8 ms·

How Fortnite leveled up, broke records, and changed gaming

96 points by hownottowrite 9y ago

Insanity 9y ago
So they say: "But another huge boost to the game’s popularity has been cross-platform play — meaning you can play with your friends who are accessing it on a variety of devices and platforms." And it can run on iOS and soon Android as well.. but not Linux. That's a bit of a shame, kind of curious to try that game out now but I can't imagine gaming on Android / iOS is something comfortable.
- metaobject 9y ago
  I'm not a big gamer, but i recall in the late 90s - early 2000s timeframe there were several big-title FPS games available on Linux (Quake series, Unreal, Half Life). Whatever happened to that momentum? Not enough demand, I guess?
  - TylerE 9y ago
    The biggest thing was the continual (and continuing) shit show that is graphics drivers on linux.
    - teach 9y ago
      That's just false. Graphics drivers on Linux are easy to update and offer nearly identical performance in many games.
      - TylerE 9y ago
        Yeah, right. Historically, drivers were often not available at all, at least not ones that actually exposed the real power of the hardware - and performance is usually lower. See this set of recent benchmarks for instance, which show Linux performance lagging behind W10 by 15-25%. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-win10-feb18&num=4 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-w...
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        These days, the performance diff is mostly from relatively low effort ports. I'm not really complaining about them - they have to earn money. But in most cases it's not primarily a drivers problem anymore.
      - tomc1985 9y ago
        Yeah, just stop your X server and run this opaque binary, answer these questions about kernel modules, restart X, and hope your display config isn't completely messed up... super easy! //slightly salty
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        Unless you buy Intel or AMD.
        tomc1985 9y ago
        Up until very recently I was on Catalyst drivers on Mint 18 and it was just as bad. Thank God the open source drivers work decent now. And Intel? HA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA One word: gma500 ... welcome to hell!
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        Yes, I'm talking about the state of software now and hardware up to about five years old. gma500 is from about 2008, apparently.
        izacus 9y ago
        Except that Intel still doesn't make a graphics chip worth anything when it comes to running 3D games like Fortnight. And AMD opensource drivers are far from having nVidia-like feature and capabilitiy parity with their Windwos counterparts. Sadly.
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        What is missing from AMD's drivers? They are great now IME, I'm using them to play games. (Note I have older GCN hardware - there seem to be more bugs with more recent hardware where they are still making bigger changes)
        9y ago
      - nl 9y ago
        I do machine learning for a living. I don't dare update my display drivers unless I have 3 days without a deliverable because of the disaster it usually is. Usually (yes, more than 50% of the times) it will break my displays (fail to detect both monitors, switch to some weird resolution etc), and always it will break CUDA/CUDNN so I have hours of work making that work again. I have a completely standard setup: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, NVidia GPU, Intel CPU. (I've been using Linux since Slackware 0.9, so yes I do know how to configure things. I'm sick of it not getting better since then).
        maccard 9y ago
        If it makes you feel any better I don’t update my windows display drivers unless ive 3 days free either, for exactly the same reason...
        ManlyBread 9y ago
        I don't update my drivers at all unless I run into something that refuses to work, don't fix it if it ain't broke
        maccard 9y ago
        I work in games, so I have to keep relatively up to date.. I’m usually one - two versions behind...
        notafxn 9y ago
        I suggest you switch to btrfs and use volume snapshots. That way you can take a snapshot just before you do a major upgrade (like a driver update) and if things don't work out you can instantly restore your system so you can keep working.
    - eikenberry 9y ago
      Not sure what you mean. Video drivers on Linux are finally coming together for all the main players. Nvidia's proprietary drivers are still good, Radeon's free drivers are very competitive and Intel free drivers are still great (though suck for gaming).
  - 013a 9y ago
    Games got significantly more complex, relying on more abstraction layers. DirectX got significantly more popular. Console gaming exploded.
- Mononokay 9y ago
  It's especially ironic, given that the game is made by Epic, a company that officially supports game development on Linux with their engine.
  - cma 9y ago
    I don't think the anti-cheat middleware they are using works on Linux.
    - thegeekpirate 9y ago
      This is correct—BattlEye does not currently support Linux, unfortunately. I'd kill for Epic to throw some money at it =c
      - DiabloD3 9y ago
        The obvious question is: how is it running on Android? Purely as an Android middleware, thus allowing more clever hacks through?
        dogma1138 9y ago
        It doesn’t run currently on Android and BattleEye doesn’t work on iOS either they don’t bother with anti cheat on mobile you just do root / jailbreak detection as you can’t really cheat without them as you need to hook into the memory and the network stack.
      - randomblob 9y ago
        Just get a PS4, it's playable using mouse and keyboard on consoles as well. But controller is better anyway IMHO.
  - a_t48 9y ago
    Epic doesn’t really support Linux that well - they mainly support Linux as a cross-compile target, running the editor natively is a bit more hairy and extremely poorly documented.
- a13n 9y ago
  Just weigh the benefits and costs of supporting Linux and it's obvious why they made that decision. How many million people are not playing Fortnite because they don't support Linux? I bet it rounds to zero.
- kevindong 9y ago
  Fortnite doesn't run on macOS very well. I legitimately get 4x the performance at 4x the resolution on my Macbook while in Windows vs. macOS.
  - josefdlange 9y ago
    Do you run in windowed (macOS-native) fullscreen or (what I assume is) direct-to-graphics-card fullscreen? The windowed fullscreen performance was abysmal compared to when I switched to the other. I forget what the default was, but it's worth investigating. On Windows it's probably more performant either way, but at least with the above change I was able to at least run it playably on my 2017.
    - QML 9y ago
      I think more games / GPUs are optimized for Windows [1]; found that out when I was researching eGPUs this weekend. [1] https://youtu.be/-DaDjFm7_qw?t=128 https://youtu.be/-DaDjFm7_qw?t=128
- dugditches 9y ago
  Also the article they link said crossplay happened within the past week or so, even though it was taking off before that. I'm thinking it being Free To Play on consoles(where there aren't lots of F2P games) was the big upswing.
cctt23 9y ago
It does look like a fun game, and I’d like to play it, but not with the obscene monetization strategy they employ. These modern freemium games are downright toxic, and the only winning move is not to play.
- thegeekpirate 9y ago
  > obscene monetization strategy they employ Asking money for cosmetic-only things is obscene?
  - morsch 9y ago
    Well, yes. Better than pay to win, but still pretty obscene.
    - andybak 9y ago
      Obscene? You will run out of superlatives pretty quickly if you use them so casually. As VR has brought me closer to a world I previously had little contact with I've find the gaming community's quickness to anger and it's (lack of a) sense of perspective fairly exhausting. It's impossible to even begin a discussion about monetisation strategies without getting shouted down. You'd think we were discussing gun reform in the midwest. ;-)
      - morsch 9y ago
        I grew up on games that had no monetization strategy beyond an initial investment. Many popular and hugely influential online games -- TF/TFC, the original Counterstrike -- were mods made by hobbyists and released for free, with the blessing of the original game's developers[1]. Gamers self-organized to create an infrastructure of public servers. Pay to win games just moved the Overton window so far that these days, paying for cosmetic items doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm not angry about any of this; with ever decreasing time left for playing games I don't really care. Obscene may be a bit harsh -- I recycled it from the grandparent; but it does also imply that the judgment is relative and based on taste more than anything. I'd also use it when saying that I use an obscene amount of salt or that a sweater is an obscene color without intending to downplay affairs of state. [1] This seems super rare these days, right?
tomc1985 9y ago
I feel like Fortnite's success is the first major success in Epic's master plan -- with that 5% rake on the Unreal Engine license they've got a back door into the sales data for all their licensees. (And because of the openness of their program, they have a lot more to peek into and, assumably, fewer contractual obligations to them). Can't help but wonder if they looked at PUBG's figures and saw their market research done for them? I was looking forward to Fortnite as the Garry's-Mod-meets-Left-for-Dead and its sudden emphasis on Battle Royale was a little disappointing.
- randomblob 9y ago
  Lol, you wouldn't have had to look at PUBG sales data to know they're making hella bank...
- matt_s 9y ago
  Battle Royale wasn't in their plan though. They were making the PvE version ("Save the World") for a while (years) and had just released a beta version you could buy over the summer. I believe the story goes that just a couple of devs went off and made the Battle Royale version to see if it would be fun to play.
tfuop 9y ago
Stupid game propped up by social media...will hav a shortlie of a fortnight..
wink 9y ago
So it "changed gaming" because it's one of the current top games with record-breaking user numbers? (The other one being PUBG) I'm not so sure. Did World of Warcraft change gaming? It surely changed the MMO scene, and they went from total niche market to being very openly discussed and for a while (ca 2008 to 2014?) you found people everywhere that didn't identify as gamers before, but got hooked on WoW. But did it change "gaming"? I don't know, console gamers still play their console games, there are some MMOs, but the majority is still single player/coop/small team and I don't see the PC (non-RPG) gaming market being totally different since WoW was released in 2004. TLDR: Huge hit: yes. Changed a certain genre of games: probably. Changed gaming: nope.
- Kiro 9y ago
  > Did World of Warcraft change gaming? The answer is "yes", which invalidates your whole argument. You should have picked a better example.
  - wink 9y ago
    Please elaborate how you think it changed gaming as a whole? If you think it shaped the whole landscape in general, as in.. transformed one niche genre to a mainstream genre - then yes. Maybe we're just talking different viewpoints. When did "online gaming" change gaming? (If we can agree that it did?) There were online MUDs in the 80s, but hardly anyone knew of them. I'd say the break through in online games were the mid- to end 90s in the upcoming web. (Quake et.al, I wouldn't say Doom already counts, but maybe my own experience is too prominent here) - and then again the MMO years - nothing of that changed the whole spectrum of gaming. On the other hand, maybe ever shift from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit changed gaming. Did the release of every breakthrough console change gaming? Maybe I just fail to see the revolutionary steps :)
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      > Please elaborate how you think it changed gaming as a whole? (not the person you're replying to) I've heard it said that it's because there's a strong MMO influence on many console games (which aren't MMOs) these days. (This isn't something I can personally comment on, as I haven't played that many modern console games, it's just what I've heard others say).
eveningcoffee 9y ago
It looks like an interesting game but it is from EPIC with a cancerous business model.
- Kiro 9y ago
  How is it cancerous exactly? The game is free and the only thing you can spend money on is cosmetics.
firewalkwithme 9y ago
Make it look like a cartoon without too much blood so that children can play it. Stuff it with memes and dances for children. Parents approve and ignore the fact that the child is playing an extremely violent (and detailed) game 12hrs a day and gets rewarded for shooting other players in the head. Parents pay up for lootboxes and micro transactions every time the child screams
- zython 9y ago
  are you speaking from experience or why do you make such brave assumptions ?
  - firewalkwithme 9y ago
    Yes, I have observed my two nephews over quite some time now. Even play it with them sometimes even though I suck. I don't have any strong opinion on the matter, but it is strange watching a whole community of 8-9 year olds(!) begging for ingame purchases and discussing detailed specs of Assault Rifles with their friends. And it is pretty clear (to me) what drives the money in this game, and for example Rocket League. Parents paying for ingame goodies of children. (Yes I know 8 yo is young. But most parents will stop caring because of the peer pressure, every classmate they have get to play the game.
- matt_s 9y ago
  That is one perspective. My kids played Skylanders and Disney Infinity when they were younger. Those games both had elements of shooting projectiles at enemies to eliminate them. Fortnite is rated T and not M because there isn't realistic violence. When a player is eliminated a small flying object with an antenna shows up and it looks like they are teleported elsewhere. There is no blood or corpse or anything like that. It is not extremely violent enough to get an M rating like Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty. There are very unrealistic elements of the game, like a grenade launcher that shoots large eggs (or snowballs in winter season), the fact that you can rapidly build forts out of mined materials, and a boogie bomb that when thrown at an enemy makes them dance for 3-5 seconds.

96 points by hownottowrite 9y ago

So they say: "But another huge boost to the game’s popularity has been cross-platform play — meaning you can play with your friends who are accessing it on a variety of devices and platforms." And it can run on iOS and soon Android as well.. but not Linux. That's a bit of a shame, kind of curious to try that game out now but I can't imagine gaming on Android / iOS is something comfortable.

metaobject 9y ago
I'm not a big gamer, but i recall in the late 90s - early 2000s timeframe there were several big-title FPS games available on Linux (Quake series, Unreal, Half Life). Whatever happened to that momentum? Not enough demand, I guess?
- TylerE 9y ago
  The biggest thing was the continual (and continuing) shit show that is graphics drivers on linux.
  - teach 9y ago
    That's just false. Graphics drivers on Linux are easy to update and offer nearly identical performance in many games.
    - TylerE 9y ago
      Yeah, right. Historically, drivers were often not available at all, at least not ones that actually exposed the real power of the hardware - and performance is usually lower. See this set of recent benchmarks for instance, which show Linux performance lagging behind W10 by 15-25%. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-win10-feb18&num=4 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-w...
      - ahartmetz 9y ago
        These days, the performance diff is mostly from relatively low effort ports. I'm not really complaining about them - they have to earn money. But in most cases it's not primarily a drivers problem anymore.
    - tomc1985 9y ago
      Yeah, just stop your X server and run this opaque binary, answer these questions about kernel modules, restart X, and hope your display config isn't completely messed up... super easy! //slightly salty
      - ahartmetz 9y ago
        Unless you buy Intel or AMD.
        tomc1985 9y ago
        Up until very recently I was on Catalyst drivers on Mint 18 and it was just as bad. Thank God the open source drivers work decent now. And Intel? HA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA One word: gma500 ... welcome to hell!
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        Yes, I'm talking about the state of software now and hardware up to about five years old. gma500 is from about 2008, apparently.
        izacus 9y ago
        Except that Intel still doesn't make a graphics chip worth anything when it comes to running 3D games like Fortnight. And AMD opensource drivers are far from having nVidia-like feature and capabilitiy parity with their Windwos counterparts. Sadly.
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        What is missing from AMD's drivers? They are great now IME, I'm using them to play games. (Note I have older GCN hardware - there seem to be more bugs with more recent hardware where they are still making bigger changes)
        9y ago
    - nl 9y ago
      I do machine learning for a living. I don't dare update my display drivers unless I have 3 days without a deliverable because of the disaster it usually is. Usually (yes, more than 50% of the times) it will break my displays (fail to detect both monitors, switch to some weird resolution etc), and always it will break CUDA/CUDNN so I have hours of work making that work again. I have a completely standard setup: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, NVidia GPU, Intel CPU. (I've been using Linux since Slackware 0.9, so yes I do know how to configure things. I'm sick of it not getting better since then).
      - maccard 9y ago
        If it makes you feel any better I don’t update my windows display drivers unless ive 3 days free either, for exactly the same reason...
        ManlyBread 9y ago
        I don't update my drivers at all unless I run into something that refuses to work, don't fix it if it ain't broke
        maccard 9y ago
        I work in games, so I have to keep relatively up to date.. I’m usually one - two versions behind...
      - notafxn 9y ago
        I suggest you switch to btrfs and use volume snapshots. That way you can take a snapshot just before you do a major upgrade (like a driver update) and if things don't work out you can instantly restore your system so you can keep working.
  - eikenberry 9y ago
    Not sure what you mean. Video drivers on Linux are finally coming together for all the main players. Nvidia's proprietary drivers are still good, Radeon's free drivers are very competitive and Intel free drivers are still great (though suck for gaming).
- 013a 9y ago
  Games got significantly more complex, relying on more abstraction layers. DirectX got significantly more popular. Console gaming exploded.
Mononokay 9y ago
It's especially ironic, given that the game is made by Epic, a company that officially supports game development on Linux with their engine.
- cma 9y ago
  I don't think the anti-cheat middleware they are using works on Linux.
  - thegeekpirate 9y ago
    This is correct—BattlEye does not currently support Linux, unfortunately. I'd kill for Epic to throw some money at it =c
    - DiabloD3 9y ago
      The obvious question is: how is it running on Android? Purely as an Android middleware, thus allowing more clever hacks through?
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        It doesn’t run currently on Android and BattleEye doesn’t work on iOS either they don’t bother with anti cheat on mobile you just do root / jailbreak detection as you can’t really cheat without them as you need to hook into the memory and the network stack.
    - randomblob 9y ago
      Just get a PS4, it's playable using mouse and keyboard on consoles as well. But controller is better anyway IMHO.
- a_t48 9y ago
  Epic doesn’t really support Linux that well - they mainly support Linux as a cross-compile target, running the editor natively is a bit more hairy and extremely poorly documented.
a13n 9y ago
Just weigh the benefits and costs of supporting Linux and it's obvious why they made that decision. How many million people are not playing Fortnite because they don't support Linux? I bet it rounds to zero.
kevindong 9y ago
Fortnite doesn't run on macOS very well. I legitimately get 4x the performance at 4x the resolution on my Macbook while in Windows vs. macOS.
- josefdlange 9y ago
  Do you run in windowed (macOS-native) fullscreen or (what I assume is) direct-to-graphics-card fullscreen? The windowed fullscreen performance was abysmal compared to when I switched to the other. I forget what the default was, but it's worth investigating. On Windows it's probably more performant either way, but at least with the above change I was able to at least run it playably on my 2017.
  - QML 9y ago
    I think more games / GPUs are optimized for Windows [1]; found that out when I was researching eGPUs this weekend. [1] https://youtu.be/-DaDjFm7_qw?t=128 https://youtu.be/-DaDjFm7_qw?t=128
dugditches 9y ago
Also the article they link said crossplay happened within the past week or so, even though it was taking off before that. I'm thinking it being Free To Play on consoles(where there aren't lots of F2P games) was the big upswing.

cctt23 9y ago

It does look like a fun game, and I’d like to play it, but not with the obscene monetization strategy they employ. These modern freemium games are downright toxic, and the only winning move is not to play.

thegeekpirate 9y ago
> obscene monetization strategy they employ Asking money for cosmetic-only things is obscene?
- morsch 9y ago
  Well, yes. Better than pay to win, but still pretty obscene.
  - andybak 9y ago
    Obscene? You will run out of superlatives pretty quickly if you use them so casually. As VR has brought me closer to a world I previously had little contact with I've find the gaming community's quickness to anger and it's (lack of a) sense of perspective fairly exhausting. It's impossible to even begin a discussion about monetisation strategies without getting shouted down. You'd think we were discussing gun reform in the midwest. ;-)
    - morsch 9y ago
      I grew up on games that had no monetization strategy beyond an initial investment. Many popular and hugely influential online games -- TF/TFC, the original Counterstrike -- were mods made by hobbyists and released for free, with the blessing of the original game's developers[1]. Gamers self-organized to create an infrastructure of public servers. Pay to win games just moved the Overton window so far that these days, paying for cosmetic items doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm not angry about any of this; with ever decreasing time left for playing games I don't really care. Obscene may be a bit harsh -- I recycled it from the grandparent; but it does also imply that the judgment is relative and based on taste more than anything. I'd also use it when saying that I use an obscene amount of salt or that a sweater is an obscene color without intending to downplay affairs of state. [1] This seems super rare these days, right?

tomc1985 9y ago

I feel like Fortnite's success is the first major success in Epic's master plan -- with that 5% rake on the Unreal Engine license they've got a back door into the sales data for all their licensees. (And because of the openness of their program, they have a lot more to peek into and, assumably, fewer contractual obligations to them). Can't help but wonder if they looked at PUBG's figures and saw their market research done for them? I was looking forward to Fortnite as the Garry's-Mod-meets-Left-for-Dead and its sudden emphasis on Battle Royale was a little disappointing.

randomblob 9y ago
Lol, you wouldn't have had to look at PUBG sales data to know they're making hella bank...
matt_s 9y ago
Battle Royale wasn't in their plan though. They were making the PvE version ("Save the World") for a while (years) and had just released a beta version you could buy over the summer. I believe the story goes that just a couple of devs went off and made the Battle Royale version to see if it would be fun to play.

tfuop 9y ago

Stupid game propped up by social media...will hav a shortlie of a fortnight..

wink 9y ago

So it "changed gaming" because it's one of the current top games with record-breaking user numbers? (The other one being PUBG) I'm not so sure. Did World of Warcraft change gaming? It surely changed the MMO scene, and they went from total niche market to being very openly discussed and for a while (ca 2008 to 2014?) you found people everywhere that didn't identify as gamers before, but got hooked on WoW. But did it change "gaming"? I don't know, console gamers still play their console games, there are some MMOs, but the majority is still single player/coop/small team and I don't see the PC (non-RPG) gaming market being totally different since WoW was released in 2004. TLDR: Huge hit: yes. Changed a certain genre of games: probably. Changed gaming: nope.

Kiro 9y ago
> Did World of Warcraft change gaming? The answer is "yes", which invalidates your whole argument. You should have picked a better example.
- wink 9y ago
  Please elaborate how you think it changed gaming as a whole? If you think it shaped the whole landscape in general, as in.. transformed one niche genre to a mainstream genre - then yes. Maybe we're just talking different viewpoints. When did "online gaming" change gaming? (If we can agree that it did?) There were online MUDs in the 80s, but hardly anyone knew of them. I'd say the break through in online games were the mid- to end 90s in the upcoming web. (Quake et.al, I wouldn't say Doom already counts, but maybe my own experience is too prominent here) - and then again the MMO years - nothing of that changed the whole spectrum of gaming. On the other hand, maybe ever shift from 8bit to 16bit to 32bit changed gaming. Did the release of every breakthrough console change gaming? Maybe I just fail to see the revolutionary steps :)
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    > Please elaborate how you think it changed gaming as a whole? (not the person you're replying to) I've heard it said that it's because there's a strong MMO influence on many console games (which aren't MMOs) these days. (This isn't something I can personally comment on, as I haven't played that many modern console games, it's just what I've heard others say).

eveningcoffee 9y ago

It looks like an interesting game but it is from EPIC with a cancerous business model.

Kiro 9y ago
How is it cancerous exactly? The game is free and the only thing you can spend money on is cosmetics.

firewalkwithme 9y ago

Make it look like a cartoon without too much blood so that children can play it. Stuff it with memes and dances for children. Parents approve and ignore the fact that the child is playing an extremely violent (and detailed) game 12hrs a day and gets rewarded for shooting other players in the head. Parents pay up for lootboxes and micro transactions every time the child screams

zython 9y ago
are you speaking from experience or why do you make such brave assumptions ?
- firewalkwithme 9y ago
  Yes, I have observed my two nephews over quite some time now. Even play it with them sometimes even though I suck. I don't have any strong opinion on the matter, but it is strange watching a whole community of 8-9 year olds(!) begging for ingame purchases and discussing detailed specs of Assault Rifles with their friends. And it is pretty clear (to me) what drives the money in this game, and for example Rocket League. Parents paying for ingame goodies of children. (Yes I know 8 yo is young. But most parents will stop caring because of the peer pressure, every classmate they have get to play the game.
matt_s 9y ago
That is one perspective. My kids played Skylanders and Disney Infinity when they were younger. Those games both had elements of shooting projectiles at enemies to eliminate them. Fortnite is rated T and not M because there isn't realistic violence. When a player is eliminated a small flying object with an antenna shows up and it looks like they are teleported elsewhere. There is no blood or corpse or anything like that. It is not extremely violent enough to get an M rating like Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty. There are very unrealistic elements of the game, like a grenade launcher that shoots large eggs (or snowballs in winter season), the fact that you can rapidly build forts out of mined materials, and a boogie bomb that when thrown at an enemy makes them dance for 3-5 seconds.