Fortnight is everywhere. Musicians are name-dropping it. Sports stars are
imitating it. New York tourist shops are t-shirt-ifying it. To understand how
it got here, and how it became this phenomenon, you need to understand three things.
Back in 2013 Brendan Greene, under his handle
PlayerUnknown, created this battle royale mod for ARMA 2. It was based on the success
of another ARMA mod, the hugely popular zombie survival game DayZ. Greene was
inspired by the Japanese thriller Battle Royale, this controversial hit from 2000
where a group of schoolchildren are forced to fight each other to the death
on an island. The movies kill-to-survive concept inspired a bunch of
Japanese games, like Fate/stay night and the Danganronpa franchise. In America,
The Hunger Games franchise – book and movie – proved that that concept had
appeal here too. Greene's Arma 2 mod tapped into this
fascination and found a huge following with the Arma community. In 2015,
Bluehole Ginno Games – best known for the MMORPG Tera – got in contact with Greene.
The South Korean publisher wanted to expand into the games-as-service model,
kind-of similar to League of Legends. Instead of releasing a bunch of
self-contained games, the games-as-service model makes it so that you concentrate
on one game, and then just extend its lifetime through subscriptions,
microtransactions and events. Bluehole and Greene partnered up and
development on PlayerUnknown's Battleground – PUBG – began early 2016.
The early access version released on Steam in March 2017. Within three months, the
game had sold 5 million copies. It was a huge success.
Within 5 months, it was up to 10 million copies sold and had reached a peak of
1.3 million concurrent players, beating out other popular games of the same time
like Fallout 4 and DotA 2. Before launch, Bluehole gave an early version of the
game to a bunch of really popular streamers, sort of helping it to gain
ground on Twitch. Afterwards it spread like wildfire. Popular streamers were
given access to special custom servers so they could make their own sort of
bizarre, unique, very fun gameplay styles – like zombie mode, which became part of
the base game. PUBG proved that battle royale could capture a huge player base...
but it also had a lot of flaws in early access,
like bugs, unreliable servers, and kind of generic visuals – all of which attracted
competitors who saw an opportunity.
These days,Epic Games is known for creating
Fortnite. But at the beginning of this decade, they were a much different
company. In 2011, Epic just wrapped Gears of War 3 and were entering a
period of change. In 2012, it lost one of its most recognizable creators – Cliff
Bleszinski – and then in 2014, it sold the Gears of War brand to Microsoft. Work on
Fortnite began in around 2011 with a prototype that combined building and
shooting, but development slowed over the years as a studio adjusted to
all of these internal changes. Gradually Epic return to the Fortnite concept
and began to experiment with a bunch of other projects inspired by the big
trends in gaming at the moment. This included a free-to-play multiplayer
online battle arena game called Paragon. They also had a version of the Unreal
Engine that incorporated user-generated content, and this updated spin on Fortnite.
They were really inspired by art styles like Pixar and Tim Burton, and
this revamped take on Fortnight was supposed to be a mix of Minecraft and
Left 4 Dead, so like a co-op base defense game about gathering materials, crafting
structures, and fighting off monsters. After years of development, the game was
finally released to early access in July 2017 –
to basically... no fanfare. But Epic
was still looking for the next big trend in gaming. When PUBG blew up, they
pivoted their large, highly-skilled workforce to bring their own battle
royale mode to market faster than any competitor could. According to Ed Zobrist,
Epic's Head of Publishing, Fortnite Battle Royale was developed in only two months,
releasing in September 2017. Owing to Epic's experience developing games across
platform, the mode was released simultaneously to Windows, Mac OS,
PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1. Fortnite beat PUBG to consoles, and it supported
cross-platform play so friends could join up across many different systems. It
didn't take long for Fortnite to find a dedicated audience.
According to Epic, the game hit 10 million players just two weeks after its
release. From the beginning epic games leveraged its long experience in the
game industry. They were really proactive
about engaging the twitch community. They gave out copies to streamers, but they
also developed Fortnite Twitch Prime pack that had exclusive gear and skins
and emotes. The strategy really paid off; Twitch records were broken when
Tyler "Ninja" Blevins streamed fortnight with the pop culture icon Drake. This stream
peaked at over 635,000 concurrent viewers
and it launched Fortnite from the gaming community into the general pop
culture consciousness. By late 2017, Paragon had hemorrhaged way too many players
to still be worth updating. So Epic cancelled it. They deprioritized their
other projects, and they just went all-in on Fortnite. The iOS version,
developed in-house, was released in April 2018 with cross-play for Windows, Mac and
Xbox one. In just three days, this version brought in about 1 million
dollars through in-app purchases and within a month that figure blew past
25 million. Epic had finally found the hit they were searching for.
Ninja: Thank you the lord. Oh my god, it's for yourself. Good shit.
Key to Fortnite's success story is the fact that
it matures a beloved genre alongside its player base. Fortnite taps into the
same demographic that grew up playing Minecraft, and helped them
graduate to a more complex, competitive world – but also still used the creative
skills that they'd already developed. Lots of games have building or crafting,
but not very many have the same sort of bright, cartoonish aesthetic that
Fortnite does. It's a style that appeals to a broader audience than most other
battle royales, including people who might not otherwise play video games.
And unlike PUBG, it's free! Supported mostly by cosmetic based microtransactions.
Gone are the days of having to visit your one rich friend's house to play their Super
Nintendo. There's no upfront investment to play, just the time it takes to
download it.
Recent backlashes against the loot boxes system inDestiny 2 and Star
Wars Battlefront point to an evolving standard in how games are monetized.
Rather than asking players to gamble or pay to unlock better stats, Fortnite
plays the same whether you invest in it or not. Players know exactly what they're
getting for their money, and the skins and emotes are so enticing that people
are eager to shell out for them. And the Battle Pass, which provides more quests
and rewards, is a great value. It's only about $10 a season.
It's a brilliant system – which we've covered at length.
To keep players interested, Epic uses its massive team to constantly create new weapons.
They alter locations. They develop these bizarre storylines at lightning speed.
They've been really proactive in keeping Fortnite fresh, introducing crossovers
like The Avengers: Infinity War event, where players could battle for the
Infinity Gauntlet. They've also been adding limited time options like 50v50
and Playground modes, and they regularly incorporate gameplay updates like new
vehicles and power-ups, ominous comets rocket launches, and a grenade that makes
people dance. Like... this game has it all.
Fortnite has the pedigree of Epic's
classic shooters, but it has this personality and vibrance that really
differentiates it – not just from the other games that Epic has made but also
from the competition. At this rate it seems like Fortnite is gonna be on top
for a while, but there are plenty who said that of PUBG. No one thing
catapulted Fortnite to the cultural spotlight. It was just a matter of smart,
timely moves by Epic Games, really stylish design, a willingness to
experiment, and a little bit of luck. A game like Fortnite isn't an accident –
it's a perfect storm.