10 ms·

Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think

114 points by johnny313 8y ago

dijit 8y ago
The thing with fortnite is that it was free, available and nearly first. It's success is a direct relation to the apex of those things together. It's success will not be emulated even if better games (Like; Apex Legends from Respawn/EA) come to the fore. It's unwise to use their model because, like world of warcraft, it only really works once or for one incumbent. Fortnite works because "it's fortnite", it's already successful as hell, any monetisation, even small amounts is enough to catapult it to profitability. Time will see if I'm right or not, the industry is changing, large studios need more money if they're to continue making AAA games and it's clear that people begrudge spending $60 for a game and then having monetisation inside. I hope EA's gamble with Apex works, not to prove me wrong but because I think it's a good game. Fortnite on the other hand.. I just don't get, the combat/controls/graphics/hitboxes/animations are kinda dirt. But I think it's popular because it's popular, like Paris Hilton.
- nightski 8y ago
  I don't feel Warcraft is a fair comparison at all because with an MMO you have significantly more invested in your character than anything in fortnite. We are talking thousands of hours of invested. Many players have hundreds of days played (meaning a full 24 hours per day).
  - jack_pp 8y ago
    That all resets about once a year when a new expansion gets out. You invest into fortnight the same as you invest in anything, you specialize your skill for this one game, your social circle revolves around it etc. You don't need gear to invest in a game
    - gsich 8y ago
      WoW expansions don't come every year.
      - plorkyeran 8y ago
        These days there's a soft reset every 5-6 months when a new raid tier comes out rather than only once per expansion. For the last few years they've tried hard to make it so that when someone who played years ago gets the urge to give it another try they can actually make it into the endgame content before that urge passes.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - nightski 8y ago
      Gear does, true. But there is a lot more personal attachment to an account than gear. There are achievements, mounts, pets, guilds, social connections/friends, etc... Also during it's peak the reset was much less of a thing (Wrath was the first expansion that started the gear reset per tier trend and it was also the peak of the games player count).
- scotty79 8y ago
  I think having 100 players play one actual realtime game well is unprecendented technical achievement and Fortnight in relation to it is similar for me as iPhone is in relation to actually working capacitive touch screen. In the world of games, being free (legally or otherwise) is pretty much requirement of exorbitant organic popularity.
  - covercash 8y ago
    The original Starseige:TRIBES let you play with up to 128 players. It was okay on dialup but my 10down/1up cable connection gave me consistent pings under 30. That was in 1999.
    - scotty79 8y ago
      Ahead of it's time I guess... Internet and gaming weren't enough of a thing back then for anything exorbitant. It must have done well because I heard of it despite never playing it.
    - w4rh4wk5 8y ago
      Indeed. Thinking about Battlefield 1942, there were servers with 128 players, lots of vehicles and it ran perfectly fine. Guess most people just did not experience games like these the way we both did.
    - vvanders 8y ago
      Yup, that or my personal favorite Subspace where you had a couple hundred players on 56k and everything was pretty snappy.
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        Subspace:Continuum ate up SO much of my time in middle school, I think it was my first experience with online gaming. Great times. You can still download it to this day: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144913037 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14491...
  - 8y ago
- fullshark 8y ago
  Isn't Fortnite just the next evolution of Team Fortress 2? I think it's far more likely something replaces it than Fortnite is the king of free to play online battle games indefinitely.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    I'd say Overwatch is a closer analogue to being the next evolution of TF2 than Fortnite is, from a purely gameplay perspective (the two games have very similar game modes from point control/king of the hill to "Cart pushing" along with the class/hero/trait based characters).
    - burk96 8y ago
      I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day. I disagree with that though because I see Fortnite capturing the more of the COD semi-casual crowd rather than the relatively more hardcore crowd TF2 captured. Of course this is really generalized, but I can't imagine Drake playing TF2 back in its heyday.
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day. That's fair, and if that's the case, I'd still say Overwatch has a better claim to that title (beyond the initial purchase price, anyway-but Blizzard routinely opens the game up for extended F2P periods). What's going to be interesting to watch in the purely F2P arena is this newcomer Apex from EA. I tried it out last night and it has a lot of interesting features and motifs that seem to be a collection of all of these games; you've got the dedicated classes from TF2, the "hero" theme from overwatch and the overarching battle royale/last team standing from Fortnite, PUBG and others. Fortnite definitely getting there, but competitive Overwatch is reaching StarCraft levels of intense (or what competitive StarCraft was in the 2000's), there was a team from Europe I think that won over a million dollars in an Overwatch pro match back in 2017, teams are getting sponsored[1], even ESPN-"the worldwide leader in sports"-is getting into broadcasting Overwatch matches[2]. None of this is to take anything away from what the team over at Epic is doing or to say anything less of Fortnite, for what it's worth. It's definitely a phenomenon in its own right, but there's serious amounts of money being moved around for competitive OW gaming. --- [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/08/overwatch-league-inks-coca-cola-as-sponsor.html https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/08/overw... [2]http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24062274/overwatch-league-comes-espn-disney-abc http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24062274/overwatch-le...
- hopler 8y ago
  Fortnite isn't near/first of anything except the mix of existing motifs they mixed together and executed on exceedingly well. It's not a novel format like the first sandbox or rpg or fps or anything
  - mhh__ 8y ago
    Of it's generation, fortnite was the first to really nail the aesthetics and "How do you do, fellow kids"-elements. The gameplay is almost secondary. PUBG is almost intimidating, fortnite is the opposite.
- potta_coffee 8y ago
  Fornite isn't even remotely near first. They took good ideas from other games and executed them very well.
  - adestefan 8y ago
    The one thing Fortnite did do better than everyone was getting mobile to work well. F2P, good mobile controls, and the community of streams is what made Fortnite take off.
    - lmedinas 8y ago
      Just a small comment that Cross-progress in Fortnite is great. Means you have the same account on your Android, Mac, PC and PS4. They really nailed it.
- root_axis 8y ago
  > he combat/controls/graphics/hitboxes/animations are kinda dirt This is just wrong. The game became popular because its a pretty damn good game and quite fun. Yes, it is somewhat derivative but most things are. People forget that Epic is an old school titan of the gaming industry that pioneered a lot of what we see in FPS titles today. They know what they're doing, even if they lifted some inspiration from other titles.
  - DKnoll 8y ago
    > it is somewhat derivative I'd argue it's a lot more than somewhat derivative. The game mechanics are a direct rip-off of Player Unknown Battlegrounds, except more 'kid friendly.' The only notable differences are being cartoonish and the addition of a building system (which looks a whole lot like the one in Rust). Here is a side-by-side video of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN6_Ibxnpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN6_Ibxnpk. Their main source of income is selling in-game emotes like dances, which are all stolen without paying any royalty to their creators.
    - mattmanser 8y ago
      Which was a ripoff of h1z1, which was a ripoff of day z, which was a ripoff CoD zombies, which was a ripoff of battlefield, which was a ripoff of quake, which was a ripoff of doom, etc., etc. Probably missing a bunch of steps but you get the picture.
      - DKnoll 8y ago
        The building system in Rust is a lot like H1Z1, but it is very different from Day-Z. Rust and H1Z1 differ in that Rust is not a zombie survival game, unlike the original (now discontinued) version of H1Z1. Coincidentally Fortnite was originally designed as a zombie survival game and shifted to battle royale late in development, much like H1Z1. COD Zombies doesn't have building other than at specific points where you could reinforce barricades. At the time the first COD Zombies game mode was released (Call of Duty: World at War) Battlefield did not yet have a barricading system (like it does now) or any sort of wave-based survival mode. Quake is a deathmatch shooter, Battlefield is a tactical shooter. Very little resemblance. Quake was made by the same people as Doom. My point is that Fortnite copies very much from PUBG. I didn't make any arguments about whether that is acceptable or precedented.
- mhh__ 8y ago
  Fortnite is a really well made game, I've never had any issues with the core gameplay/ game engine. Less consistent than CS:GO, but more consistent than siege (A game with a very very strong "competitive" contingent)
andyidsinga 8y ago
question: what makes hanging out in fortnite different from hanging out in a popular new bar; and corollary : moving on to the new cool bar when it opens up? I've played a bunch of fortnite last year, even spent a bit of money on some outfits and got a better mouse for builds - don't want to be a default ya'know ;). It was "fun times" for sure - even met a few people I tried to play with regularly if I saw them online. Ultimately, the fun factor sort of wore off....next.
- pram 8y ago
  For me it was the novelty of the experiences they added to the game. It keeps it very fresh, especially with friends. For example when they added the vehicles, it was hilarious and interesting for a bit. Then they added balloons, which amazingly could also be used to float the vehicles. It allows a lot of amusing creativity and makes the game fun even if you and your friends suck.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gnat 8y ago
To save you reading: the article discusses and dismisses a lot of the hype of Fortnite exceptionalism, and the author's basis for "Fortnite is the Future" is that it's being used like Second Life, aka a social forum for people to hang out as much as for gaming.
- justtopost 8y ago
  I remember playing a lot of TF2 because it felt almost like socializing compared to 'better' games. I think open, but also somewhat selective (vote ban, mute) communication is the perfect app for our increasingly socially disconnected population. The game is not just the game anymore, it is the whole Arcade!
thinkingemote 8y ago
Theres been a wave of these articles and I think it's mainly due to the journalists having grown up and having children who play computer games. In other words, it's a topic of the chattering clases trying to understand the youth.
- PunchTornado 8y ago
  the youth? everyone at my office plays Fortnite and we're from 30 to 50 years old.
  - andyidsinga 8y ago
    while I agree there are certainly adults playing. Web search of fortnite demographics put A LOT (like a 50% or more at < 24). My own anecdotal experience in squads is that half are probably teens. So - the parent comment is certainly conceivable.
zemo 8y ago
> Fortnite wasn’t designed to be a Second Life-style experience, or even a digital “third place“; it became one organically. I don't even know what to do with this comment. All multiplayers games are designed to be a third place, that's why they have groups that stay together between rounds, integrated voice chat, and friend systems. Multiplayer games have been designed to act as third places for ... a long, long time now. > Epic has also built up another great and particularly hard to establish advantage: some 200MM+ registered user accounts. I don't think that Fornite players as a group think that setting up a new user account is a big deal. Having an account is not a particularly big point of friction any more. > Third is the threat posed by the shift to cloud-based gaming do players actually want this? I've only heard that players want this from "thought leader", technology speculator types. Never in my thousands of hours of online gaming have I ever heard another player talk about this. > they will be able to support Unity and other engines as well (interoperability will obviously be critical to any Metaverse and has long been a passion point of Sweeney’s). this seems pretty divorced from technical and political reality.
- wernercd 8y ago
  > do players actually want this? What makes companies the most money? One shot games? Or never ending games with repeat buys? I see more of the later and not really the former... That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based.
  - maxsilver 8y ago
    > Or never ending games with repeat buys? (snip) That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based. That's not what cloud based means here. "Cloud based", in this context, refers to video streaming of a game rendered within a data centre, remote-desktop-ed to your computer like a YouTube video. (The article calls it a 'cloud-based streaming solution'). Lots of companies offer this (GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, etc). But almost no players actually play that way today. Lots of players are spending money in online "never-ending" / "repeat-buy" games. (Fortnite, Apex, Blackout, Destiny, Warframe, Path of Exile, WoW, etc). But approximately 0% of players are spending any money on "cloud-based" ones (using the articles definition of cloud-based).
mesozoic 8y ago
From someone who's been following gaming for 30 years let me tell you Its good, people like it for now, it'll be dwindled down in 2 years and something new will be the hotness.
- redisman 8y ago
  One game always rises to the top for a few years. Minecraft was the previous one. I think it also has a lot to do with luck, people love to read too much into a single success story and try to replicate it (cargo culting). Most fail.
mattnewport 8y ago
Interesting article but I think it somewhat misrepresents Epic's history and overstates the extent to which they have primarily been an engine company. Epic started as a pure games developer. They somewhat accidentally fell into the engine business on the back of Unreal but turned it into a major part of their business in a way that id did not despite similar interest in licensing the Quake engine around the same era. They always continued to develop their own successful games however (the article does at least mention Gears of War) and in the past were sometimes accused of being more focused on shipping their own games than supporting engine licensees. They have always maintained a business model built both around successful in house games as well as successful games from licensees. In this regard they differ from a purely engine focused company like Unity who don't have in house titles only licensees and engines like Lumberyard that have neither. And cloud based gaming streamed to a thin client will always be a dumb idea and will never succeed for similar reasons that thin clients in general never take off but more fundamental. Games require low latency and it it will always make sense to have significant compute on the client because physics.
- redisman 8y ago
  Just the input lag through a network sounds horrible. Maybe if I had fiber and the machine was located at my ISP or something it might work.
ggregoire 8y ago
Interesting time to release this article: EA just released their own battle royale game (Apex Legends), and 10 millions people already played the game in its first 72 hours[1]. Plus, the reviews seem to be unanimous about the quality of the game. It got 300,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch right now, vs. 140,000 for Fortnite[2]. Curious to see what's the future of Fortnite now. [1] https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/apex-legends-10-million-players https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/apex-legends-10-m... [2] https://www.twitch.tv/directory https://www.twitch.tv/directory
- mhh__ 8y ago
  Apex Legends is really good but it strikes me as more of a pubg-type game not fortnite. The Penetration fortnite has had across ages 10-20 is almost surreal. Anecdote: I was playing Apex (and Siege, for balance...) and I can hear my friends younger brother playing fortnite with his friends - across the room -through the chat.
  - screye 8y ago
    An anecdote. My 14 year old cousin visited this week and has already shifted to Apex Legends... After months of being invested in fortnite. Loyalty in non-rpg fps games is fickle. No game may shine the way fortnite is in its peak for a while, but I do not see it having the longevity that the industry believe it will have.
  - lmedinas 8y ago
    Ist't Apex Legends classified as 18yo content ? At least in Germany is. This also helps explains why you're younger brother was still playing Fortnite and why it's not gonna die to Apex.
lazyjones 8y ago
The revenue per user calculation in the article seems wrong. 200 million users, $318 million revenue per month = $18 per user and year, not $96. What am I missing?
moneywoes 8y ago
How does EA's F2P shooter compare?
- crooked-v 8y ago
  I've still yet to try it, but I've seen plenty of claims that it improves on the basic gameplay and fun by making teamwork with random players super easy.
- lmedinas 8y ago
  In my opinion it's a brilliant game because the Game combines a vast number of interesting mechanics from PUBG, Blackout and Fornite into a Free2Play game. Not to mention that: - is way faster to get into the game by being much more optimized. - a typical game is between 15-25min, There are much less dead times when compared to PUBG and Fortnite - The characters are fun and they bring an interesting approach to BR. - The ping system is great. You don't need to explicitly use Voice communication. I've won a number of games without using Voice. Give it try, its really a fun game.
- screye 8y ago
  It is amazing. They basically built a BR game from ground up, and James in the best bits of Titanfall 2 (a highly acclaimed fps shooter)
treebeard901 8y ago
> "indeed, the speed with which Battle Royale launched suggests the mode was in development well before Save the World had even launched" The author might be missing an important part of the history here. PUBG and Fortnite both use the unreal engine. Part of the development of the unreal engine during this time was related to adding features and performance improvements to the engine for a game like PUBG. PUBG had many performance problems originally and they did not seem to have the technical ability or the access to make needed structural changes to the engine. This means PUBG developers had to work with the unreal developers to improve PUBG. It's entirely possible that the unreal developers used fortnite and started converting it to a battle royale game at this time. They would've needed a similar kind of game for testing the engine changes internally. The next logical step was to complete the fornite BR mode and release it. Good for Epic games, questionable outcome for PUBG. In a way, it is similar to Amazon basics knowing what third party products are popular and finding a way to put a cheaper clone in the marketplace.

114 points by johnny313 8y ago

The thing with fortnite is that it was free, available and nearly first. It's success is a direct relation to the apex of those things together. It's success will not be emulated even if better games (Like; Apex Legends from Respawn/EA) come to the fore. It's unwise to use their model because, like world of warcraft, it only really works once or for one incumbent. Fortnite works because "it's fortnite", it's already successful as hell, any monetisation, even small amounts is enough to catapult it to profitability. Time will see if I'm right or not, the industry is changing, large studios need more money if they're to continue making AAA games and it's clear that people begrudge spending $60 for a game and then having monetisation inside. I hope EA's gamble with Apex works, not to prove me wrong but because I think it's a good game. Fortnite on the other hand.. I just don't get, the combat/controls/graphics/hitboxes/animations are kinda dirt. But I think it's popular because it's popular, like Paris Hilton.

nightski 8y ago
I don't feel Warcraft is a fair comparison at all because with an MMO you have significantly more invested in your character than anything in fortnite. We are talking thousands of hours of invested. Many players have hundreds of days played (meaning a full 24 hours per day).
- jack_pp 8y ago
  That all resets about once a year when a new expansion gets out. You invest into fortnight the same as you invest in anything, you specialize your skill for this one game, your social circle revolves around it etc. You don't need gear to invest in a game
  - gsich 8y ago
    WoW expansions don't come every year.
    - plorkyeran 8y ago
      These days there's a soft reset every 5-6 months when a new raid tier comes out rather than only once per expansion. For the last few years they've tried hard to make it so that when someone who played years ago gets the urge to give it another try they can actually make it into the endgame content before that urge passes.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightski 8y ago
    Gear does, true. But there is a lot more personal attachment to an account than gear. There are achievements, mounts, pets, guilds, social connections/friends, etc... Also during it's peak the reset was much less of a thing (Wrath was the first expansion that started the gear reset per tier trend and it was also the peak of the games player count).
scotty79 8y ago
I think having 100 players play one actual realtime game well is unprecendented technical achievement and Fortnight in relation to it is similar for me as iPhone is in relation to actually working capacitive touch screen. In the world of games, being free (legally or otherwise) is pretty much requirement of exorbitant organic popularity.
- covercash 8y ago
  The original Starseige:TRIBES let you play with up to 128 players. It was okay on dialup but my 10down/1up cable connection gave me consistent pings under 30. That was in 1999.
  - scotty79 8y ago
    Ahead of it's time I guess... Internet and gaming weren't enough of a thing back then for anything exorbitant. It must have done well because I heard of it despite never playing it.
  - w4rh4wk5 8y ago
    Indeed. Thinking about Battlefield 1942, there were servers with 128 players, lots of vehicles and it ran perfectly fine. Guess most people just did not experience games like these the way we both did.
  - vvanders 8y ago
    Yup, that or my personal favorite Subspace where you had a couple hundred players on 56k and everything was pretty snappy.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Subspace:Continuum ate up SO much of my time in middle school, I think it was my first experience with online gaming. Great times. You can still download it to this day: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=144913037 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14491...
- 8y ago
fullshark 8y ago
Isn't Fortnite just the next evolution of Team Fortress 2? I think it's far more likely something replaces it than Fortnite is the king of free to play online battle games indefinitely.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  I'd say Overwatch is a closer analogue to being the next evolution of TF2 than Fortnite is, from a purely gameplay perspective (the two games have very similar game modes from point control/king of the hill to "Cart pushing" along with the class/hero/trait based characters).
  - burk96 8y ago
    I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day. I disagree with that though because I see Fortnite capturing the more of the COD semi-casual crowd rather than the relatively more hardcore crowd TF2 captured. Of course this is really generalized, but I can't imagine Drake playing TF2 back in its heyday.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day. That's fair, and if that's the case, I'd still say Overwatch has a better claim to that title (beyond the initial purchase price, anyway-but Blizzard routinely opens the game up for extended F2P periods). What's going to be interesting to watch in the purely F2P arena is this newcomer Apex from EA. I tried it out last night and it has a lot of interesting features and motifs that seem to be a collection of all of these games; you've got the dedicated classes from TF2, the "hero" theme from overwatch and the overarching battle royale/last team standing from Fortnite, PUBG and others. Fortnite definitely getting there, but competitive Overwatch is reaching StarCraft levels of intense (or what competitive StarCraft was in the 2000's), there was a team from Europe I think that won over a million dollars in an Overwatch pro match back in 2017, teams are getting sponsored[1], even ESPN-"the worldwide leader in sports"-is getting into broadcasting Overwatch matches[2]. None of this is to take anything away from what the team over at Epic is doing or to say anything less of Fortnite, for what it's worth. It's definitely a phenomenon in its own right, but there's serious amounts of money being moved around for competitive OW gaming. --- [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/08/overwatch-league-inks-coca-cola-as-sponsor.html https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/08/overw... [2]http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24062274/overwatch-league-comes-espn-disney-abc http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24062274/overwatch-le...
hopler 8y ago
Fortnite isn't near/first of anything except the mix of existing motifs they mixed together and executed on exceedingly well. It's not a novel format like the first sandbox or rpg or fps or anything
- mhh__ 8y ago
  Of it's generation, fortnite was the first to really nail the aesthetics and "How do you do, fellow kids"-elements. The gameplay is almost secondary. PUBG is almost intimidating, fortnite is the opposite.
potta_coffee 8y ago
Fornite isn't even remotely near first. They took good ideas from other games and executed them very well.
- adestefan 8y ago
  The one thing Fortnite did do better than everyone was getting mobile to work well. F2P, good mobile controls, and the community of streams is what made Fortnite take off.
  - lmedinas 8y ago
    Just a small comment that Cross-progress in Fortnite is great. Means you have the same account on your Android, Mac, PC and PS4. They really nailed it.
root_axis 8y ago
> he combat/controls/graphics/hitboxes/animations are kinda dirt This is just wrong. The game became popular because its a pretty damn good game and quite fun. Yes, it is somewhat derivative but most things are. People forget that Epic is an old school titan of the gaming industry that pioneered a lot of what we see in FPS titles today. They know what they're doing, even if they lifted some inspiration from other titles.
- DKnoll 8y ago
  > it is somewhat derivative I'd argue it's a lot more than somewhat derivative. The game mechanics are a direct rip-off of Player Unknown Battlegrounds, except more 'kid friendly.' The only notable differences are being cartoonish and the addition of a building system (which looks a whole lot like the one in Rust). Here is a side-by-side video of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN6_Ibxnpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN6_Ibxnpk. Their main source of income is selling in-game emotes like dances, which are all stolen without paying any royalty to their creators.
  - mattmanser 8y ago
    Which was a ripoff of h1z1, which was a ripoff of day z, which was a ripoff CoD zombies, which was a ripoff of battlefield, which was a ripoff of quake, which was a ripoff of doom, etc., etc. Probably missing a bunch of steps but you get the picture.
    - DKnoll 8y ago
      The building system in Rust is a lot like H1Z1, but it is very different from Day-Z. Rust and H1Z1 differ in that Rust is not a zombie survival game, unlike the original (now discontinued) version of H1Z1. Coincidentally Fortnite was originally designed as a zombie survival game and shifted to battle royale late in development, much like H1Z1. COD Zombies doesn't have building other than at specific points where you could reinforce barricades. At the time the first COD Zombies game mode was released (Call of Duty: World at War) Battlefield did not yet have a barricading system (like it does now) or any sort of wave-based survival mode. Quake is a deathmatch shooter, Battlefield is a tactical shooter. Very little resemblance. Quake was made by the same people as Doom. My point is that Fortnite copies very much from PUBG. I didn't make any arguments about whether that is acceptable or precedented.
mhh__ 8y ago
Fortnite is a really well made game, I've never had any issues with the core gameplay/ game engine. Less consistent than CS:GO, but more consistent than siege (A game with a very very strong "competitive" contingent)

andyidsinga 8y ago

question: what makes hanging out in fortnite different from hanging out in a popular new bar; and corollary : moving on to the new cool bar when it opens up? I've played a bunch of fortnite last year, even spent a bit of money on some outfits and got a better mouse for builds - don't want to be a default ya'know ;). It was "fun times" for sure - even met a few people I tried to play with regularly if I saw them online. Ultimately, the fun factor sort of wore off....next.

pram 8y ago
For me it was the novelty of the experiences they added to the game. It keeps it very fresh, especially with friends. For example when they added the vehicles, it was hilarious and interesting for a bit. Then they added balloons, which amazingly could also be used to float the vehicles. It allows a lot of amusing creativity and makes the game fun even if you and your friends suck.

deleted 8y ago

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gnat 8y ago

To save you reading: the article discusses and dismisses a lot of the hype of Fortnite exceptionalism, and the author's basis for "Fortnite is the Future" is that it's being used like Second Life, aka a social forum for people to hang out as much as for gaming.

justtopost 8y ago
I remember playing a lot of TF2 because it felt almost like socializing compared to 'better' games. I think open, but also somewhat selective (vote ban, mute) communication is the perfect app for our increasingly socially disconnected population. The game is not just the game anymore, it is the whole Arcade!

thinkingemote 8y ago

Theres been a wave of these articles and I think it's mainly due to the journalists having grown up and having children who play computer games. In other words, it's a topic of the chattering clases trying to understand the youth.

PunchTornado 8y ago
the youth? everyone at my office plays Fortnite and we're from 30 to 50 years old.
- andyidsinga 8y ago
  while I agree there are certainly adults playing. Web search of fortnite demographics put A LOT (like a 50% or more at < 24). My own anecdotal experience in squads is that half are probably teens. So - the parent comment is certainly conceivable.

zemo 8y ago

> Fortnite wasn’t designed to be a Second Life-style experience, or even a digital “third place“; it became one organically. I don't even know what to do with this comment. All multiplayers games are designed to be a third place, that's why they have groups that stay together between rounds, integrated voice chat, and friend systems. Multiplayer games have been designed to act as third places for ... a long, long time now. > Epic has also built up another great and particularly hard to establish advantage: some 200MM+ registered user accounts. I don't think that Fornite players as a group think that setting up a new user account is a big deal. Having an account is not a particularly big point of friction any more. > Third is the threat posed by the shift to cloud-based gaming do players actually want this? I've only heard that players want this from "thought leader", technology speculator types. Never in my thousands of hours of online gaming have I ever heard another player talk about this. > they will be able to support Unity and other engines as well (interoperability will obviously be critical to any Metaverse and has long been a passion point of Sweeney’s). this seems pretty divorced from technical and political reality.

wernercd 8y ago
> do players actually want this? What makes companies the most money? One shot games? Or never ending games with repeat buys? I see more of the later and not really the former... That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based.
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > Or never ending games with repeat buys? (snip) That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based. That's not what cloud based means here. "Cloud based", in this context, refers to video streaming of a game rendered within a data centre, remote-desktop-ed to your computer like a YouTube video. (The article calls it a 'cloud-based streaming solution'). Lots of companies offer this (GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, etc). But almost no players actually play that way today. Lots of players are spending money in online "never-ending" / "repeat-buy" games. (Fortnite, Apex, Blackout, Destiny, Warframe, Path of Exile, WoW, etc). But approximately 0% of players are spending any money on "cloud-based" ones (using the articles definition of cloud-based).

mesozoic 8y ago

From someone who's been following gaming for 30 years let me tell you Its good, people like it for now, it'll be dwindled down in 2 years and something new will be the hotness.

redisman 8y ago
One game always rises to the top for a few years. Minecraft was the previous one. I think it also has a lot to do with luck, people love to read too much into a single success story and try to replicate it (cargo culting). Most fail.

mattnewport 8y ago

Interesting article but I think it somewhat misrepresents Epic's history and overstates the extent to which they have primarily been an engine company. Epic started as a pure games developer. They somewhat accidentally fell into the engine business on the back of Unreal but turned it into a major part of their business in a way that id did not despite similar interest in licensing the Quake engine around the same era. They always continued to develop their own successful games however (the article does at least mention Gears of War) and in the past were sometimes accused of being more focused on shipping their own games than supporting engine licensees. They have always maintained a business model built both around successful in house games as well as successful games from licensees. In this regard they differ from a purely engine focused company like Unity who don't have in house titles only licensees and engines like Lumberyard that have neither. And cloud based gaming streamed to a thin client will always be a dumb idea and will never succeed for similar reasons that thin clients in general never take off but more fundamental. Games require low latency and it it will always make sense to have significant compute on the client because physics.

redisman 8y ago
Just the input lag through a network sounds horrible. Maybe if I had fiber and the machine was located at my ISP or something it might work.

ggregoire 8y ago

Interesting time to release this article: EA just released their own battle royale game (Apex Legends), and 10 millions people already played the game in its first 72 hours[1]. Plus, the reviews seem to be unanimous about the quality of the game. It got 300,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch right now, vs. 140,000 for Fortnite[2]. Curious to see what's the future of Fortnite now. [1] https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/apex-legends-10-million-players https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/apex-legends-10-m... [2] https://www.twitch.tv/directory https://www.twitch.tv/directory

mhh__ 8y ago
Apex Legends is really good but it strikes me as more of a pubg-type game not fortnite. The Penetration fortnite has had across ages 10-20 is almost surreal. Anecdote: I was playing Apex (and Siege, for balance...) and I can hear my friends younger brother playing fortnite with his friends - across the room -through the chat.
- screye 8y ago
  An anecdote. My 14 year old cousin visited this week and has already shifted to Apex Legends... After months of being invested in fortnite. Loyalty in non-rpg fps games is fickle. No game may shine the way fortnite is in its peak for a while, but I do not see it having the longevity that the industry believe it will have.
- lmedinas 8y ago
  Ist't Apex Legends classified as 18yo content ? At least in Germany is. This also helps explains why you're younger brother was still playing Fortnite and why it's not gonna die to Apex.

lazyjones 8y ago

The revenue per user calculation in the article seems wrong. 200 million users, $318 million revenue per month = $18 per user and year, not $96. What am I missing?

moneywoes 8y ago

How does EA's F2P shooter compare?

crooked-v 8y ago
I've still yet to try it, but I've seen plenty of claims that it improves on the basic gameplay and fun by making teamwork with random players super easy.
lmedinas 8y ago
In my opinion it's a brilliant game because the Game combines a vast number of interesting mechanics from PUBG, Blackout and Fornite into a Free2Play game. Not to mention that: - is way faster to get into the game by being much more optimized. - a typical game is between 15-25min, There are much less dead times when compared to PUBG and Fortnite - The characters are fun and they bring an interesting approach to BR. - The ping system is great. You don't need to explicitly use Voice communication. I've won a number of games without using Voice. Give it try, its really a fun game.
screye 8y ago
It is amazing. They basically built a BR game from ground up, and James in the best bits of Titanfall 2 (a highly acclaimed fps shooter)

treebeard901 8y ago

> "indeed, the speed with which Battle Royale launched suggests the mode was in development well before Save the World had even launched" The author might be missing an important part of the history here. PUBG and Fortnite both use the unreal engine. Part of the development of the unreal engine during this time was related to adding features and performance improvements to the engine for a game like PUBG. PUBG had many performance problems originally and they did not seem to have the technical ability or the access to make needed structural changes to the engine. This means PUBG developers had to work with the unreal developers to improve PUBG. It's entirely possible that the unreal developers used fortnite and started converting it to a battle royale game at this time. They would've needed a similar kind of game for testing the engine changes internally. The next logical step was to complete the fornite BR mode and release it. Good for Epic games, questionable outcome for PUBG. In a way, it is similar to Amazon basics knowing what third party products are popular and finding a way to put a cheaper clone in the marketplace.