative unknown before the Grand Finals. Before that, he was averaging well under 2,000 viewers on Twitch. NICKMERCS, as I mentioned above, is one of the most popular streamers on Twitch. During the first match of the Grand Finals, the stream caught what was the most iconic moment of the entire series. Aydan eliminated NICKMERCS and danced on his grave.

This was the “Allen Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue” moment of the day. The crowd and the guys in the booth ate it up. After this display of showmanship, the crew knew that any time these two encountered each other it had to be shown. Fortunately, Aydan and NICKMERCS chose to land in the same location every match. Nearly every second of each of their 4 encounters was shown. Listen to the crowd roar as the tension builds with each encounter.

Focusing on a single encounter may not give all of the players an equal amount of screen time, but it ensures the audience is always watching a fight. Audiences are also able to enjoy the development of rivalries, like the one between Aydan and NICKMERCS, in real time. Because the stream focused on the encounters between Aydan and NICKMERCS instead of bouncing around to different players, we were able to see the genesis of the first superstar Fortnite rivalry.

The Commentary

ESports commentary has proven to be difficult. Like with any sports commentary, commentators are looking to explain the sport in a way that is digestible for new viewers while also delving into the intricacies for the more experienced viewers all while capturing the flow of play.

On top of that, eSports commentators have not been around for the better part of a century. Many sports broadcasters were able to grow up watching their favorite commentators, then go on to school to learn the ropes while still being able to learn from their heroes at any time by switching on the television. Most eSports commentators have to learn on the fly.

For Week 1 of Summer Skirmish, streamers Toaster, Carpet, and Rainy served as the commentators. These three all had some commentary experience, calling games like Battlerite and Rocket League, but none had experience calling Fortnite matches. To be fair, this was the first Fortnite event with commentators and technical problems made calling the matches incredibly difficult.

The first week of Summer Skirmish was plagued by lag problems. The commentary crew was clearly instructed to ignore these problems and laugh them off, but this came off as unprofessional. If they weren’t laughing, the crew was often sitting in silence as players complained about the technical difficulties.

The commentators were also restricted by the lack of spectator camera. A spectator camera can show wide shots of the positions and health of many players at once. Without this, the commentators could only call the action of whichever streamer they were watching at the time. There was no way to tell audiences how other players were rotating position because they were stuck following one player at a time.

Though they were severely handicapped by the situation, the three commentators from Week 1 were not invited back. Starting in Week 2, we were introduced to Zeke Mateus. Zeke is currently a video editor for Epic Games who was willing to throw himself into the lion’s den of internet wrath to become the first competitive Fortnite commentator.

After Week 1, Zeke was paired with a different popular streamer each week. Popular streamers Hamlinz, Dr. Lupo, and CouRage were among those who took a week off from competing to help Zeke in the booth. While having experienced Fortnite players calling the matches improved the broadcast, the presentation still left a lot to be desired. The commentary was formulaic — Zeke would ask a simple question about what was happening and whichever streamer was guest commentating would answer.

For the Grand Finals, Epic Games decided to go with two streamers as the main commentators while Zeke performed sideline interviews. After their strong commentary performances during Summer Skirmish, CouRage and Dr. Lupo were the streamers chosen to do lead commentary. Both are high level Fortnite players, both are popular personalities on Twitch, and they had worked with each other before. On top of that, CouRage has actual experience commentating eSports, having previously called several Call of Duty tournaments.

With the Grand Finals featuring two exceptional commentators and finally integrating spectator view, Fortnite finally had the major league feel of a legitimate eSport. The improved commentary, along with the focus on action and improvements to the format, made the Grand Finals of Summer Skirmish an exceptional viewing experience. To see how everything came together, just rewatch the final game from the Grand Finals.

Hopefully, this is just the beginning for Fortnite as an eSport. Epic Games has learned a ton from Summer Skirmish that they can use to ensure their presentations are professional and entertaining. With Fall Skirmish having already begun and another huge tournament planned for TwitchCon 2018 at the end of October, Fortnite looks to be a major player in the future of eSports.