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.
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?)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd love to know how people like Sweeny and Carmack were able to transition from engine programmers to effective CEOs/CTOs of massive corporations. As monkish, introverted engineers, it surely would have required drastic changes in mindset and personality over the years. What steps were involved? Is there any advice to be gleamed for introverts who wish to become better leaders?
The article covers that in many ways Fortnite is a social network and that's certainly true in my house.
My step-son often jumps on to talk to the friends he has at school or where his father lives, often he just finds a corner of a room and hunkers down he's not actively playing (though he does of course do that as well).
In a strange way epic has made a compelling second life by focusing on the game playing aspect first.
With the creation tools they have, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if players could make their own maps that where shareable so others could visit.
I graduated high school 5 years ago, and in that generation (of video game culture) our social game was League of Legends.
Everyone was always online. Ya, we liked the game, some even cared about their rank, but the beauty was playing with all your friends and talking over Skype. I'm glad that kids have the opportunity to be social in a time where technology often makes us lonelier
> With the creation tools they have, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if players could make their own maps that where shareable so others could visit.
This already exists, called creative mode. My son and his friends play this all the time - they even planned a sleepover party for 10 kids around it.
Good to hear that this is still the case. Back in the days, games felt so much more community based, with persistent servers you would go back to day after day to hang out with the same set of people.
With the rise of quick match and match making, it felt like that was dying, and communities are instead pulling into Twitch and Discord instead. Some of my closest online friends were made in online games, so it's good that newer games still allow for that.
I remember hanging out with Tim back in the late 80's on Compuserve's GAMERS forum. He was doing shareware back then, under the Epic Megagames brand as I recall. There were a lot of people on that forum making shareware games, myself included (MVP Backgammon, released in 1991). One of my distinct memories is that Sweeney was more serious about it, and about the future of games, than most of the rest of us. Guess it paid off!
I remember reading this in some articles when Fortnite BR first came out... Unreal engine powered PUBG, which was making 40 million a month then. Epic was getting 5% so that was $2mm per month they went out and cannabalized. PUBG devs were complaining that they couldn't scale Unreal engine to 100 players before that happened, Epic had to prove em wrong. Definitely an interesting change in dynamics from vendor to competitor.
When Fortnite BR came out it had much better stability/performance, kid-friendly graphics, but ALSO a really unique, and twitch friendly fighting mechanic with building. Watching good players in a build battle is way more interesting than long range sniping or bad vehicle physics.
Off topic question for gamers (I know zero about gaming literally). Is the natural rise and fall of a game an artifact of the result of experience players getting so good that anyone starting can't make their mark easily against them? Whereby if they go to a new game they get a fresh and less competitive chance of success? (Am I stating this correctly even?)
It's the endgame content. Once you've gotten as good as you can get, it gets boring. In shooters, once you've memorized the levels and have a best gun and best loadout, the game becomes routine. Go to this corner, throw a grenade, come out shooting, duck back, hide in this bush. After time, everyone starts using the same tactics and it stops being fun. For other games like MMOs (WoW, GW2, etc), once you've beaten the main content of the game there may not be anything left to do. Just more of the same, or competitive PvP play that has the same problem as the shooters I was talking about.
Once you've seen everything the game has to offer, it starts getting boring quickly. Like watching the same movie over and over. Some you can watch over and over because they're that good, some you watch once or twice and you're done.
Now to your question of it being too hard to beat good players in an older game, that does have an effect. You might find it difficult to get into Counter Strike or Team Fortress 2 these days because the people still playing are really, really good. They've been playing the same game for a decade.
One thing I've realized recently, AAA games are a medium like blockbuster movies. They aren't enjoyed in a vacuum, there's a social participatory element to them. People want to be part of an active fanbase and/or talk about it with their peers.
Playing an unpopular indie game (or even a game that's >8 years old) is kinda lonely. Yeah its fun but who am I going to talk to it about? Playing Fortnite or Overwatch or even a new AAA single-player game feels like being in the cultural zeitgeist.
It's generally tied to the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Most super popular games these days have a short skill ceiling and an accessible skill floor; encouraging getting good isn't a major focus of design.
If all there is to do is to get achievements and better loot, then players will tire and leave.
If there's community, ways to express identity, and so forth, then players will keep each other engaged.
Fortnite doubles down on the latter by having an in-game store with time-windowed products and other mechanics that heavily leverage FOMO and social anxiety.
This is probably a small factor -- a much larger factor is just that gamers get bored easily and want to play newer games, even the skilled ones.
Most games will put players of similar skill level against each other, so the fact that there's a cohort of players who are much stronger than you can be totally invisible to your experience of the game as a weaker player, even when that delta is getting larger over time. Whatever skill level you happen to be at, there's probably someone else there too.
I think it's usually more of a result of getting bored with the content than the skill of the players. Certain games never get boring for a big enough critical mass of players to keep going indefinitely (CS:GO, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Fortnite, etc). Many of these games have matchmaking system that try to put players of similar skill together. These systems are sometimes flawed, but can generally work well enough to soften the experience of picking up the game for the first time.
Like it or not, you have to really respect the product execution with Fortnite. Even with hiccups (and there have been and continue to be hiccups) the speed and execution is honestly nothing short of breathtaking.
IMHO there have been 9 key factors to Fortnite's success:
1. They didn't go for a "military" motif (think Call of Duty, PUBG, etc). Instead they chose whimsy, basically. This gives almost limitless possibilities for skins and in-game themes. Instead of just changing the colour of weapons and combat fatigues, you can be a banana (the article mentions this), John Wick, Marshmello, a chicken (the Tender Defender, which is just an amazing name) and so on. This provides an endless supply of skins people can buy. They also (wisely) chose to have limited customization slots (from memory, glider, trails, skin, back bling, harvester and weapons rather than, say, left boot, right boot, left leg, right leg, etc).
2. Further to (1), this means pretty much anything can be put in the game and it "fits". Earlier this year, Sea of Thieves kind of blew up on Twitch for a couple of months. Next Fortnite season there were pirates, a pirate ship, cannons you could shoot yourself across the map with, etc. Coincidence? I think not.
3. There is only one map. I saw PUBG added new maps. Huge mistake. HUGE. This just splits the player base. It meant (in PUBG at least) people would back out if they didn't get on the map they wanted. The alternative of selecting map still splits the player base. Instead, Fortnite has one map that constantly changes.
4. Another way to keep things fresh: LTMs. The Floor is Lava is a relatively recent example of this.
5. The first FPSs had static maps. Think CSGO or Rainbow 6 as recent(ish) examples. This leads to players who know the map camping a spot where they can kill you with a pixel shot to the big toe when you walk by. Then came destructible environments, which seem like a good idea, but they quickly devolve into static maps as the environment is destroyed. Fortnite has both destructible elements and the ability to build. The parallels to Minecraft are apt. This was a real innovation in a shooter.
6. It being free-to-play with purchases being purely cosmetic so it's not a pay-to-win game ("pay-to-flex" is probably a good way to describe what Fortnite is).
7. You can't just log on and buy "everything". There are challenges. Items are available only for a limited time. Certain items are thus rare (eg the original Skull Trooper). It really encourages constant play.
8. The creator code program so people (ie streamers) would push the item shop.
9. It's a game that's entertaining to watch and isn't too short. Personally I've watched a lot on Twitch and I don't even play the game. How nuts is that?
Something will eventually come along to replace Fortnite. I'm not sure this will happen anytime soon. I also suspect you won't see something that so singularly occupies mindshare like Fortnite so a long time to come.
Well, maybe a huge mistake from a business, milk-the-cow-dry standpoint. But from a gameplay perspective, there's a fair number of players who enjoy playing on multiple maps and wouldn't keep playing a game with a single map.
A case in point being myself and my close group of friends, who still play many hours of PUBG every week and also buy the season passes. We don't play Fortnite or Apex Legends, which only have one map (among many other differences).
There's plenty of room for more than one way of managing a large multiplayer game, thankfully. I'd dread a future where game-makers only try to optimize for financial success and are afraid of ailenating _any_ part of their customer base. Thankfully, there seems to be a point where things shift back out of equilibrium when too many game companies try to do this. Fortnite actually being a very good example.
The map piece is interesting because I've observed that with most major fps games out there. With battlefield it's really bad because it isn't across just maps but game versions.
So you have people who truly loved one setting stick to it till nobody plays any more, but they are then not part of the general population and particularly any new IAP (although recent developments seem like they are trying to fix that).
I think being kid friendly and stream friendly really helped. A lot of kids transitioned to it from Minecraft, so the building aspect of the game also contributed.
I wonder how well it would have done without YouTube or Twitch.
As he says, the team is behind fornite and the environment he fostered is responsible for it. Unreal was the same - so groundbreaking during its time that just a great vision was not going to bring something that complicated to life.
I remember being absolutely floored when Unreal came out. I was in awe of that team and still am. No one else was anywhere near them at the time in terms of immersive feel and art design, in my opinion.
It's also one of the few FPS games I've encountered where, for several years, I felt like I could play it almost indefinitely (that is, in what little free time I had). It directly drove at least two major system upgrades. Everything's different now, of course, but if they came out with another single player campaign in that universe I would pick it up without a second thought.
Has outline.com been handcuffed? Whenever I hit a paywall it used to just be a matter of feeding them the link. Now everything seems to get: "We're sorry, but this URL is not supported by Outline"
It was for sure all premeditated. Like you know... "Hey guys, we need to earn some serious cash now, so let's stop screwing around and wank ourselves off on some stupid games only we like... Let's build some serious shit for once."
And whops. There we go. Good old Tim stopped wanking to Day-Z and got some shit done, all on his own.
Not to mention that Epic Games is pile of crap now that they released this game. It was once a nice company to work work for, now its just the same shitty sweat shop like any other gaming company, who only sees bottom lines and milking customers... And employees.
[+] [-] orliesaurus|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] derefr|6 years ago|reply
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?)
[+] [-] mdorazio|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] leftnode|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Jare|6 years ago|reply
Related (to both Fortnite and Gears of War): some words from Rod Fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the...
[+] [-] s_y_n_t_a_x|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamesque|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zootam|6 years ago|reply
Cliffy B was an early investor in Oculus. He put a lot of money into Lawbreakers which flopped.
[+] [-] Ambele|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] archagon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noir_lord|6 years ago|reply
My step-son often jumps on to talk to the friends he has at school or where his father lives, often he just finds a corner of a room and hunkers down he's not actively playing (though he does of course do that as well).
In a strange way epic has made a compelling second life by focusing on the game playing aspect first.
With the creation tools they have, it'd be interesting to see what would happen if players could make their own maps that where shareable so others could visit.
[+] [-] acpetrov|6 years ago|reply
Everyone was always online. Ya, we liked the game, some even cared about their rank, but the beauty was playing with all your friends and talking over Skype. I'm glad that kids have the opportunity to be social in a time where technology often makes us lonelier
[+] [-] cheez|6 years ago|reply
This already exists, called creative mode. My son and his friends play this all the time - they even planned a sleepover party for 10 kids around it.
[+] [-] xwdv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehsankia|6 years ago|reply
With the rise of quick match and match making, it felt like that was dying, and communities are instead pulling into Twitch and Discord instead. Some of my closest online friends were made in online games, so it's good that newer games still allow for that.
[+] [-] markbnj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tln|6 years ago|reply
When Fortnite BR came out it had much better stability/performance, kid-friendly graphics, but ALSO a really unique, and twitch friendly fighting mechanic with building. Watching good players in a build battle is way more interesting than long range sniping or bad vehicle physics.
[+] [-] mattnewport|6 years ago|reply
I'm glad they clarified that, I wasn't sure which was which for a moment.
[+] [-] gist|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freehunter|6 years ago|reply
Once you've seen everything the game has to offer, it starts getting boring quickly. Like watching the same movie over and over. Some you can watch over and over because they're that good, some you watch once or twice and you're done.
Now to your question of it being too hard to beat good players in an older game, that does have an effect. You might find it difficult to get into Counter Strike or Team Fortress 2 these days because the people still playing are really, really good. They've been playing the same game for a decade.
[+] [-] xgulfie|6 years ago|reply
Playing an unpopular indie game (or even a game that's >8 years old) is kinda lonely. Yeah its fun but who am I going to talk to it about? Playing Fortnite or Overwatch or even a new AAA single-player game feels like being in the cultural zeitgeist.
[+] [-] dleslie|6 years ago|reply
If all there is to do is to get achievements and better loot, then players will tire and leave.
If there's community, ways to express identity, and so forth, then players will keep each other engaged.
Fortnite doubles down on the latter by having an in-game store with time-windowed products and other mechanics that heavily leverage FOMO and social anxiety.
[+] [-] cjbprime|6 years ago|reply
Most games will put players of similar skill level against each other, so the fact that there's a cohort of players who are much stronger than you can be totally invisible to your experience of the game as a weaker player, even when that delta is getting larger over time. Whatever skill level you happen to be at, there's probably someone else there too.
[+] [-] hoodedmongoose|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acheron|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|6 years ago|reply
IMHO there have been 9 key factors to Fortnite's success:
1. They didn't go for a "military" motif (think Call of Duty, PUBG, etc). Instead they chose whimsy, basically. This gives almost limitless possibilities for skins and in-game themes. Instead of just changing the colour of weapons and combat fatigues, you can be a banana (the article mentions this), John Wick, Marshmello, a chicken (the Tender Defender, which is just an amazing name) and so on. This provides an endless supply of skins people can buy. They also (wisely) chose to have limited customization slots (from memory, glider, trails, skin, back bling, harvester and weapons rather than, say, left boot, right boot, left leg, right leg, etc).
2. Further to (1), this means pretty much anything can be put in the game and it "fits". Earlier this year, Sea of Thieves kind of blew up on Twitch for a couple of months. Next Fortnite season there were pirates, a pirate ship, cannons you could shoot yourself across the map with, etc. Coincidence? I think not.
3. There is only one map. I saw PUBG added new maps. Huge mistake. HUGE. This just splits the player base. It meant (in PUBG at least) people would back out if they didn't get on the map they wanted. The alternative of selecting map still splits the player base. Instead, Fortnite has one map that constantly changes.
4. Another way to keep things fresh: LTMs. The Floor is Lava is a relatively recent example of this.
5. The first FPSs had static maps. Think CSGO or Rainbow 6 as recent(ish) examples. This leads to players who know the map camping a spot where they can kill you with a pixel shot to the big toe when you walk by. Then came destructible environments, which seem like a good idea, but they quickly devolve into static maps as the environment is destroyed. Fortnite has both destructible elements and the ability to build. The parallels to Minecraft are apt. This was a real innovation in a shooter.
6. It being free-to-play with purchases being purely cosmetic so it's not a pay-to-win game ("pay-to-flex" is probably a good way to describe what Fortnite is).
7. You can't just log on and buy "everything". There are challenges. Items are available only for a limited time. Certain items are thus rare (eg the original Skull Trooper). It really encourages constant play.
8. The creator code program so people (ie streamers) would push the item shop.
9. It's a game that's entertaining to watch and isn't too short. Personally I've watched a lot on Twitch and I don't even play the game. How nuts is that?
Something will eventually come along to replace Fortnite. I'm not sure this will happen anytime soon. I also suspect you won't see something that so singularly occupies mindshare like Fortnite so a long time to come.
[+] [-] marvin|6 years ago|reply
Well, maybe a huge mistake from a business, milk-the-cow-dry standpoint. But from a gameplay perspective, there's a fair number of players who enjoy playing on multiple maps and wouldn't keep playing a game with a single map.
A case in point being myself and my close group of friends, who still play many hours of PUBG every week and also buy the season passes. We don't play Fortnite or Apex Legends, which only have one map (among many other differences).
There's plenty of room for more than one way of managing a large multiplayer game, thankfully. I'd dread a future where game-makers only try to optimize for financial success and are afraid of ailenating _any_ part of their customer base. Thankfully, there seems to be a point where things shift back out of equilibrium when too many game companies try to do this. Fortnite actually being a very good example.
[+] [-] shostack|6 years ago|reply
So you have people who truly loved one setting stick to it till nobody plays any more, but they are then not part of the general population and particularly any new IAP (although recent developments seem like they are trying to fix that).
[+] [-] didibus|6 years ago|reply
I wonder how well it would have done without YouTube or Twitch.
[+] [-] wingflapper|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slfnflctd|6 years ago|reply
It's also one of the few FPS games I've encountered where, for several years, I felt like I could play it almost indefinitely (that is, in what little free time I had). It directly drove at least two major system upgrades. Everything's different now, of course, but if they came out with another single player campaign in that universe I would pick it up without a second thought.
[+] [-] MarkMc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheez|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] canada_dry|6 years ago|reply
Has outline.com been handcuffed? Whenever I hit a paywall it used to just be a matter of feeding them the link. Now everything seems to get: "We're sorry, but this URL is not supported by Outline"
[+] [-] w0mbat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runn1ng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3xblah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BearsAreCool|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3phyr|6 years ago|reply
EDIT: Removed possible demeaning sentence
[+] [-] martamorena|6 years ago|reply
And whops. There we go. Good old Tim stopped wanking to Day-Z and got some shit done, all on his own.
Not to mention that Epic Games is pile of crap now that they released this game. It was once a nice company to work work for, now its just the same shitty sweat shop like any other gaming company, who only sees bottom lines and milking customers... And employees.