In this show, we aren’t going to explain to you what the game Fortnite entails, as
we’ve done that before and we are quite sure 99 percent of you know what we are talking
about.
If you look at the most recent statistics on global players, Fortnite said itself in
a blog post in June, “In less than a year, Fortnite has grown to 125 million players.”
Statistica tells us the same, while MarketWatch recently said that 40 million players log
in to play every month.
We are also told that Fortnite’s main competitor, PUBG, has seen its number of players halve
since January 2018.
Fortnite is king, and in another show, we’ve already tried to explain why that is so.
But today we’ll look at two of the game’s biggest stars, in this episode of the Infographics
Show, Ali A vs Ninja - How Do the Fortnite Players Compare?
We’ll do a quick intro for one of these stars: Ninja.
Quick, because we’ve already dedicated a show to him.
If you saw that, you’ll know his real name is Tyler Blevins.
He’s 27-years old, and he’s become quite the celebrity for his masterful gameplay,
with Forbes writing that, in terms of social media interactions, he was bigger than Portuguese
football hero Cristiano Ronaldo and retired American boxer, Floyd “Money” Mayweather.
When we wrote that show, he was reportedly making around $500,000 a month from mostly
streaming his games.
But Metro in the UK did some adding up in April of this year, and put the figure at
almost one million dollars a month.
It doesn’t seem to have gone to his head, though.
He’s all about ‘hard work pays dividends’, and ‘keep your head down’.
One thing we’ll add is that many of you said he certainly wasn’t the best Fortnite
player out there, contradicting some media.
He recently went head-to-head with other great players in the biggest Fortnite competition
yet, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
So, now let’s introduce our next star.
His name is Alastair “Ali-A” Aiken, a 24 yr old Englishman, who has also made a
fortune from gaming.
While you could argue that this guy may not be the same player as Ninja, or even “Myth”,
or many other Fortnite greats, he does seem to have ruled YouTube with his Fortnite games.
This was a Forbes headline in April this year: “If You Search 'Fortnite' On YouTube, You
Get 49 Ali-A Videos Out Of 120 Top Results.”
Ali-A was of course around before Fortnite, and his game commentaries, friendly coaching
style, and humorous vlogs have earned him around 13 million subscribers and over 3 billion
views.
His main claim to fame comes from being a whizz on Minecraft and a great coach for Call
of Duty.
From what we can see, though, no one ranks him anywhere close to the best COD players
of all time.
He’s also done TV, and has a graphic novel written about him called “Ali-A Adventures:
Game On!”
According to some pundits, Ali-A is a very good gamer, but when it comes to the YouTube
hustle, he’s outstanding.
He knows how to create titles you will click on, keep you hooked, and he can also work
the algorithms.
The question is, is he any good at Fortnite?
Well, not half as good as Ninja, it seems.
But is Ninja just the most popular, and not the most skillful?
We had a look at the website FortniteTracker and indeed, overall, Ninja was in first place
on the PC leaderboard.
He has 3,074 wins from 8,649 games.
In second place, was TwitchSvennoss with 3,070 wins from 6,661 games, and in third place
was TwitchUwatakashi with 2,942 wins from 8,031 games.
You have to go down this list a lot to find the famous Myth.
And the highest ranked Brit, far from being Ali-A, was Zaccubus, with 2,373 wins from
6,673 games.
If you go to the all platforms leader list, including PS4 and Xbox One, the results look
different.
You also have lots of different players ranked higher for win percentage, kills, or top 3
finishes, top 10s, etc, or TNR rating – and overall analysis of all your games.
So, it’s kinda complicated saying who the best player is.
A website called Top Tens says the top three players, based on user votes, are Ninja, The
Myth, and then Daequan, but that wasn’t based on enough votes for the result to be
compelling evidence of who really is the best.
Ranker has the same top two, but with Muselk in third.
It has Ali-A in eleventh place.
Ok, so what we are basically saying is that it’s hard to judge who is the best, and
sometimes we mistake skill level for popularity.
You must be an all-rounder to truly be the best, which is why Ninja is extolled so much.
The one thing to sort this problem out would be to just have all the players playing against
each other.
That’s kind of what happened recently at the first E3 Pro Am, what Forbes called “Fortnite’s
Super Bowl or Celebrity Deathmatch.”
You couldn’t really say all the best players were there, though, as, out of the 100 players,
50 of them were celebrities and 50 were pro players.
TV stars, rappers, athletes, and serious players mingled in an LA stadium among 22,000 fans.
The prize was $3 million dollars for charity, and some serious bragging rights.
Yes, Ali-A was there, as were the boy Ninja and The Myth.
The players played a warm-up solo game, a warm-up duo game, and a Final Duo Charity
Match.
Ninja played with EDM artist Marshmallow; Ali-A played with Fall Out Boy Bassist Pete
Wentz, and Myth played with NBA player Paul George.
In the solo game, NoahJ came out on top with Kinstaar in second.
In the warm up duo game, Kinstaar and Sean0 were top, with Ninja and Marshmello second,
and for the final, Ninja and Marshmallow beat CourageJD and Kenneth Faried.
CourageJD, by the way, is Ninja’s friend and sometimes playing partner.
You should also know that in the final, Ali-A and Pete Wentz did quite well, coming in fifth
place.
Winner of the solo event, Noahj456 has almost 3.5 million YouTube subscribers.
He made a video of his own top ten Fortnite players.
Here is the list, starting at 5th place: 5.
Daequan (USA).
4.
Myth (USA).
3.
Hamlinz (USA).
2.
Ninja (USA) and 1 is Tfue (USA).
Now, that’s a pretty American-centric list, and looking at stats, there are some great
players around the world, with some heavy hitters from Mexico, Japan, the UK, China,
Sweden, The Netherlands, Russia…and the list goes on.
We are not endorsing what NoahJ is saying, just giving you his opinion.
We are, of course, hoping to hear yours.
As for the tournament, did Ninja look like the best player out there?
Well, apparently, he spent most of the final hiding out in safe zones, but perhaps he is
just wily.
He didn’t win by luck alone, that’s for sure.
Is he better than Ali-A?
Yes, without a doubt.
He may only be just as popular, though.
Nonetheless, you could say this competition was as much about glitz and glamor as it was
putting the world’s best together.
If you want to see that happen, you may have to wait for the Fortnite World Cup in 2019.
This is the one way we’ll see who the best is, especially if we see such international
tournaments in more years to come.
We think Ninja has more of a chance of winning one of those than Ali-A.
So, what do you think?
Ali A or Ninja?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called Ninja vs
Average Player, How do they compare?!
Thanks for watching, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe.
See you next time!