19 ms·

Fortnite is free, but kids are getting bullied into spending money

172 points by anarbadalov 7y ago

ben7799 7y ago
We had already decided no Fortnite in the house but this really is awful. My impression is some of this is kids younger than "teenager" too, which is even worse. Hilarious this game is so toxic when one of the UI designers was featured here on HN last week pontificating about ethics in games.
- falsedan 7y ago
  ex-designer I thought
wyldfire 7y ago
> And so “default” quickly became a put-down within the Fortnite community, a signal that you are a lesser player in some way. I can confirm that my son did not like being a "default" and wanted me to give him vbucks so that he could avoid this shame. I think it's ludicrous, of course, so I didn't. But I think one of his friends might have gifted him some, or he played enough time so that the system granted him some non-default skins. Also as a side effect of buying the "save the world" edition I think he got some skins. I knew it was a mistake to consider games with lootboxes (the Star Wars one) and play-to-win games, but I'd hoped/assumed Fortnite was not like those. I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for things getting out of hand w/Fortnite. EDIT: lots of speculation regarding the genesis of this phenomenon among these threads. I should note that my son (and probably his friends) all watch youtubers who play fortnite and some of them seem to refer to 'defaults' with derision. "Did it start there or have they just gotten caught up with the same culture?" I don't know.
- khill 7y ago
  Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes. The Save The World mode did but they recently removed them so you always know what you are buying if you decide to spend money. I'd say it's not pay-to-win either because most of the skins people buy in the shop are more flashy and easier to spot than the dreaded default skins. I think this is less about Fortnite and more about people finding another way others are different and using it as a lever to make themselves feel better about their own insecurities.
  - wyldfire 7y ago
    > Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes. > I think this is less about Fortnite ... make themselves feel better about their own insecurities. Sure, I got that, I'm just saying that I felt okay letting kids play Fortnite because it didn't have the hallmarks of the well-publicized dangers from other free to play games. But regardless of whether the problem comes from people and culture surrounding the game or the designer of the game, I think I'll restrict my kids' access to it if it starts to look like a hazard.
    - beenBoutIT 7y ago
      Anything that's free to play and requires a credit card is potentially dangerous for kids.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Ironically this makes the default skins the most rare. I've never played Fortnite, but this was true in Overwatch which was kind of interesting. I've never seen anyone get picked on for not having a non-default skin though. It's hard to believe this happens in Fortnite, but I don't interact with people in their teens or younger.
  - nemothekid 7y ago
    I think the difference with Overwatch is, Overwatch does have proper proxy for skill level, skill rating. You wouldn't deride a grandmaster player for using default skins. In fortnite, you don't know if your squad member is good or not, but if they don't have any skins, chances are they haven't invested in the game. So even if you are good at the game, there isn't any other way to signal to other players that you are good without skins
    - percentcer 7y ago
      If you need a skin to signal that you're good then you're not very good
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      Overwatch also has a proper proxy for how experienced a player is -- the player's account level, which is displayed prominently on the scoreboard. Skins are a lot less visible, the game gives them away pretty liberally, and the default skins aren't radically different in appearance from most of the paid ones.
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  This is a thing with Fortnite, but is not a phenomenon with all games that have a similar revenue model. A few years ago I played DotA 2 a lot (like, 10 hours a day every day, while enrolled in school). I did eventually buy some skins to show off, but ultimately it was pointless and everyone knew it. When you saw another player in the game, you didn't think about their skins, aside from maybe ogling at the fancy particle FX for a bit, or maybe some complaining in chat about how it unfairly made hero X look like hero Y, etc. My friends similarly bought skins but ultimately didn't care. The situation is similar in the MMOFPS Planetside 2. In that game skins are more correlated with skill, and I have gotten a few comments about playing well for someone with no skins. But there is absolutely no negativity. My younger brother plays Fortnite, and they (he + his friends) have some impressively horrifying obsession with skins. Labeling something or some action as a 'default' is an insult commonly used in real life. I have only played the game a tiny bit, and have no idea why this is the case. Even my college aged friends really care a lot about the skins.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    >I did eventually buy some skins to show off, but ultimately it was pointless and everyone knew it. This was my experience with League of Legends as well. Skins were admired but not considered a mark of skill. I personally didn't play with many skins and was not judged for not having them.
    - JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
      I recently had this discussion here regarding CSGO, more regarding loot boxes, but a similar enough conversation. In CSGO, people really do care about skins. Now, you normally don't get flamed for having default skins, but people look closely at your knife, your AWP, your gloves, etc. If you have good skins, people generally like you more (in a random queue context). You are also expected to generally not suck. On the flip side, you set yourself up for pressure by having nicer skins, because people then say "all skins, no skill". So oddly enough the skins in CSGO do play into the culture. Especially because the running joke is the better the skins, the better the player.
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  The Overton window seems to have shifted a lot since That Retarded Horse[0]. :/ [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjuFpQ3EeA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjuFpQ3EeA
- RantyDave 7y ago
  I grew up in England in the 80's and the label on one's shirt was a big deal. It seems to me that this behaviour may be a part of the creation of 'self' that adolescents go through, and that this is the same thing across a different medium. It's tribal, it shows implicit approval of one's decisions (namely to spend money on a costume), and I'm prepared to bet it's cross cultural too...
  - walshemj 7y ago
    The cost of football replica kit (home and away strips change each year) did start to become an issue as well as kids potentially carrying adverts for Drink and Gambling firms.
  - dv_dt 7y ago
    I wonder if anyone suggested regulation of Nike for creating a fashion fetish of Air Jordans, with the same kinds of money being thrown at Fortnite.
    - xmprt 7y ago
      The difference is that I still have my 20 year old Nike shirt in my closet but skins and other digital items aren't likely to exist for anywhere near as long.
      - NoodleIncident 7y ago
        The digital cosmetics will probably exist longer, and definitely can be "worn" for a much longer time before "wearing out"
        tareqak 7y ago
        You are assuming that there will be people playing Fortnite in its current incarnation in 20 years. I don't think Fortnite is quite at the level of NetHack or even Minecraft yet.
- Pils 7y ago
  My theory is relatively simple: skins/costumes are signals and signals are important. Fortnite has matchmaking, and the majority of players use the matchmaking function in the two-/four-player modes rather than with a premade group. The average player you are matched with will be Fortnite-matchmaking replacement level[1]. If that player doesn't have a skin, they are more likely to underperform, from your perspective, since the pool of "non-skinned" players also includes new players and marginally-invested players (i.e. players who rarely play). I think a lot of comparisons to fashion are trying to solve the symptom, rather than this deeper problem. Youth sports has a similar phenomenon. If you show up to the first day of practice with "default" athletic gear (running shoes instead of cleats, cargo shorts instead of athletic shorts etc.) you would face a similar type of shunning. The reason why there isn't a push to ban expensive athletic equipment is due to 1) The equipment manufacturers have huge sway over youth sports organizations via sponsorship 2) kids like athletic equipment because its one of the few outlets of individual identity available to them. That's why you are more likely to see displays of individual or group altruism (e.g. what happened to your son) rather than questioning the ethics/fairness of this phenomenon. That is also why I prefer Apex Legends' freemium model to Fortnite's. Yes, it does include loot boxes (which are intrinsically exploitative), but it also includes ways to signal gaming ability without paying money, such as opt-in game statistics (how many wins with a character, how many kills, etc). More explicit signals of competency make weaker secondary signals (having the right skin/kit/cleats) a lot less relevant, even counterproductive (being labelled a poser). [1]https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml
- zepearl 7y ago
  The game is engineered not to attract parent's attention (e.g. no visual "extremes") and to attract youngsters and make them spend money - in this context I'm happy not to be a parent right now :) Respect for your efforts :)
- kochikame 7y ago
  I think they're usually called "no skins"
- taneq 7y ago
  Kids don't actually care about the token (skins, clothing brands, basketball shoes, ...) in question. They just care that the token is scarce enough to differentiate the haves from the have-nots. It's all about status.
  - ahje 7y ago
    Sadly, this is the one thing that people keep forgetting about. This isn't a new phenomena; it's just bullies finding an excuse to be assholes to others.
- JaimeThompson 7y ago
  You can get vbucks by playing Save The World. Simply logging into STW gets you vbucks about every week or so.
AlexandrB 7y ago
Make no mistake, this is an entirely intentional consequence of Fortnite's design. There's a great video[1] that goes into detail on the psychological manipulation used in Fortnite's monetization model. It saddens me that a hobby that brought me so much joy as a kid/teenager now preys on the same insecurities it once sheltered me from. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0
- oblio 7y ago
  Heh... Hearthstone has a literal slot machine display as the matchmaking progress bar. Opening packs is animated to look like opening a bag of loot. More expensive cards have nicer effects or animations. F2P games are Skinner boxes.
frankc 7y ago
I guess i'm kind of old now but it's odd because I seem to remember that when I played mmorpgs, especially pvp, it was the reverse. Players who were decked out in fancy armor that they did not directly earn in game were called 'twinkies' and generally derided. When I played guild wars, most of the good pvp people just had default outfits. The pve players with fancy clothes who came into pvp generally were viewed as worse at pvp (and it was often true because their builds did not translate well into pvp).
- mcv 7y ago
  That's also my view. The metagame of free to play games is to resist all the temptations to spend money on it. People who spend money on it have lost.
  - Konnstann 7y ago
    At some point in my life I realized that some games were worth spending money on, especially given the amount of time spent in them. I can understand your point of view, and I totally agree in the context of children/teens but I try not to play games that heavily incentivize spending, so when I put 100+ hours into a game, I don't consider buying some microtransactions "losing".
    - mcv 7y ago
      I totally agree. You wouldn't want to know how much money I spent on Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. But I know what I'm buying and why, and it's a conscious decision, not succumbing to pressure or temptation. I think it's healthy to recognise when a system, game or otherwise, tries to manipulate you into spending money, and I try to teach my son to recognise that. It's fine to spend money, but spend it on something that's worth it, something you want, not something you're pressured into.
      - Konnstann 7y ago
        F2P games unfortunately fall into the dichotomy where the target market is usually the people with the least amount of money to spend, but also with the least amount of willpower/experience to resist spending it. I'm glad that when I was growing up the closest thing I had to the microtransaction hell that is F2P were MMOs that I couldn't run, and all my games came on CDs.
mcv 7y ago
> "You can't hop into a Fortnite match as a default without being singled out" If that's true, then a lot changed in a months since I played it with my son. Admittedly Fortnite culture isn't as strong here, and my son has already lost interest (he's back to Minecraft and Roblox again). That people would bully someone over not spending money is this, seems really weird to me. Then again, some kids will use anything to bully others, but my impression is those kids are fairly rare. Could it be that this is different across different cultures? My impression as an outsider is that bullying is far more common and accepted in the US than in Europe (they even elected a bully as president), and I've heard about studies that Americans are more likely to kick down to people below them on the social ladder, whereas in many other places people are more likely to punch up and help people below them. Also: the importance of hollow status symbols. I don't see kids at my son's school care about about such things. Sure, a cool skin is cool, but not as much as achievements are. My personal opinion on the purchase of skins is that if you end up paying for a game that's free, you've lost.
- wolco 7y ago
  Where are you from?
  - mcv 7y ago
    Netherland. Maybe we're the one that's different though; Netherland has a culture of social equality, where rich people are expected not to show it.
epaga 7y ago
Fascinating article. This opens my eyes to why my son gifted his classmate a $10 skin from his own pocket money for no special occasion - there was clearly far more going on than I had realized. Bullying is one way of handling "defaults" - generosity is another... and Epic Games makes boatloads of money either way.
- mcv 7y ago
  Kinda sickening that bullying between kids is apparently a vital part of their monetisation strategy. Maybe everybody should get assigned a random unique skin, but if you pay you get the skin you want.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Nice idea, but people would repeatedly make free accounts until they got the skin they wanted.
    - asdff 7y ago
      Is that a bad thing?
  - p1necone 7y ago
    I highly doubt this was an intentional outcome. Multiplayer video games have had paid skins for years. Fortnite has just attracted way way way more young teens, and they're bullying each other because of differences as they always have. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't actually any more bullying going on because of Fortnite - it's just more obvious to people outside of the teenagers social sphere because of how wildly popular Fortnite is and how much media attention it's getting.
- asdff 7y ago
  You should remind him of the legend of the No Skin Hero, who handily dismantles everyone who payed money on a free video game due to raw skill alone.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
My parents told me stories of being bullied because their home made clothes had no tags on them (meaning not bought, although from pictures they looked impressively good on par with regular fashion IMO). I never experienced any sort of wealth based bullying or witnessed it occurring to anyone in my school days. I can’t relate to what’s being discussed. I would be very confused if someone tried to attack me on the premise of not spending money for pointless visuals.
- asdf21 7y ago
  Do you wear nice clothes to work present day?
  - mcv 7y ago
    I wear decent clothes, but nothing excessively expensive or visibly branded. I prefer clothes without visible brands; I'm not going to pay those companies to advertise for them. If they want me to advertise for them, they should pay me. Fortunately when I was a kid, my school was also relatively free from this. Maybe not primary school, where at a certain point Cool Cat sweaters became really popular. But in secondary school, clothes were more a way to express your own taste than to buy into some kind of status. Making your own or getting some vintage thrift shop stuff was cooler than a visible brand. But something simple was never wrong either, as far as I know. But clearly some schools or some countries are very different in this. It's all about how status-driven a culture is, I guess. Dutch culture has never approved of excessive displays of wealth, and reading this, maybe that's for the better.
  - wolco 7y ago
    As a developer no.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    I do, but I work at a nice place with clear standards. Fortnite is garbo and free. For this analogy to work, I would need to feel like I was being attacked for wearing gym clothes to Arby’s or Taco Bell. Honestly I would be more prone to bullying people who do buy skins probably... you’re not cool if you put on an expensive tie to get your fake cheese Fritos milkshake anathema* for 0.69¢ (*I don’t have any particular reason to believe these exist)
fraun 7y ago
Wow, I guess I still hadn't grasped how big fortnight was, not having much to do with children and all... I guess minecraft either attracted a younger audience or the lack of competition removed aspects of bullying?
- mental1896 7y ago
  Pretty much anything you could ever want in Minecraft you can get for free (perhaps with the assistance of mods). From what little time I've spent playing Fortnite, it seems much more narrowly-scoped and frankly, pretty boring. I'm not even sure why they're being compared here; they're very different games.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    Fortnite is a lot more competitive I would assume, it's basically a FPS right?
    - mental1896 7y ago
      That was my understanding. I think it tries to capture some of Minecraft's mechanics like freeform building but it's so distilled it's not really fair to compare them.
      - mcv 7y ago
        The building in Fortnite is not remotely comparable to that in Minecraft. You can build stuff, but it's mostly small fortifications quickly thrown together to hide behind.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobush 7y ago
  All of Fortnite is crafted and tuned around in-game purchases. It's also a very centralized game. Minecraft online gaming is a very different experience and there are thousands of independent servers.
hesdeadjim 7y ago
The only lesson I can draw from this story is that teenagers have an unparalleled inventiveness to be assholes to each other.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Pretty much. You get made fun of for your looks, your name, your character, or your hobbies, but the one certainty is you will be made fun of. It's not cool, but it's going to happen, and I don't think there's a way to avoid it.
  - ansible 7y ago
    Indeed. I was recently reading "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Rich Harris. Many parents believe they have a large influence on their children's personality (traits like confidence). However, it seems like the influence of their peers vastly outweighs what parents do (outside of actual abuse, which is of course bad).
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      Was their discussion in the book about home schooled kids? I'd be interested in how that changes the dynamic.
      - ansible 7y ago
        I don't recall much discussion of home-schooled kids. Unless the parents are deliberately limiting the children's socialization with peers their own age, I'd expect that it doesn't matter. The common misconception is that kids emulate their parents to become successful adults. Where in actuality, kids emulate other (sometimes slightly older) kids, in order to become successful kids.
  - larrydag 7y ago
    The trick is teaching your kids about that culture and how to look out for it. Fortnite makes it hard. When I was growing up it was trading cards, sneakers, or latest video games. My parents taught me tough turkey on occasion. In-app stores are the new status symbol that parents now need to understand and now educate the next generation.
rchaud 7y ago
Stories like this make me relieved that I went to a school that mandated uniforms. For the most part, this circumvented an arms race around student fashion where what you wore signified your status. It wasn't a perfect solution, as kids still jousted for attention via watches, iPods, jewellery, but it was better than nothing.
- koolba 7y ago
  I'm also a big fan of school uniforms. Ditto for standardized school breakfasts and lunches as well.
- libria 7y ago
  Even with uniforms at my school, those with the yellow Ralph Lauren shirts looked down on those with the yellow Izod shirts or worse off-brand. It was easy to ignore though, but still amusing. "Insecurity uh finds a way."
- toomanybeersies 7y ago
  I had a different experience with school uniforms. At my school they made their best effort to strip any individuality out of us. No jewellery, no "extreme" haircuts (basically anything that wasn't a clipper cut or short back and sides), no hair dye (even to another natural colour). Sure, it may have prevented an arms race around student fashion, but it went so far the other way instead and denied us any right to express ourselves. People still got bullied relentlessly, the existence of a uniform did nothing to stop that.
jerf 7y ago
In my brush with Fortnite and its culture, this was the thing that surprised me the most. What I wonder is, did Epic deliberately do this? It wouldn't take much to seed the initial culture with this idea. If they didn't, it is certain that whatever the next "Fortnite" is will deliberately have its corporate creators try to seed the community with the idea that not spending money is socially bad, and you should feel bad about not buying things, and make other people feel bad about not buying things. I can come up with three or four subtle ways of slanting things against the "defaults" even in a nominally free-to-play game that on paper is indeed totally fair just by casually thinking about it for five minutes [1], and goodness only knows what I could come up with if I were in a position to think about this as my day job and run experiments. I've posted on HN a few times about how I'm keeping my kids away from a lot of the modern ad-based or free-to-play stuff like this, because since I was a kid the market has become wildly more potent at extracting money from children. I often have phrased it in terms of ads being more sophisticated, but this is honestly more what I have in mind. This is so far beyond anything I was subjected to as a child as to be a quantitative difference. (Let me emphasize that yes, I'm aware that such things existed as a kid. I remember the console wars, Furby, and the general stream of advertising aimed at me. It was not unheard of to have even a bit of spontaneous social pressure show up. But I'd still say this is some next-level stuff. None of that stuff really followed me home unless I let it; this actively shuts people out of full social participation even from their home if they don't give in to the social pressure.) What prepubescent brain can be expected to stand up to this? I'm trying to explain this stuff to my kids, but the simple truth is they are cognitively capable of getting hooked by this stuff years before they are cognitively capable of understanding the analysis, and then it's another few years of brain development after that when mere intellectual comprehension of what is being fired at them can be transformed into concrete actions to defend themselves. [1] For example, suppose you have the player's name above the character, as it often is. Suppose you make one of the things you can get with a skin is the ability to change the fonts on that name. Suppose the default font is much higher visibility, and that when you buy something, the UI automatically changes them away from the "default" font, making their visibility de facto lower, even though it's officially just an "optional" font. You only have to provide a slightly gradient like that, and then let the community iterate it on it for a few months. You can even trivially be sure that your gradient is noticed by seeding the player forum with a couple of accounts pointing this out in week 2 or 3, and a couple dozen other accounts agreeing with it, and then a couple more later swearing up and down that they tried it out and it totally improved their game. But you could claim with a straight face that the game is still totally fair to people who don't pay... "look, they get all the same weapons, the damage is the same, the win conditions are the same".... it's not even necessarily a bad argument! I miss when you could be on the Internet and read a message from someone and safely assume it was from an actual person.
Stubbs 7y ago
I'm surprised FIFA never gets scrutinised in this was, it's an £80 game each year and to make any kind of impression you need to buy packs. I watched my son once where he literally spent what I'd given him on packs, looked at what he'd "won" and sold them all instantly for in game currency. When I asked why he didn't use any of them he said they were no good. He then repeated the same process on the rest of the packs, keeping maybe 1 player. It reminds me of the behaviour of people addicted to slot machines, literally pumping in coins, recycling their winnings until they have nothing left. After the Battlefront 2 debacle, EA said they were abandoning loot boxes and wouldn't do pay to win any more. They appear to have avoided it with Battlefield V, but FIFA still stands as the Daddy when it comes to pay to win and it needs to be destroyed.
- rchaud 7y ago
  I downloaded FIFA15 on PS3 years ago, and I've only played it a couple of times for this reason. They have completely gimped the out-of-the-box features in terms of what you can do as a single player. Majority of gameplay revolves around Ultimate Team, which requires packs. Makes me long for the days of FIFA 96-09, where you didn't have to buy a damn thing other than the game itself to play in tournaments with you favourite team. The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games.
  - ahje 7y ago
    > The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games. Yeah, and the worst part is that many video game companies would rather kill decent single-player franchises with low-quality games that nobody likes, in order to get multiplayer capability and loot-boxes baked into everything. Ten years ago I spent quite a lot of money on video games. Now, I just can't be bothered anymore. Most of the games I bought ten years ago have more replay value than the ones on the market today. At the same time the market for gaming seems to have exploded, so I guess it's working out for them.
  - ionised 7y ago
    > The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games. In fairness, that particular model seems to be mainly attributed to the kind of EA/Ubi/Acti/ annual 'AAA blockbuster' shovelware. All games I play currently on PC are free of this crap. No game I've bought in the last year has had anything like this either. That said I mostly play games that are highly moddable.
magashna 7y ago
Isn't this the same with clothes, phones, etc.?
- TheChaplain 7y ago
  Indeed it is, and not only for kids. iPhone, BMW, Armani are status symbols that opens doors in many countries.
maliker 7y ago
I tried the game, and it wasn't my cup of tea--I'm more of a civilization kind of guy. However, reading about how the game is evolving as a social destination is fascinating. Reminds me of MUDs back in the day, except it's way more popular and way more mainstream.
- TheGRS 7y ago
  Seems weird that its all happened with a shooter. They've been pretty much there the whole time. Battle Royale as a game mode/genre isn't the most unique idea to ever come along either. The visuals sort of set it apart, though I've seen plenty of cartoony shooters that have come before. I can't really put my finger on what makes Fortnite work so well with teenagers, other than how the game happened to seize on a fad at just the right time, and then went all-in with teenager-pleasing updates. The only other game that had this sort of success was Minecraft. Just perfect timing with a game that was highly moddable and became a digital hangout spot for kids.
  - smaddock 7y ago
    Fortnite is one of the few games that is available on all major platforms, including mobile, which allows online cross-play. I believe its accessibility, cost, and scarcity of alternatives is what makes it appealing to younger audiences. The portability of Unreal Engine 4 places Epic Games in a unique position where they can deliver this kind of experience.
    - TheGRS 7y ago
      I think what's kind of odd though is that it didn't happen sooner. Nothing technologically-speaking today is much different than, say, 15 years ago. Other than bandwidth and console-maker's willingness to work with each other for the greater good.
      - asdff 7y ago
        I don't know why they did it, to be honest. IIRC microsoft tried halo 2 or 3 briefly play testing xbox vs pc, and pc won everytime due to how much more accurate a mouse is vs a thumbstick. In this gen, microsoft finally allowed cross platform play with fortnight and PC players still win every engagement.
neilv 7y ago
One of the popular free-to-play tablet strategy games I tried a few years ago had a different variation on "bullying", and presumably known to the developers. There, you could use small free amounts of the numerous different currencies/resources/boosts (also purchasable with real money), spend hours designing bases in a multiplayer world, and... then pay-to-win griefers would come along and destroy everything you built, and violate whatever you were actively controlling. I imagine there were a lot of angry/frustrated deletions of the game, and also a lot of impulsive spending of money to be able to rebuild and defend what you'd just created.
- babaganoosh89 7y ago
  That’s what Game of War was like. Every tech level was around a 2x improvement than the one before it. So much of the game was high level pay to win players beating up on the low level free players 1v20.
hashkb 7y ago
Capitalizing on social insecurity has always been good business. Take a look at fashion. Why should video games be exempt? This is a problem we need to fix in our societies, not by demonizing companies who take advantage of bugs in our brains.
waffleguy 7y ago
The problem is with players’ mentalities. Rocket league has loot boxes, but skins aren’t what get called you a noob (or in this case default). It’s if you know the strategy. Can you rotate? Or do you just ball chase. I think since rocket league is about skilled play while fortnite is a typical fps, rocket league players focus on the he important part of the game.
vasili111 7y ago
I think in this particular situation the problem is more with child education than the problem with the game itself.
NetOpWibby 7y ago
Fortnite is the new GTA.
- dvhh 7y ago
  True to some degree, at least for GTA you can clearly place the blame on the parent for not scrutinizing the recommended rating for the game they let there kid play.
p1necone 7y ago
This screams moral panic to me. We're seeing proportionally more kids getting bullied about Fortnite because Fortnite is proportionally (very) more popular than other stuff that's visible to adults. Fortnite lets you pay some real money for a cosmetic upgrade to your character. That's it. There's not even random loot boxes or anything that actually affects your chance to win. Video games have done this for ages. The only difference is that Fortnite is currently very very popular with quite a young demographic, and that demographic also consists of emotionally immature kids who bully each other over everything. This bullying is going on regardless, Fortnite being so popular just makes bullying about it more visible/obvious.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  When I was a kid, everyone's parents brought us to the "video arcade" which was free to enter but the games would "bully" us to INSERT 4 TOKENS after dying a few times. Nobody got seriously upset about this.
  - dvhh 7y ago
    The analogy is quite wrong, and even then the parent did provide some modicum of supervision (or control the spending in some way), inserting quarter do require slightly more effort than pressing a button to accept the charge on the credit card. Yeah I remember blowing a lot of money at the video game arcade, but at least felt guilty when looking at my empty wallet.
    - taneq 7y ago
      If the kid can press a button on their phone to accept a charge on a credit card, the problem is with someone giving the kid a phone and hooking it up to a credit card, not with the game in question. Game arcades were the original pay2win. Come to think of it, that's probably why I never played them...
      - dvhh 7y ago
        Arcade games do fit some definition of pay2win, but also rarely gives advantages to the one putting the more coins in the machine. Not that I would defend arcade games, as they are a dying breed, but competitive arcade games were somehow fair.
erulabs 7y ago
I wonder how much of this is due to match making, squads, and the social aspect of the game. In many other games, if you win a few rounds (or do well at all), you're quickly pitted against semi-professional players and lose horribly. Semi-professional and professional players simply do not care about their costumes or outfits, and often choose the skin that offers the most visual clarity or blends in the most. You specifically _do not_ want to standout in a -competitive- shooter game. But, in Fortnight, because only 1 player wins, and because of the chaotic and random nature of the game, and because of the social aspect (playing with a group of friends), I wonder if most kids ever experience a user 10x or 20x or 200x their skill level. It's very likely most players never really improve their skill levels over time. Watching professional StarCraft or Counter-Strike, graphics and details are turned down to the lowest setting, skins and such are not used, etc etc. If you were never aware of the "ladder of skill" in front of you, or your place on it, it seems more reasonable to focus on cosmetics. What really interests me is that a few years ago games started actively removing "leaderboards" and "ranking positions" UI pieces - specifically to make new players and poorly skilled players feel more comfortable and happy. There is absolutely a balance here. Recently my 7 year old nephew said a game (RayMan) was boring because "we always win", and I had a great conversation with him about difficultly in life - things that are always easy and always fun are dangerous. Games with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable - it's about the accomplishment, not the reward. This applies to video games, drugs, relationships, food, and just about everything else in life. I absolutely am glad his mother doesn't allow FortNight, but allows me to play Chess, Rocket League, and StarCraft with him.
- dunstad 7y ago
  Relationships with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable?
  - erulabs 7y ago
    Well, maybe not "Relationships with intense difficulty", but it's a very common and very naive assumption that the perfect person for you will "just work" and there will be no fights and no difficulty. Loving someone is a lot of hard work - and it's extremely rewarding. Teenage relationships where everything "just works" and everyone is in bliss tend to end with a lot of tears. Anyways, yes, it's not a set-in-stone rule - but typically, anything that's extremely easy also has a disappointing side. The best stuff in life takes work.
stestagg 7y ago
Polygon is free but I just got bullied into getting tracked by their advertising partners :(
mprev 7y ago
If my kids and their friends are anything to go by then Fortnite is no longer cool. They complain that, despite the seasons, the game is too samey and has got boring. My kids did experience peer pressure to buy season passes a year or so ago.
- asdff 7y ago
  Somehow fortnight got away with having one map for this long
  - ShinTakuya 7y ago
    I mean Dota and LoL got away with the same thing. Hell, you can even point at chess as an example of how it's possible for a game to remain engaging despite staying the same.
Kenji 7y ago
If your so-called friends bully you for not having in-game skins, you're better off being alone, literally. Cut the negative people out of your life, it's better to only have one worthwhile friend than 20 "friends" who opportunistically bully you. This is not the fault of Fortnite or any game. This is the fault of the cruelty of children.
settsu 7y ago
There’s also some very rough bullying behavior by teens of younger players (who tend to talk a lot of game and such), which is unfortunate amd inexcusable. Racist, sexist, and bigoted speech is also not uncommon. However, let’s be frank and acknowledge that this is not at all a new phenomenon—kids have been made fun of for their clothes, shoes, lunches, haircuts, age, ad nauseam. There’s little (white) punks of single digit age dropping the n-word in public parks. Kids can be straight up cruel. Pointing at video games or music or whatever the scapegoat du jour is mostly unproductive.
NKosmatos 7y ago
Interesting to note that in the article, Epic is only mentioned once and for a different reason from what we would expect, for designing nice skins!!! Nothing is stated about how they’re promoting/pushing their digital offerings to young kids, who are not of age to be able to clearly judge what is good for them and when they’re being tricked by shabby marketing in order to do purchases. I’ve read that Epic is throttling users who don’t have paid for a battle pass, is not as fast and supportive as it should be with refunds and is dumping a lot of money in sponsorships/prizes so as to attract more young players. They know what is happenings and I don’t thing this will change :-( It’s true that society, schools, kids and parents have changed in recent years and that’s why we’re seeing an increase of bullying, which is not helping the situation with how gaming is affecting lives. IMHO some kind of regulation/stricter rules are needed.
nangtrongvuon 7y ago
I’ve played the game at a relatively decent level, and the general idea is “defaults” tend to be easier opponents. Of course, most people and specifically kids don’t want to be looked down upon, which leads to the phenomenon mentioned in the article. Fortnite is special in that skins are very prominent from the so called “defaults”, thus someone with skins show that they have clearly invested in the game and therefore (on average) are better players. In other games like Apex Legends (another Battle Royals), the skins aren’t as obvious or are much subtler recolors and slight changes from the base model.
craftinator 7y ago
Sounds like we need to produce kids that are more bully-resistant. This comment is likely to make some people upset, so let me elaborate: Being able to resist bullying in any format is an extremely useful life skill. I was lucky enough to be taught by the Marine Corps in how to resist it, and it's been instrumental in life, almost every day. People who are easily diverted through bully tactics are easily distracted from their life goals by anyone who is loud enough and mildly persuasive enough. Their opinions end up mirroring the loudest person in the room, quashing their self image and their creativity. This article is about video games, but as video games are, for many kids, a daily form of social interaction, it makes them a prime candidate for learning early on how to resist negative and cynical attitudes being thrown at them.
LUmBULtERA 7y ago
I hadn't heard the term "default" like this before, but I love it -- as a compliment. I'd adopt the term "default" regarding cosmetics in pride. Fuck buying worthless shit.
madshiva 7y ago
The problem are not with kids, but with the parents that don't do their jobs. You should know what your kid are doing and teach them how to not waste money on skins or other temporary product that worth nothing. It's just a matter of understanding and teaching, it was always the case when parents, can't understand how it work. BTW, I sell all theses crap items and make money. (PUBG, CS:GO,...) for playing for "free", I have earned around 20$ at least.

172 points by anarbadalov 7y ago

We had already decided no Fortnite in the house but this really is awful. My impression is some of this is kids younger than "teenager" too, which is even worse. Hilarious this game is so toxic when one of the UI designers was featured here on HN last week pontificating about ethics in games.

falsedan 7y ago
ex-designer I thought

wyldfire 7y ago

> And so “default” quickly became a put-down within the Fortnite community, a signal that you are a lesser player in some way. I can confirm that my son did not like being a "default" and wanted me to give him vbucks so that he could avoid this shame. I think it's ludicrous, of course, so I didn't. But I think one of his friends might have gifted him some, or he played enough time so that the system granted him some non-default skins. Also as a side effect of buying the "save the world" edition I think he got some skins. I knew it was a mistake to consider games with lootboxes (the Star Wars one) and play-to-win games, but I'd hoped/assumed Fortnite was not like those. I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for things getting out of hand w/Fortnite. EDIT: lots of speculation regarding the genesis of this phenomenon among these threads. I should note that my son (and probably his friends) all watch youtubers who play fortnite and some of them seem to refer to 'defaults' with derision. "Did it start there or have they just gotten caught up with the same culture?" I don't know.

khill 7y ago
Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes. The Save The World mode did but they recently removed them so you always know what you are buying if you decide to spend money. I'd say it's not pay-to-win either because most of the skins people buy in the shop are more flashy and easier to spot than the dreaded default skins. I think this is less about Fortnite and more about people finding another way others are different and using it as a lever to make themselves feel better about their own insecurities.
- wyldfire 7y ago
  > Fortnite doesn't have lootboxes. > I think this is less about Fortnite ... make themselves feel better about their own insecurities. Sure, I got that, I'm just saying that I felt okay letting kids play Fortnite because it didn't have the hallmarks of the well-publicized dangers from other free to play games. But regardless of whether the problem comes from people and culture surrounding the game or the designer of the game, I think I'll restrict my kids' access to it if it starts to look like a hazard.
  - beenBoutIT 7y ago
    Anything that's free to play and requires a credit card is potentially dangerous for kids.
izzydata 7y ago
Ironically this makes the default skins the most rare. I've never played Fortnite, but this was true in Overwatch which was kind of interesting. I've never seen anyone get picked on for not having a non-default skin though. It's hard to believe this happens in Fortnite, but I don't interact with people in their teens or younger.
- nemothekid 7y ago
  I think the difference with Overwatch is, Overwatch does have proper proxy for skill level, skill rating. You wouldn't deride a grandmaster player for using default skins. In fortnite, you don't know if your squad member is good or not, but if they don't have any skins, chances are they haven't invested in the game. So even if you are good at the game, there isn't any other way to signal to other players that you are good without skins
  - percentcer 7y ago
    If you need a skin to signal that you're good then you're not very good
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    Overwatch also has a proper proxy for how experienced a player is -- the player's account level, which is displayed prominently on the scoreboard. Skins are a lot less visible, the game gives them away pretty liberally, and the default skins aren't radically different in appearance from most of the paid ones.
the_pwner224 7y ago
This is a thing with Fortnite, but is not a phenomenon with all games that have a similar revenue model. A few years ago I played DotA 2 a lot (like, 10 hours a day every day, while enrolled in school). I did eventually buy some skins to show off, but ultimately it was pointless and everyone knew it. When you saw another player in the game, you didn't think about their skins, aside from maybe ogling at the fancy particle FX for a bit, or maybe some complaining in chat about how it unfairly made hero X look like hero Y, etc. My friends similarly bought skins but ultimately didn't care. The situation is similar in the MMOFPS Planetside 2. In that game skins are more correlated with skill, and I have gotten a few comments about playing well for someone with no skins. But there is absolutely no negativity. My younger brother plays Fortnite, and they (he + his friends) have some impressively horrifying obsession with skins. Labeling something or some action as a 'default' is an insult commonly used in real life. I have only played the game a tiny bit, and have no idea why this is the case. Even my college aged friends really care a lot about the skins.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  >I did eventually buy some skins to show off, but ultimately it was pointless and everyone knew it. This was my experience with League of Legends as well. Skins were admired but not considered a mark of skill. I personally didn't play with many skins and was not judged for not having them.
  - JakeTheAndroid 7y ago
    I recently had this discussion here regarding CSGO, more regarding loot boxes, but a similar enough conversation. In CSGO, people really do care about skins. Now, you normally don't get flamed for having default skins, but people look closely at your knife, your AWP, your gloves, etc. If you have good skins, people generally like you more (in a random queue context). You are also expected to generally not suck. On the flip side, you set yourself up for pressure by having nicer skins, because people then say "all skins, no skill". So oddly enough the skins in CSGO do play into the culture. Especially because the running joke is the better the skins, the better the player.
Nullabillity 7y ago
The Overton window seems to have shifted a lot since That Retarded Horse[0]. :/ [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjuFpQ3EeA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCjuFpQ3EeA
RantyDave 7y ago
I grew up in England in the 80's and the label on one's shirt was a big deal. It seems to me that this behaviour may be a part of the creation of 'self' that adolescents go through, and that this is the same thing across a different medium. It's tribal, it shows implicit approval of one's decisions (namely to spend money on a costume), and I'm prepared to bet it's cross cultural too...
- walshemj 7y ago
  The cost of football replica kit (home and away strips change each year) did start to become an issue as well as kids potentially carrying adverts for Drink and Gambling firms.
- dv_dt 7y ago
  I wonder if anyone suggested regulation of Nike for creating a fashion fetish of Air Jordans, with the same kinds of money being thrown at Fortnite.
  - xmprt 7y ago
    The difference is that I still have my 20 year old Nike shirt in my closet but skins and other digital items aren't likely to exist for anywhere near as long.
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      The digital cosmetics will probably exist longer, and definitely can be "worn" for a much longer time before "wearing out"
      - tareqak 7y ago
        You are assuming that there will be people playing Fortnite in its current incarnation in 20 years. I don't think Fortnite is quite at the level of NetHack or even Minecraft yet.
Pils 7y ago
My theory is relatively simple: skins/costumes are signals and signals are important. Fortnite has matchmaking, and the majority of players use the matchmaking function in the two-/four-player modes rather than with a premade group. The average player you are matched with will be Fortnite-matchmaking replacement level[1]. If that player doesn't have a skin, they are more likely to underperform, from your perspective, since the pool of "non-skinned" players also includes new players and marginally-invested players (i.e. players who rarely play). I think a lot of comparisons to fashion are trying to solve the symptom, rather than this deeper problem. Youth sports has a similar phenomenon. If you show up to the first day of practice with "default" athletic gear (running shoes instead of cleats, cargo shorts instead of athletic shorts etc.) you would face a similar type of shunning. The reason why there isn't a push to ban expensive athletic equipment is due to 1) The equipment manufacturers have huge sway over youth sports organizations via sponsorship 2) kids like athletic equipment because its one of the few outlets of individual identity available to them. That's why you are more likely to see displays of individual or group altruism (e.g. what happened to your son) rather than questioning the ethics/fairness of this phenomenon. That is also why I prefer Apex Legends' freemium model to Fortnite's. Yes, it does include loot boxes (which are intrinsically exploitative), but it also includes ways to signal gaming ability without paying money, such as opt-in game statistics (how many wins with a character, how many kills, etc). More explicit signals of competency make weaker secondary signals (having the right skin/kit/cleats) a lot less relevant, even counterproductive (being labelled a poser). [1]https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/about/war_explained.shtml
zepearl 7y ago
The game is engineered not to attract parent's attention (e.g. no visual "extremes") and to attract youngsters and make them spend money - in this context I'm happy not to be a parent right now :) Respect for your efforts :)
kochikame 7y ago
I think they're usually called "no skins"
taneq 7y ago
Kids don't actually care about the token (skins, clothing brands, basketball shoes, ...) in question. They just care that the token is scarce enough to differentiate the haves from the have-nots. It's all about status.
- ahje 7y ago
  Sadly, this is the one thing that people keep forgetting about. This isn't a new phenomena; it's just bullies finding an excuse to be assholes to others.
JaimeThompson 7y ago
You can get vbucks by playing Save The World. Simply logging into STW gets you vbucks about every week or so.

AlexandrB 7y ago

Make no mistake, this is an entirely intentional consequence of Fortnite's design. There's a great video[1] that goes into detail on the psychological manipulation used in Fortnite's monetization model. It saddens me that a hobby that brought me so much joy as a kid/teenager now preys on the same insecurities it once sheltered me from. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0

oblio 7y ago
Heh... Hearthstone has a literal slot machine display as the matchmaking progress bar. Opening packs is animated to look like opening a bag of loot. More expensive cards have nicer effects or animations. F2P games are Skinner boxes.

frankc 7y ago

I guess i'm kind of old now but it's odd because I seem to remember that when I played mmorpgs, especially pvp, it was the reverse. Players who were decked out in fancy armor that they did not directly earn in game were called 'twinkies' and generally derided. When I played guild wars, most of the good pvp people just had default outfits. The pve players with fancy clothes who came into pvp generally were viewed as worse at pvp (and it was often true because their builds did not translate well into pvp).

mcv 7y ago
That's also my view. The metagame of free to play games is to resist all the temptations to spend money on it. People who spend money on it have lost.
- Konnstann 7y ago
  At some point in my life I realized that some games were worth spending money on, especially given the amount of time spent in them. I can understand your point of view, and I totally agree in the context of children/teens but I try not to play games that heavily incentivize spending, so when I put 100+ hours into a game, I don't consider buying some microtransactions "losing".
  - mcv 7y ago
    I totally agree. You wouldn't want to know how much money I spent on Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. But I know what I'm buying and why, and it's a conscious decision, not succumbing to pressure or temptation. I think it's healthy to recognise when a system, game or otherwise, tries to manipulate you into spending money, and I try to teach my son to recognise that. It's fine to spend money, but spend it on something that's worth it, something you want, not something you're pressured into.
    - Konnstann 7y ago
      F2P games unfortunately fall into the dichotomy where the target market is usually the people with the least amount of money to spend, but also with the least amount of willpower/experience to resist spending it. I'm glad that when I was growing up the closest thing I had to the microtransaction hell that is F2P were MMOs that I couldn't run, and all my games came on CDs.

mcv 7y ago

> "You can't hop into a Fortnite match as a default without being singled out" If that's true, then a lot changed in a months since I played it with my son. Admittedly Fortnite culture isn't as strong here, and my son has already lost interest (he's back to Minecraft and Roblox again). That people would bully someone over not spending money is this, seems really weird to me. Then again, some kids will use anything to bully others, but my impression is those kids are fairly rare. Could it be that this is different across different cultures? My impression as an outsider is that bullying is far more common and accepted in the US than in Europe (they even elected a bully as president), and I've heard about studies that Americans are more likely to kick down to people below them on the social ladder, whereas in many other places people are more likely to punch up and help people below them. Also: the importance of hollow status symbols. I don't see kids at my son's school care about about such things. Sure, a cool skin is cool, but not as much as achievements are. My personal opinion on the purchase of skins is that if you end up paying for a game that's free, you've lost.

wolco 7y ago
Where are you from?
- mcv 7y ago
  Netherland. Maybe we're the one that's different though; Netherland has a culture of social equality, where rich people are expected not to show it.

epaga 7y ago

Fascinating article. This opens my eyes to why my son gifted his classmate a $10 skin from his own pocket money for no special occasion - there was clearly far more going on than I had realized. Bullying is one way of handling "defaults" - generosity is another... and Epic Games makes boatloads of money either way.

mcv 7y ago
Kinda sickening that bullying between kids is apparently a vital part of their monetisation strategy. Maybe everybody should get assigned a random unique skin, but if you pay you get the skin you want.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Nice idea, but people would repeatedly make free accounts until they got the skin they wanted.
  - asdff 7y ago
    Is that a bad thing?
- p1necone 7y ago
  I highly doubt this was an intentional outcome. Multiplayer video games have had paid skins for years. Fortnite has just attracted way way way more young teens, and they're bullying each other because of differences as they always have. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't actually any more bullying going on because of Fortnite - it's just more obvious to people outside of the teenagers social sphere because of how wildly popular Fortnite is and how much media attention it's getting.
asdff 7y ago
You should remind him of the legend of the No Skin Hero, who handily dismantles everyone who payed money on a free video game due to raw skill alone.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

My parents told me stories of being bullied because their home made clothes had no tags on them (meaning not bought, although from pictures they looked impressively good on par with regular fashion IMO). I never experienced any sort of wealth based bullying or witnessed it occurring to anyone in my school days. I can’t relate to what’s being discussed. I would be very confused if someone tried to attack me on the premise of not spending money for pointless visuals.

asdf21 7y ago
Do you wear nice clothes to work present day?
- mcv 7y ago
  I wear decent clothes, but nothing excessively expensive or visibly branded. I prefer clothes without visible brands; I'm not going to pay those companies to advertise for them. If they want me to advertise for them, they should pay me. Fortunately when I was a kid, my school was also relatively free from this. Maybe not primary school, where at a certain point Cool Cat sweaters became really popular. But in secondary school, clothes were more a way to express your own taste than to buy into some kind of status. Making your own or getting some vintage thrift shop stuff was cooler than a visible brand. But something simple was never wrong either, as far as I know. But clearly some schools or some countries are very different in this. It's all about how status-driven a culture is, I guess. Dutch culture has never approved of excessive displays of wealth, and reading this, maybe that's for the better.
- wolco 7y ago
  As a developer no.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  I do, but I work at a nice place with clear standards. Fortnite is garbo and free. For this analogy to work, I would need to feel like I was being attacked for wearing gym clothes to Arby’s or Taco Bell. Honestly I would be more prone to bullying people who do buy skins probably... you’re not cool if you put on an expensive tie to get your fake cheese Fritos milkshake anathema* for 0.69¢ (*I don’t have any particular reason to believe these exist)

fraun 7y ago

Wow, I guess I still hadn't grasped how big fortnight was, not having much to do with children and all... I guess minecraft either attracted a younger audience or the lack of competition removed aspects of bullying?

mental1896 7y ago
Pretty much anything you could ever want in Minecraft you can get for free (perhaps with the assistance of mods). From what little time I've spent playing Fortnite, it seems much more narrowly-scoped and frankly, pretty boring. I'm not even sure why they're being compared here; they're very different games.
- asdf21 7y ago
  Fortnite is a lot more competitive I would assume, it's basically a FPS right?
  - mental1896 7y ago
    That was my understanding. I think it tries to capture some of Minecraft's mechanics like freeform building but it's so distilled it's not really fair to compare them.
    - mcv 7y ago
      The building in Fortnite is not remotely comparable to that in Minecraft. You can build stuff, but it's mostly small fortifications quickly thrown together to hide behind.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jacobush 7y ago
All of Fortnite is crafted and tuned around in-game purchases. It's also a very centralized game. Minecraft online gaming is a very different experience and there are thousands of independent servers.

hesdeadjim 7y ago

The only lesson I can draw from this story is that teenagers have an unparalleled inventiveness to be assholes to each other.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Pretty much. You get made fun of for your looks, your name, your character, or your hobbies, but the one certainty is you will be made fun of. It's not cool, but it's going to happen, and I don't think there's a way to avoid it.
- ansible 7y ago
  Indeed. I was recently reading "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Rich Harris. Many parents believe they have a large influence on their children's personality (traits like confidence). However, it seems like the influence of their peers vastly outweighs what parents do (outside of actual abuse, which is of course bad).
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Was their discussion in the book about home schooled kids? I'd be interested in how that changes the dynamic.
    - ansible 7y ago
      I don't recall much discussion of home-schooled kids. Unless the parents are deliberately limiting the children's socialization with peers their own age, I'd expect that it doesn't matter. The common misconception is that kids emulate their parents to become successful adults. Where in actuality, kids emulate other (sometimes slightly older) kids, in order to become successful kids.
- larrydag 7y ago
  The trick is teaching your kids about that culture and how to look out for it. Fortnite makes it hard. When I was growing up it was trading cards, sneakers, or latest video games. My parents taught me tough turkey on occasion. In-app stores are the new status symbol that parents now need to understand and now educate the next generation.

rchaud 7y ago

Stories like this make me relieved that I went to a school that mandated uniforms. For the most part, this circumvented an arms race around student fashion where what you wore signified your status. It wasn't a perfect solution, as kids still jousted for attention via watches, iPods, jewellery, but it was better than nothing.

koolba 7y ago
I'm also a big fan of school uniforms. Ditto for standardized school breakfasts and lunches as well.
libria 7y ago
Even with uniforms at my school, those with the yellow Ralph Lauren shirts looked down on those with the yellow Izod shirts or worse off-brand. It was easy to ignore though, but still amusing. "Insecurity uh finds a way."
toomanybeersies 7y ago
I had a different experience with school uniforms. At my school they made their best effort to strip any individuality out of us. No jewellery, no "extreme" haircuts (basically anything that wasn't a clipper cut or short back and sides), no hair dye (even to another natural colour). Sure, it may have prevented an arms race around student fashion, but it went so far the other way instead and denied us any right to express ourselves. People still got bullied relentlessly, the existence of a uniform did nothing to stop that.

jerf 7y ago

In my brush with Fortnite and its culture, this was the thing that surprised me the most. What I wonder is, did Epic deliberately do this? It wouldn't take much to seed the initial culture with this idea. If they didn't, it is certain that whatever the next "Fortnite" is will deliberately have its corporate creators try to seed the community with the idea that not spending money is socially bad, and you should feel bad about not buying things, and make other people feel bad about not buying things. I can come up with three or four subtle ways of slanting things against the "defaults" even in a nominally free-to-play game that on paper is indeed totally fair just by casually thinking about it for five minutes [1], and goodness only knows what I could come up with if I were in a position to think about this as my day job and run experiments. I've posted on HN a few times about how I'm keeping my kids away from a lot of the modern ad-based or free-to-play stuff like this, because since I was a kid the market has become wildly more potent at extracting money from children. I often have phrased it in terms of ads being more sophisticated, but this is honestly more what I have in mind. This is so far beyond anything I was subjected to as a child as to be a quantitative difference. (Let me emphasize that yes, I'm aware that such things existed as a kid. I remember the console wars, Furby, and the general stream of advertising aimed at me. It was not unheard of to have even a bit of spontaneous social pressure show up. But I'd still say this is some next-level stuff. None of that stuff really followed me home unless I let it; this actively shuts people out of full social participation even from their home if they don't give in to the social pressure.) What prepubescent brain can be expected to stand up to this? I'm trying to explain this stuff to my kids, but the simple truth is they are cognitively capable of getting hooked by this stuff years before they are cognitively capable of understanding the analysis, and then it's another few years of brain development after that when mere intellectual comprehension of what is being fired at them can be transformed into concrete actions to defend themselves. [1] For example, suppose you have the player's name above the character, as it often is. Suppose you make one of the things you can get with a skin is the ability to change the fonts on that name. Suppose the default font is much higher visibility, and that when you buy something, the UI automatically changes them away from the "default" font, making their visibility de facto lower, even though it's officially just an "optional" font. You only have to provide a slightly gradient like that, and then let the community iterate it on it for a few months. You can even trivially be sure that your gradient is noticed by seeding the player forum with a couple of accounts pointing this out in week 2 or 3, and a couple dozen other accounts agreeing with it, and then a couple more later swearing up and down that they tried it out and it totally improved their game. But you could claim with a straight face that the game is still totally fair to people who don't pay... "look, they get all the same weapons, the damage is the same, the win conditions are the same".... it's not even necessarily a bad argument! I miss when you could be on the Internet and read a message from someone and safely assume it was from an actual person.

Stubbs 7y ago

I'm surprised FIFA never gets scrutinised in this was, it's an £80 game each year and to make any kind of impression you need to buy packs. I watched my son once where he literally spent what I'd given him on packs, looked at what he'd "won" and sold them all instantly for in game currency. When I asked why he didn't use any of them he said they were no good. He then repeated the same process on the rest of the packs, keeping maybe 1 player. It reminds me of the behaviour of people addicted to slot machines, literally pumping in coins, recycling their winnings until they have nothing left. After the Battlefront 2 debacle, EA said they were abandoning loot boxes and wouldn't do pay to win any more. They appear to have avoided it with Battlefield V, but FIFA still stands as the Daddy when it comes to pay to win and it needs to be destroyed.

rchaud 7y ago
I downloaded FIFA15 on PS3 years ago, and I've only played it a couple of times for this reason. They have completely gimped the out-of-the-box features in terms of what you can do as a single player. Majority of gameplay revolves around Ultimate Team, which requires packs. Makes me long for the days of FIFA 96-09, where you didn't have to buy a damn thing other than the game itself to play in tournaments with you favourite team. The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games.
- ahje 7y ago
  > The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games. Yeah, and the worst part is that many video game companies would rather kill decent single-player franchises with low-quality games that nobody likes, in order to get multiplayer capability and loot-boxes baked into everything. Ten years ago I spent quite a lot of money on video games. Now, I just can't be bothered anymore. Most of the games I bought ten years ago have more replay value than the ones on the market today. At the same time the market for gaming seems to have exploded, so I guess it's working out for them.
- ionised 7y ago
  > The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing video games. In fairness, that particular model seems to be mainly attributed to the kind of EA/Ubi/Acti/ annual 'AAA blockbuster' shovelware. All games I play currently on PC are free of this crap. No game I've bought in the last year has had anything like this either. That said I mostly play games that are highly moddable.

magashna 7y ago

Isn't this the same with clothes, phones, etc.?

TheChaplain 7y ago
Indeed it is, and not only for kids. iPhone, BMW, Armani are status symbols that opens doors in many countries.

maliker 7y ago

I tried the game, and it wasn't my cup of tea--I'm more of a civilization kind of guy. However, reading about how the game is evolving as a social destination is fascinating. Reminds me of MUDs back in the day, except it's way more popular and way more mainstream.

TheGRS 7y ago
Seems weird that its all happened with a shooter. They've been pretty much there the whole time. Battle Royale as a game mode/genre isn't the most unique idea to ever come along either. The visuals sort of set it apart, though I've seen plenty of cartoony shooters that have come before. I can't really put my finger on what makes Fortnite work so well with teenagers, other than how the game happened to seize on a fad at just the right time, and then went all-in with teenager-pleasing updates. The only other game that had this sort of success was Minecraft. Just perfect timing with a game that was highly moddable and became a digital hangout spot for kids.
- smaddock 7y ago
  Fortnite is one of the few games that is available on all major platforms, including mobile, which allows online cross-play. I believe its accessibility, cost, and scarcity of alternatives is what makes it appealing to younger audiences. The portability of Unreal Engine 4 places Epic Games in a unique position where they can deliver this kind of experience.
  - TheGRS 7y ago
    I think what's kind of odd though is that it didn't happen sooner. Nothing technologically-speaking today is much different than, say, 15 years ago. Other than bandwidth and console-maker's willingness to work with each other for the greater good.
    - asdff 7y ago
      I don't know why they did it, to be honest. IIRC microsoft tried halo 2 or 3 briefly play testing xbox vs pc, and pc won everytime due to how much more accurate a mouse is vs a thumbstick. In this gen, microsoft finally allowed cross platform play with fortnight and PC players still win every engagement.

neilv 7y ago

One of the popular free-to-play tablet strategy games I tried a few years ago had a different variation on "bullying", and presumably known to the developers. There, you could use small free amounts of the numerous different currencies/resources/boosts (also purchasable with real money), spend hours designing bases in a multiplayer world, and... then pay-to-win griefers would come along and destroy everything you built, and violate whatever you were actively controlling. I imagine there were a lot of angry/frustrated deletions of the game, and also a lot of impulsive spending of money to be able to rebuild and defend what you'd just created.

babaganoosh89 7y ago
That’s what Game of War was like. Every tech level was around a 2x improvement than the one before it. So much of the game was high level pay to win players beating up on the low level free players 1v20.

hashkb 7y ago

Capitalizing on social insecurity has always been good business. Take a look at fashion. Why should video games be exempt? This is a problem we need to fix in our societies, not by demonizing companies who take advantage of bugs in our brains.

waffleguy 7y ago

The problem is with players’ mentalities. Rocket league has loot boxes, but skins aren’t what get called you a noob (or in this case default). It’s if you know the strategy. Can you rotate? Or do you just ball chase. I think since rocket league is about skilled play while fortnite is a typical fps, rocket league players focus on the he important part of the game.

vasili111 7y ago

I think in this particular situation the problem is more with child education than the problem with the game itself.

NetOpWibby 7y ago

Fortnite is the new GTA.

dvhh 7y ago
True to some degree, at least for GTA you can clearly place the blame on the parent for not scrutinizing the recommended rating for the game they let there kid play.

p1necone 7y ago

This screams moral panic to me. We're seeing proportionally more kids getting bullied about Fortnite because Fortnite is proportionally (very) more popular than other stuff that's visible to adults. Fortnite lets you pay some real money for a cosmetic upgrade to your character. That's it. There's not even random loot boxes or anything that actually affects your chance to win. Video games have done this for ages. The only difference is that Fortnite is currently very very popular with quite a young demographic, and that demographic also consists of emotionally immature kids who bully each other over everything. This bullying is going on regardless, Fortnite being so popular just makes bullying about it more visible/obvious.

ravenstine 7y ago
When I was a kid, everyone's parents brought us to the "video arcade" which was free to enter but the games would "bully" us to INSERT 4 TOKENS after dying a few times. Nobody got seriously upset about this.
- dvhh 7y ago
  The analogy is quite wrong, and even then the parent did provide some modicum of supervision (or control the spending in some way), inserting quarter do require slightly more effort than pressing a button to accept the charge on the credit card. Yeah I remember blowing a lot of money at the video game arcade, but at least felt guilty when looking at my empty wallet.
  - taneq 7y ago
    If the kid can press a button on their phone to accept a charge on a credit card, the problem is with someone giving the kid a phone and hooking it up to a credit card, not with the game in question. Game arcades were the original pay2win. Come to think of it, that's probably why I never played them...
    - dvhh 7y ago
      Arcade games do fit some definition of pay2win, but also rarely gives advantages to the one putting the more coins in the machine. Not that I would defend arcade games, as they are a dying breed, but competitive arcade games were somehow fair.

erulabs 7y ago

I wonder how much of this is due to match making, squads, and the social aspect of the game. In many other games, if you win a few rounds (or do well at all), you're quickly pitted against semi-professional players and lose horribly. Semi-professional and professional players simply do not care about their costumes or outfits, and often choose the skin that offers the most visual clarity or blends in the most. You specifically _do not_ want to standout in a -competitive- shooter game. But, in Fortnight, because only 1 player wins, and because of the chaotic and random nature of the game, and because of the social aspect (playing with a group of friends), I wonder if most kids ever experience a user 10x or 20x or 200x their skill level. It's very likely most players never really improve their skill levels over time. Watching professional StarCraft or Counter-Strike, graphics and details are turned down to the lowest setting, skins and such are not used, etc etc. If you were never aware of the "ladder of skill" in front of you, or your place on it, it seems more reasonable to focus on cosmetics. What really interests me is that a few years ago games started actively removing "leaderboards" and "ranking positions" UI pieces - specifically to make new players and poorly skilled players feel more comfortable and happy. There is absolutely a balance here. Recently my 7 year old nephew said a game (RayMan) was boring because "we always win", and I had a great conversation with him about difficultly in life - things that are always easy and always fun are dangerous. Games with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable - it's about the accomplishment, not the reward. This applies to video games, drugs, relationships, food, and just about everything else in life. I absolutely am glad his mother doesn't allow FortNight, but allows me to play Chess, Rocket League, and StarCraft with him.

dunstad 7y ago
Relationships with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable?
- erulabs 7y ago
  Well, maybe not "Relationships with intense difficulty", but it's a very common and very naive assumption that the perfect person for you will "just work" and there will be no fights and no difficulty. Loving someone is a lot of hard work - and it's extremely rewarding. Teenage relationships where everything "just works" and everyone is in bliss tend to end with a lot of tears. Anyways, yes, it's not a set-in-stone rule - but typically, anything that's extremely easy also has a disappointing side. The best stuff in life takes work.

stestagg 7y ago

Polygon is free but I just got bullied into getting tracked by their advertising partners :(

mprev 7y ago

If my kids and their friends are anything to go by then Fortnite is no longer cool. They complain that, despite the seasons, the game is too samey and has got boring. My kids did experience peer pressure to buy season passes a year or so ago.

asdff 7y ago
Somehow fortnight got away with having one map for this long
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  I mean Dota and LoL got away with the same thing. Hell, you can even point at chess as an example of how it's possible for a game to remain engaging despite staying the same.

Kenji 7y ago

If your so-called friends bully you for not having in-game skins, you're better off being alone, literally. Cut the negative people out of your life, it's better to only have one worthwhile friend than 20 "friends" who opportunistically bully you. This is not the fault of Fortnite or any game. This is the fault of the cruelty of children.

settsu 7y ago

There’s also some very rough bullying behavior by teens of younger players (who tend to talk a lot of game and such), which is unfortunate amd inexcusable. Racist, sexist, and bigoted speech is also not uncommon. However, let’s be frank and acknowledge that this is not at all a new phenomenon—kids have been made fun of for their clothes, shoes, lunches, haircuts, age, ad nauseam. There’s little (white) punks of single digit age dropping the n-word in public parks. Kids can be straight up cruel. Pointing at video games or music or whatever the scapegoat du jour is mostly unproductive.

NKosmatos 7y ago

Interesting to note that in the article, Epic is only mentioned once and for a different reason from what we would expect, for designing nice skins!!! Nothing is stated about how they’re promoting/pushing their digital offerings to young kids, who are not of age to be able to clearly judge what is good for them and when they’re being tricked by shabby marketing in order to do purchases. I’ve read that Epic is throttling users who don’t have paid for a battle pass, is not as fast and supportive as it should be with refunds and is dumping a lot of money in sponsorships/prizes so as to attract more young players. They know what is happenings and I don’t thing this will change :-( It’s true that society, schools, kids and parents have changed in recent years and that’s why we’re seeing an increase of bullying, which is not helping the situation with how gaming is affecting lives. IMHO some kind of regulation/stricter rules are needed.

nangtrongvuon 7y ago

I’ve played the game at a relatively decent level, and the general idea is “defaults” tend to be easier opponents. Of course, most people and specifically kids don’t want to be looked down upon, which leads to the phenomenon mentioned in the article. Fortnite is special in that skins are very prominent from the so called “defaults”, thus someone with skins show that they have clearly invested in the game and therefore (on average) are better players. In other games like Apex Legends (another Battle Royals), the skins aren’t as obvious or are much subtler recolors and slight changes from the base model.

craftinator 7y ago

Sounds like we need to produce kids that are more bully-resistant. This comment is likely to make some people upset, so let me elaborate: Being able to resist bullying in any format is an extremely useful life skill. I was lucky enough to be taught by the Marine Corps in how to resist it, and it's been instrumental in life, almost every day. People who are easily diverted through bully tactics are easily distracted from their life goals by anyone who is loud enough and mildly persuasive enough. Their opinions end up mirroring the loudest person in the room, quashing their self image and their creativity. This article is about video games, but as video games are, for many kids, a daily form of social interaction, it makes them a prime candidate for learning early on how to resist negative and cynical attitudes being thrown at them.

LUmBULtERA 7y ago

I hadn't heard the term "default" like this before, but I love it -- as a compliment. I'd adopt the term "default" regarding cosmetics in pride. Fuck buying worthless shit.

madshiva 7y ago

The problem are not with kids, but with the parents that don't do their jobs. You should know what your kid are doing and teach them how to not waste money on skins or other temporary product that worth nothing. It's just a matter of understanding and teaching, it was always the case when parents, can't understand how it work. BTW, I sell all theses crap items and make money. (PUBG, CS:GO,...) for playing for "free", I have earned around 20$ at least.