- Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now.
Even if you don't play games that much,
you've probably seen a Fortnite
clip or two on social media.
And heard about the game's meteoric rise.
But beyond being super popular,
the game is also incredibly important
to the future of the industry.
Fortnite is impacting how modern video games are developed.
And how they get popular, stay relevant and make money.
So what's the secret to its success?
Let's take a look at the ingredients of Fortnite
that have turned it into such a big hit.
And how that formula is changing pretty much everything
about online games in 2018.
What you might not know about Fortnite
is that it's been cooking for a while, years in fact.
The game was announced way back in 2011.
And when it finally launched last summer
it didn't even include the Battle Royale mode
that has made it so popular.
The developer, Epic Games, saw a big opportunity
to capitalize on a trend set by the game PUBG.
And so it iterated quickly and released a version
of Fortnite that pinned 100 people against one another
in a big sprawling environment.
The result is that now Fortnite is played
by tens of millions of people
and it makes a fortune for Epic every month.
In April the game made 300 million dollars.
That's more than the New Avengers movie
made in its opening weekend.
This game has gotten so big that some people in the industry
think Fortnite may become a generation defining title.
Think something like Minecraft.
So what makes Fortnite special?
Why is it so successful and popular
and why are people spending so much money on it?
The answer there is a bit complex.
It involves delving into how video games typically
get made and how they make money.
Also how that process has been changing over the years.
For Fortnite it's important to understand
that it's not doing anything super new.
It's not the first free-to-play game certainly.
Mobile games predominantly from Asia
figured out years ago that if you gave away a game for free,
you could charge players small amounts of money
to make their characters look unique.
Fortnite is also not the first game
to be treated as an evolving service
instead of like a one-off product.
Games like Destiny, Overwatch, World of Warcraft,
they've been doing this for years.
But most importantly Fortnite isn't
even the first Battle Royale game.
They copied most of the gameplay from PUBG,
which itself is based on earlier game modes like DayZ.
But Fortnite is the first free-to-play Battle Royale game
and is updated almost daily.
It's super polished, runs well on basically
every platform including phones.
And it has a very cartoony art style
that appeals to all ages,
which is great for parents who are worried
about video game violence.
The ingredients were all there and Epic
was just the first one to do it well.
They didn't set out to make the biggest game in the world,
but they did anyway because they were willing
to take risks and evolve.
If you play a lot of games like me,
you're probably hooked on Fortnite.
And like me maybe you've spend a little bit
of real money on the game or maybe a lot of real money.
So here is my whole vault of emotes that I've bought.
There's of course the disco dancing one
to go with my disco dancing character.
It's also the floss dance.
You can even do the Snoop Dogg drop it like it's hot dance.
So why are we, you and me spending
so much money on a free video game?
Well in Fortnite most of the money that you spend
is spent on accessories like costumes
and hang gliders and pickaxes.
That don't help you do any better at the game
but they do help you stand out on the battlefield.
You can make yourself look like a swamp monster
or a disco dancer or even Keanu Reeves from John Wick.
You can also spend money on what are called emotes,
which is just industry-speak for really silly dance moves.
I think is particularly good at designing new emotes.
They're always pulling from popular memes
and encouraging the community to even submit their own.
- This actually stays in the game
I will probably crap my pants.
- But where Epic was really smart
was in creating a system for players
to unlock some of these items
without spending any real money.
They do this by borrowing a lot from role-playing games,
where you use XP to level up
and you complete challenges to progress.
So essentially a system that rewards players
for investing more time.
For instance Epic sells a three-month subscription service
for $10 called the Battle Pass.
With its own set of unique rewards,
and only by playing the game pretty much
every single day can you unlock every costume and dance.
I subscribed to the battle pass
for three seasons in a row now,
because I play at least a little bit every day
and it made sense.
Also I needed the John wick skin because, reasons.
Epic is always adding new and wild stuff
to the game for free.
Like jet packs and shopping carts
and new experimental game modes
that keep it fresh every week.
Lately they've been going even further
by crafting elaborate story lines for Fortnite.
Like the meteor crash that happened last month.
They give players lots of narratives to invest in
and talk about online.
So sure the game has done really well, people love it.
but does that mean that every game in the future
is just gonna be a re-skin of Fortnite?
No.
There will always be a place for those big franchise games.
They come out once every few years and really make waves.
Like Grand Theft Auto or Zelda or the new God of War.
But because Fortnite is so popular,
it's hard to imagine the best bits of it won't be copied
by gaming's biggest players.
- [Narrator] This is something totally new. **Correction: Footage should be sourced to Activision, not EA.**
This is doing Battle Royale the Black Ops way. **Correction: Footage should be sourced to Activision, not EA.**
- And in this day and age the most popular games,
the ones that people talk about and play every single day,
they absolutely need to be fun to watch.
And Fortnite is an amazing spectator sport.
It's everywhere on social media.
With clips flooding Reddit and Instagram and Twitter.
Fortnite's viral moments they're legendary in the community
and it's really, really huge on YouTube and Twitch.
Take Tyler, Ninja, Blevins,
the most popular Twitch streamer in the world.
Ninja who's a former Halo pro, ditched his ESports career
just when fortnite was getting big.
And by the spring he was making hundreds of thousands
of dollars a month playing Fortnite
for upwards of 12 hours a day on Twitch.
Then in March Ninja played with Drake.
Yes that Drake.
It was a huge milestone for Fortnite and gaming culture.
And it happened in the middle of the night
with no promotion.
Nobody really saw it coming,
and yet more than 500,000 people tuned in to watch it live.
It really marked the moment when Fortnite
felt like it was going mainstream.
With so many people playing this game,
these streams have gigantic built-in audiences.
Fortnite is creating a whole new class
of internet celebrity on YouTube and Twitch.
That's because for the really good players,
Fortnite is a great tool for creating viral clips
of high scope plays and other really shareable moments.
For you or me watching somebody else
play Fortnite is just as entertaining
as watching a TV show or sport.
And if you watch you might just learn a few things too.
So the game industry has watched all of these shifts
happen over the years.
The push to make games more streamable,
to turn them into free-to-play platforms.
And everything else that Fortnite has really mastered.
Now all these companies are trying
to make sense of it and adapt.
But just as Fortnite came out of nowhere last fall
and surprised everybody,
some new game or concept might do the same to Fortnite.
The Battle Royale genre
won't be the hot new thing forever.
And game design nowadays it's all about copying,
iterating and finding a new way to do something better.
For Epic, if it wants to continue making
the most popular game in the world,
it cannot get complacent.
They have to remember that taking risks,
experimenting and listening to players
is why Fortnite got so big in the first place.
For the rest of the industry it would be smart
not to just copy Fortnite,
but to really learn from Epic's willingness to adapt.
That might be the most important lesson
to learn from Fortnite's success.
- [Narrator] For more gaming news
and stuff about Fortnite and better flossing,
check out polygon.com,
where they're better at dancing.
(laughs) Alright, good.
I'm really hot in this jacket.