Hello,
Welcome to the Power Up. When Fortnite came out in 2017 it was new and exciting. It was one of the first games to have a 100 person battle royale mode and it was free.
Three years later the game is still new and exciting, but for different reasons. Now with over 250 million players, Epic Games, the studio that created Fortnite, is rewriting the playbook for how to engage a digital community. Here are some ways that Fortnite is pushing the boundaries of what a video game can be.
What Fortnite is turning into
A social network
This week Fortnite released Party Royale, a no combat mode. On the surface that seems weird for a shooting game, but it makes sense once you think of the social needs that gamers have.
Winning isn’t the biggest priority for a large number of people who play video games. Many people just log on to have a good time with their friends. Fortnite is one of the perfect games for this activity because it offers cross-platform play and voice chat. That means that one friend can be on a Nintendo Switch, another could be on a PS4, and one could be on a phone while playing on the same island.
The no combat island lets Fortnite compete with the Facebook groups, Facetimes, and Zoom calls of the world as a virtual hangout space. The game’s edge is that you can do much more on a digital island with your friends than you can do while holding a phone up to your face.
An art form
The recent Travis Scott concert in Fortnite drew over 25 million viewers. It has people talking about Fortnite’s potential for musicians, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. This concert was a blueprint for the storytelling possibilities Fortnite holds.
The event had people’s avatars dancing, manipulating the camera, flying through asteroids, and diving underwater. These are all normal game functions, but they were all used in smart ways to enhance the artistic experience.
It’ll be interesting to see how developers expand these artist collaborations in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see someone like Quentin Tarantino create the next official event.
I also wouldn’t be shocked to see Fortnite expand its own in-game creation tools, so that fans can create their own art experiences like the Travis Scott concert without the developer’s help.
A channel for brands
Fortnite is one of the most brand-friendly games out there. That’s not going to change anytime soon, but the way brands are integrated into the game will. Right now a lot of brand partnerships revolve around offering skins and the occasional game mode. Fortnite is slowly changing that.
Look at the in-game theatre for example. Production companies can use it to run trailers for their shows, much like a real-world theatre. It’s not a stretch to say that Fortnite is going to start branding other parts of the game world. Imagine if the in-game grocery store turns into a Whole Foods or all of the cars in the game were Fords.
What to take away:
Fortnite built a large following by being a fun shooting game with a low barrier to entry. Now that Fortnite has a large player base it is stretching the limits on the social, creative, and monetary roles a video game can fulfill.
Gaming news that caught my eye:
BBC: Wimbledon is cancelled, but Mario Tennis is not. The biggest Tennis stars are competing in a Mario Tennis esports tournament for charity on Sunday, May 3rd.
Gamespot: Call of Duty Warzone is coming under fire for its gargantuan download size. It’s taking up almost 200 gigabytes on players’ consoles. That has led some to speculate that the game is large so that players are forced to delete other games. they play on their consoles.
Washington Post: Xbox Game Pass announced it has over 10 million users. It’s a membership that allows people to pay a small amount each month to have access to hundreds of games. A lot of experts see this type of offering as the future of the game industry. For perspective, Sony’s similar service only has 1 million subscribers.
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