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Fortnite was initially a huge flop - it wasn't free to begin with - I played the alpha and beta, the game was basically a boring PvE (player versus environment)

Fortnite was initially a huge flop - it wasn't free to begin with - I played the alpha and beta, the game was basically a boring PvE (player versus environment) building. Minecraft with better graphics. Users had to build "bases" with material to prevent zombies over-running them when they spawned and attacked you. A little bit like RUST (another game not the programming language) - except the raids in this case are usually done by humans, raiding for resources other players' stocks inside bases. Then somehow out of the blue - Fortnite became huge: they did a Battle Royale mode, which was free to play, and compared to the competition, the game ran smoothly on almost any PC using it. This coupled with its young cartoony look like League of Legends and riding the Battle Royale hype without the realism, helped surely fuel it. Let's not forget that Tim - the man behind Fortnite - is also the man behind Unreal, Unreal Tournament (huge RIP Unreal Tournament and its fanbase - that's another story not many would wanna know about now ), Paragon (another RIP and an angry fanbase) and the Unreal engine, which is Epic Game's biggest asset after Fortnite ( actually I have no data to compare what makes Epic Games more money, Unreal Engine or Fortnite at this time) P.S. If you're into this stuff also look up Cliff Bleszinski / Cliffy B: he's another big name from the Unreal scene but retired from Epic Games when Tencent bought a huge stake and "peaced out' from the scene after his career flopped when he tried to do solo projects.

zootam 7y ago
> Cliff Bleszinski / Cliffy B: he's another big name from the Unreal scene but retired from Epic Games and "peaced out' after his career flops. Cliffy B was an early investor in Oculus. He put a lot of money into Lawbreakers which flopped.
mdorazio 7y ago
> they did a Battle Royale mode, which was free to play Let's be honest here, it's more accurate to say they saw the massive popularity of PubG, copied the gameplay mode, and made it free in a transparent attempt to boost a failing game and get in front of the PubG juggernaut. The initial version of Fortnite BR wasn't that great, it was just free. Where the Fortnite team really did a good job was taking that initial BR version and turning it into something with huge global appeal and continuing fresh content to keep players engaged for multiple years.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  I agree - a lot of it...it was the look of the game, the fact it ran smoothly and the building that made a lot of people try it out: I can feel some teenagers going like: "Hey look it's like minecraft but with guns" but let's not forget the emotes/dances. Those went viral!
- iamtheworstdev 7y ago
  Let's be more honest - their success was largely due to the PUBG developers refusing to fix a broken game and tackle cheating.
  - Jare 7y ago
    I'm going to bet on technical debt and raw lack of experience rather than "refusal."
    - skellera 7y ago
      A true difference in knowing how to use the tool. Obviously, the creators of the engine are going to put out a more optimized game than pretty much anyone else using it.
      - grogenaut 7y ago
        Don't forget having the team work 90 hour weeks for multiple years to power the success. Edit: I like that I'm getting downvoted by fanboys of epic for pointing out the large human cost to games being "updated as fast as gamers want it". https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-cru... if you don't know but games are very complex simulations and very hard to work on. Keeping fortnite up to date took a ton of effort by a ton of people in a not really sustainable way for peoples lives or careers to make it a success. Also can take irreversible impacts on help and psyche. And really every time I played that game it was still massively buggy. For instance build to weapon switch issue that locked me out of controls for 1-3 seconds on a regular basis. And epic got very good at the cheating stuff because they were helping blue hole solve the same issues and got to prototype it out on pubg and got a headstart there. Yeah that's a risk of using a team's engine but...
leftnode 7y ago
A lot of high school memories this brings up. I was a huge UT player, in a clan, competed, everything. I emailed Mark Rein in high school about getting into 3D programming. He was the president of Epic Games back then and emailed me back. I stopped playing when I went to college. What happened to the UT fan base? Is there an article about it? Genuinely curious.
- wingerlang 7y ago
  Arena shooters in general kind of died out, I don't think it is specific to UT.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  Community is still around in fact the whole UT (from 99 to 4) fanbase hangs around a couple of Discords. Mind you, we're talking about 200 people globally probably so, it's tiny but big enough to play.
- AJ007 7y ago
  I still get the urge to play the original UT. It is weird that instinctively that era of games feels mere years ago but it is more like 2 decades. Perhaps it’s that the leap from ZZT to UT seems far more vast than UT to Fortnite. People should pay more attention to Tim Sweeney. He appears to have a much better grasp on how to run a tech company using an open platform than the more well known Silicon Valley CEOs. The Unreal Engine may not be explicitly open source as in Linux, but it’s all viewable and the licensing terms are reasonable.
derefr 7y ago
> Somehow out of the blue, Fortnite became huge That “somehow” is pretty obvious: they had already built all the assets for a great multiplayer FPS-esque, and already had a whole marketing department spun up to get people to play it. Once they decided to pivot to Battle Royale as a game mechanic, they spent a month on rewriting game logic, and then had a nearly-finished AAA Battle Royale game on their hands with a staff ready to sell it, with more polish than existing entries in the genre and no other studios close to catching up to chase the fad in time. Business take-away: if you build for a well-established, very competitive market, and then—near the finish line—pivot into a new and (as yet) less-competitive market where you can still reuse everything you built, the extra polish you had to put into your product to get it to stand out in the heavily-competitive field, will make you stand head-and-shoulders above everyone else in the less-competitive field. (I’m trying to think of other good examples of this effect in the business domain but coming up short. Anyone?)
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  Apple using its iPod and Mac experience to enter (smart)phones?
- blazespin 7y ago
  I disagree. There was no magic trick here. Unreal is a company built with the best and brightest in the games industry over a very long period. I don't think any other company could have replicated their success - they just don't have that level of talent density.
- bhouston 7y ago
  This is a very accurate assessment. It was a real effective marketing team combined with a very smart pivot to an adjacent market and hitting product market fit.epic games tried and tried and tried (paragon, recent attempts to revitalize unreal tournament, etc) and eventually they got a huge hit.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    Yeah, it's like the Picasso napkin thing. Fortnite wasn't an overnight success, it was decades in the making. I had so much hype for the new Unreal Tournament, but after seeing how that was handled I never even gave Paragon a shot. I'm glad Epic Games eventually figured things out.
s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
Cliffy B was the lead designer for Gears of War. A big moneymaker for Epic and one of the most unique shooters to date. When I think of Epic I think of Gears, then Unreal Engine.
Jare 7y ago
Epic was also the creator of Gears of War - a game I thought was just going to be a tech demo for Unreal Engine 3 and turned out to be a masterpiece. Related (to both Fortnite and Gears of War): some words from Rod Fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the-world-almost-canceled-epic-games-rod-fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the...
adamesque 7y ago
It’s also easy to overlook, but at the time PUBG was nearing peak impact, the only console version was a buggy Xbox port. I remember being completely taken in with PUBG streams but with only a PS4 had no way to play. I downloaded Fortnite certain it was a hack and a ripoff but it was literally the only Battle Royale-style game available to me at the time. Being free and on all platforms out of the gate was crucial.
ehsankia 7y ago
I personally enjoyed the PvE, just like I enjoyed H1Z1 survival. But as far as replayability goes, I guess PvP has more longevity. I think what really lead to Fortnite's ultra success was how well optimized the game was, that they even were able to put it on mobile and every low end computer out there.
Ambele 7y ago
I heard another reason why Fortnight became so big. I had discussions with young high school gamers and they say the single reason Fortnight became so big is that it's available on every platform. Even though one person has an XBox, another has a PS4, another has a Nintendo Switch, another just has a PC, and the casual players have Android or IOS, everyone can play with each other when they go home. Also, they play a lot of different games, but they play Fortnight everyday.

zootam 7y ago

> Cliff Bleszinski / Cliffy B: he's another big name from the Unreal scene but retired from Epic Games and "peaced out' after his career flops. Cliffy B was an early investor in Oculus. He put a lot of money into Lawbreakers which flopped.

mdorazio 7y ago

> they did a Battle Royale mode, which was free to play Let's be honest here, it's more accurate to say they saw the massive popularity of PubG, copied the gameplay mode, and made it free in a transparent attempt to boost a failing game and get in front of the PubG juggernaut. The initial version of Fortnite BR wasn't that great, it was just free. Where the Fortnite team really did a good job was taking that initial BR version and turning it into something with huge global appeal and continuing fresh content to keep players engaged for multiple years.

orliesaurus 7y ago
I agree - a lot of it...it was the look of the game, the fact it ran smoothly and the building that made a lot of people try it out: I can feel some teenagers going like: "Hey look it's like minecraft but with guns" but let's not forget the emotes/dances. Those went viral!
iamtheworstdev 7y ago
Let's be more honest - their success was largely due to the PUBG developers refusing to fix a broken game and tackle cheating.
- Jare 7y ago
  I'm going to bet on technical debt and raw lack of experience rather than "refusal."
  - skellera 7y ago
    A true difference in knowing how to use the tool. Obviously, the creators of the engine are going to put out a more optimized game than pretty much anyone else using it.
    - grogenaut 7y ago
      Don't forget having the team work 90 hour weeks for multiple years to power the success. Edit: I like that I'm getting downvoted by fanboys of epic for pointing out the large human cost to games being "updated as fast as gamers want it". https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-crunch-epic-games https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-cru... if you don't know but games are very complex simulations and very hard to work on. Keeping fortnite up to date took a ton of effort by a ton of people in a not really sustainable way for peoples lives or careers to make it a success. Also can take irreversible impacts on help and psyche. And really every time I played that game it was still massively buggy. For instance build to weapon switch issue that locked me out of controls for 1-3 seconds on a regular basis. And epic got very good at the cheating stuff because they were helping blue hole solve the same issues and got to prototype it out on pubg and got a headstart there. Yeah that's a risk of using a team's engine but...

leftnode 7y ago

A lot of high school memories this brings up. I was a huge UT player, in a clan, competed, everything. I emailed Mark Rein in high school about getting into 3D programming. He was the president of Epic Games back then and emailed me back. I stopped playing when I went to college. What happened to the UT fan base? Is there an article about it? Genuinely curious.

wingerlang 7y ago
Arena shooters in general kind of died out, I don't think it is specific to UT.
orliesaurus 7y ago
Community is still around in fact the whole UT (from 99 to 4) fanbase hangs around a couple of Discords. Mind you, we're talking about 200 people globally probably so, it's tiny but big enough to play.
AJ007 7y ago
I still get the urge to play the original UT. It is weird that instinctively that era of games feels mere years ago but it is more like 2 decades. Perhaps it’s that the leap from ZZT to UT seems far more vast than UT to Fortnite. People should pay more attention to Tim Sweeney. He appears to have a much better grasp on how to run a tech company using an open platform than the more well known Silicon Valley CEOs. The Unreal Engine may not be explicitly open source as in Linux, but it’s all viewable and the licensing terms are reasonable.

derefr 7y ago

> Somehow out of the blue, Fortnite became huge That “somehow” is pretty obvious: they had already built all the assets for a great multiplayer FPS-esque, and already had a whole marketing department spun up to get people to play it. Once they decided to pivot to Battle Royale as a game mechanic, they spent a month on rewriting game logic, and then had a nearly-finished AAA Battle Royale game on their hands with a staff ready to sell it, with more polish than existing entries in the genre and no other studios close to catching up to chase the fad in time. Business take-away: if you build for a well-established, very competitive market, and then—near the finish line—pivot into a new and (as yet) less-competitive market where you can still reuse everything you built, the extra polish you had to put into your product to get it to stand out in the heavily-competitive field, will make you stand head-and-shoulders above everyone else in the less-competitive field. (I’m trying to think of other good examples of this effect in the business domain but coming up short. Anyone?)

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Apple using its iPod and Mac experience to enter (smart)phones?
blazespin 7y ago
I disagree. There was no magic trick here. Unreal is a company built with the best and brightest in the games industry over a very long period. I don't think any other company could have replicated their success - they just don't have that level of talent density.
bhouston 7y ago
This is a very accurate assessment. It was a real effective marketing team combined with a very smart pivot to an adjacent market and hitting product market fit.epic games tried and tried and tried (paragon, recent attempts to revitalize unreal tournament, etc) and eventually they got a huge hit.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  Yeah, it's like the Picasso napkin thing. Fortnite wasn't an overnight success, it was decades in the making. I had so much hype for the new Unreal Tournament, but after seeing how that was handled I never even gave Paragon a shot. I'm glad Epic Games eventually figured things out.

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago

Cliffy B was the lead designer for Gears of War. A big moneymaker for Epic and one of the most unique shooters to date. When I think of Epic I think of Gears, then Unreal Engine.

Jare 7y ago

Epic was also the creator of Gears of War - a game I thought was just going to be a tech demo for Unreal Engine 3 and turned out to be a masterpiece. Related (to both Fortnite and Gears of War): some words from Rod Fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the-world-almost-canceled-epic-games-rod-fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the...

adamesque 7y ago

It’s also easy to overlook, but at the time PUBG was nearing peak impact, the only console version was a buggy Xbox port. I remember being completely taken in with PUBG streams but with only a PS4 had no way to play. I downloaded Fortnite certain it was a hack and a ripoff but it was literally the only Battle Royale-style game available to me at the time. Being free and on all platforms out of the gate was crucial.

ehsankia 7y ago

I personally enjoyed the PvE, just like I enjoyed H1Z1 survival. But as far as replayability goes, I guess PvP has more longevity. I think what really lead to Fortnite's ultra success was how well optimized the game was, that they even were able to put it on mobile and every low end computer out there.

Ambele 7y ago

I heard another reason why Fortnight became so big. I had discussions with young high school gamers and they say the single reason Fortnight became so big is that it's available on every platform. Even though one person has an XBox, another has a PS4, another has a Nintendo Switch, another just has a PC, and the casual players have Android or IOS, everyone can play with each other when they go home. Also, they play a lot of different games, but they play Fortnight everyday.