Fortnite (video game)

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Fortnite
Genre Survival, battle royale, sandbox
Gamming Style Third-Person
Platform Windows, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, iOS, Android
Release Date 2017-Present
Developer Epic Games
Publisher Epic Games
Website Fortnite

Fortnite is a battle royal type online multiplayer video game developed and published by Epic Games. The in-game graphics are in a cartoonish style, and the players can grab weapons to either shoot each other or fight against bots. Published in 2017, Fortnite featured the battle royale and survival (save the world) modes, while the creative mode was released in 2018. Once published, Fortnite became one of the most successful free-to-play games in history. As of 2021, Fortnite had a total of 350 million users, and it generated 5.4 billion dollars of revenue in 2018 alone. [1] The game is available on multiple PC, console, and mobile operating systems, including Windows, PS4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Android. However, the game remains on an old version on the App Store of MacOS and IOS because of the dispute of the “unapproved paying mechanism” with Apple. [2]

Gameplay

The three modes in Fortnite offer distinctive gameplay experiences to players while maintaining some similar basic elements.

Battle Royale

Fortnite’s battle royale mode features a mixture of sandbox-style games and the conventional battle royale elements. Players can choose to play with themselves or form a duo or quad group with others. Once enter the game, players will be on a cargo plane, which carries 100 people, and can choose to airdrop to anywhere on the map. The goal for each team is to survive and eliminate all other teams until they become the last men standing. To do this, players can collect weapons and equipment inside the buildings to strengthen their power, and they can even destroy various structures to collect woods, steel, and bricks, which is useful for building fortifications.

Storms are generated per several minutes to facilitate competitions between players, encircling a safe area on a random location on the map. For each storm, the safe zone is progressively encroached by the storm, and since players lose health in the storm, they need to plan wisely to reach the safe zone. Vehicles can be beneficial if players are far from the safe zone. In addition, supply boxes, which contain extremely powerful weapons and equipment, are occasionally dropped somewhere random in the safe zone. Players can pick up the supply with the risk of being ambushed, or they can play safe and ignore the supply box.

Survival

The survival mode is essentially a PvE story mode that shares similar game mechanics with the classic battle royale mode. Players can choose to play alone or with at most 3 other players. In the campaigns, most of the human beings suddenly disappeared, and the rest of them constructed a lot of “storm shields” to protect the people inside from the attack of husk, a zombie-like monster dropped by the storm. The player acts as the administrator of one of such storm shields, and the player’s task is to make through a series of adventures and gather resources so that the storm shield can be expanded. In this mode, the players can construct a variety of structures and traps to fight against the husks, which makes this mode more interesting.

Creative

In the creative mode, players can build structures on their own islands and customize the rules. Other players can join the server and play the game on the island, which can hold up to 16 players. Entering the creative mode, the player will be placed in the Creative Hub, a scene that provides access to his own island, friends’ island, or some other island picked up from the community. Each player can keep the island up for a maximum of 4 hours. [3]

The creative mode was initially published with a lot of bugs, but Epic Games quickly fixed them and later introduced a prefab system, which greatly facilitated building things on the island. It is also a place for Epic Games to hold educational events for promoting social equity and justice. In August 2021, Epic Game and TIME studio released an interactive Martin Luther King event in the creative mode, which led to widespread public debates and controversies.

Reception

Since its release in 2017, Fortnite has become a huge financial success. Fortnite had made over 9 billion dollars on all platforms from 2018 to 2019. [4] Between March 2018 and May 2019, there were 100 million new accounts created. [5]

Besides its financial success, Fortnite also won a range of awards. It won the 2019 Webby award of best multiplayer/competitive game and it is the people’s voice winner for 2018. [6] Also, it won the 2018 game critics award as the best ongoing game. [7] What’s more, Fortnite had become one of the biggest cultural phenomena in video games, and it has “helped turn its top players into stars”, such as Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who “grace the cover of ESPN the Magazine”. [8]

Fortnite is also an important platform for the Epic Games to practice and experiment with its ambitious concept of “metaverse”, which means “a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection”. [9] Such a long-term plan has received recognition from some users. In the Medium article “The metaverse is already here — it’s called Fortnite”, the writer Owen Williams shared his experiences in the virtual world of Fortnite. “We’d meet up every Tuesday, jump on voice, and hang out for hours”, he said, “it’s an excuse to catch up, mess around, and have a good time”. Williams thinks that Fortnite effectively brings everyone together because it is not only “free to play” but also fun to play: you can always “fire up a new game and jump off the bus to a new island with a fresh start” even if you are a newbie and died quickly. [10] In addition, Fortnite frequently hosts virtual crossover events with celebrities. In August 2021, Epic Games released the “Rift Tour Featuring Ariana Grande” event that drew a lot of attention in Fortnite. In the published gameplay footage, Ariana Grande stands in the fantasy-style virtual world, dancing and interacting with her fans. Her skin was also made available in the game with the price of 2800 V-Bucks, which is roughly equivalent to 20 dollars. [11][12]

Fortnite has received generally positive reviews from gaming websites. IGN gave a 9.6 out of 10 to Fortnite, and the critic Austin Golsin commented the Fortnite as “trading the traditional, bland military simulation vibe with vivid colors and an outstanding, freeform building system that is unlike anything else in competitive multiplayer games”. [13] While the official critics generally gave a good score to Fortnite, the players’ views on Metacritic are generally negative, yielding only 3.1 out of 10. The user’s dissatisfaction with Fortnite is mostly focused on the in-game purchase mechanism. One of the users, “reincarN8ed”, gave a 4 out of 10 because the game was designed to be “addictive without being satisfying” and lure the players to earn “just one more loot box” either by playing for a long time or “buy them with your hard-earned cash”. Another user named “Tushie” even gave a 0 out of 10, and he said that the game was entirely “pay to win” and “cannot progress in this game without spending real-life money” [14]

Controversies

Underage Gambling

Like many other games, Fortnite had some in-game mechanics that were equivalent to gambling. One of them is the loot box mechanism. Players can choose to spend real money to buy a random reward that may contain rare, exclusive, or powerful weapons and characters, or may just have some regular items. For example, in the survival mode, the players can use the “V-Buck” in-game currency to buy “quirky llama” loot boxes that offer random rewards to them. The V-Bucks can be either purchased using real money or gained in the game, which is much slower. Since Fortnite was ranked “Teen” by ESRB, young players in the age of above 13 can play the game and can potentially use their parents’ credit cards to spend excessive money. [15]The loot box system had caused a lot of public criticisms and lawsuits. In 2019, the parent of a young player in California sued the llama loot box as “unfair and deceptive to consumers”. [16]In Canada, a law firm prepared a class-action lawsuit against Epic Games for a pair of parents who claimed that “the creators ‘knowingly’ made the game as addictive as drugs such as cocaine”. [17] In response to a range of criticisms and lawsuits, Epic Games removed the llama looting box and compensated players who brought the looting boxes with 1000 V-Bucks or credits.

Besides the looting box mechanism, the wager matches had also become controversial. The streamer or professional players organized mini-tournaments, in which they played against each other or the stream viewers and win money from the losing side. Since a lot of streaming audiences are teenagers, they might have been addicted to that and spent a lot of money. Moreover, the wager holders may conspire to “cheat against other players or viewers and share the prize once they win the tournament”. [18] In response to that, Epic Games made efforts to ban the wager matches in the Fortnite gaming community. For instance, the famous streamer and professional player “Clix” was warned by Epic Games to stop playing wager matches because he was found “indulged in a wager match with an 11-year-old”. [19]

Addiction

While the intriguing gameplay of Fortnite usually fascinates the players and provides them with happiness, it also leads to a lot of game addictions. As a result, Fortnite was often criticized by the public to the extent that some people even think that Fortnite is “as addictive as heroin”. [20] In 2019, a Spanish teenager was hospitalized because of his severe addiction to Fortnite. He played the game for up to 20 hours a day and sometimes go to bed at 5 am. According to the psychiatrist Matias Real-Lopez, the teenager indulged in the game more and more and “stopped caring for personal hygiene and lost contact with friends” after he lost a family member. After observing the teenager and talking with him, the doctor made the diagnosis that his addiction “became similar to addiction to heroin, cocaine and other chemical substances”. [21] In the UK, a girl was put into a rehabilitation center because of her excessive addiction to Fortnite. According to her parent, she “secretly got up in the night and played until dawn”, and she “hit her father in face” when she was caught playing at midnight. [22]

Bullying & Harassment

In such a game that hosts millions of players, cyberbullying is extremely widespread. According to the US government, cyberbullying is “is bullying that takes place over digital devices like cell phones, computers, and tablets”. In the case of Fortnite, the particular gameplay mechanisms can potentially facilitate bullying behaviors. That the skins are vastly different in rarity and price, with some of them even exclusive to V-Bucks, can lead to players comparing each other and humiliating those who do not have good skin. In the gaming community, the players’ skin rarity has been “associated with being good or bad”, and when the players were eliminated, they were sometimes taunted by their opponent using emotes and inappropriate words. [23]

However, the bullying in Fortnite sometimes happens for no reason. In a video published by Youtuber “Joogie”, he entered the playground mode with 3 randomly-matched teammates, one of them is a 10-year-old girl, and the other two are fanboys of Joogie. As the game progressed, the two boys kept teamkilling the girl, looting her dropped equipment, and throwing some derogative words at her. After the girls said “I will quit the game because they keep killing me”, Joogie decided to stand out, team with her, and fight back against the two boys. Joogie said, “I don’t mind meeting fans in the playground and I’m usually friendly to them, however, these guys were just griefing this girl so I decided to team up with her and help her fight back.” The video has received over 22 million views, and the comments mostly support the Joogie’s response against cyberbullying. A youtube user called Sam Aberman commented: “we need more players like Joogie in this world”. [24]

What’s more, the actions of harassment and humiliation extended to real life. In a US middle school, the prevalence of Fortnite had made the in-game skins and clothes “become a status symbol”. Anyone who did not have good skin can be humiliated as “default” and isolated among the classmates, and it even went to the point that children believe “sophisticated costume says something about your in-game ability”, and a child “begged his parents for money to buy a skin because no one would play with him” since he only had basic skins. Another child said to his parent that “I need this skin because of my lack of self-esteem and confidence”. In addition, the “default” had also become a “generic insult both in and out of the classroom”, according to the English teacher Paul Towler. Because of this, the parents of the children who play Fortnite were becoming more and more concerned with this issue. The Twitter user Monkenstien said that financing his kid for the Fortnite skin was a wrong decision and fuels the “bullying regime” as well as “causing emotional distress”. These were only a small part of all children being bullied, and a lot more children did not want to share their experience because they “were embarrassed or ashamed that they were being harassed over something that was seemingly trivial” and decided to “get better at the game” to “prove people wrong about default skins” [25]

Plagiarism

In August 2021 Epic Games released a temporary “imposter” mode in Fortnite. In this mode, 10 players are assigned to play together, with 2 of them acting as imposters and the remaining people being agents. Imposters know the identity of all other players, while the agents only know their own identity. The imposters’ mission is to kill all agents covertly without being seen, while the agents need to find who is the imposters. Players can come together and discuss each one’s identity and then vote out anyone who is believed to be an imposter. On the same day, Gary Porter, the programmer of Among Us, published a tweet that compared the map between the “imposter” mode and Among Us and pointed out the surprising similarities between them. Porter sarcastically added, “they flipped Electrical and Medbay and connected Security to Cafeteria”. Twitter user Stephen Parker commented on this issue and said Epic Games is not “adding mechanics/gameplay that is similar to other games” in the right way. [26] As a response to the vast public dismay, Epic Games finally gave credit to InnerSloth, the creator company of Among Us, by stating that the “imposter” mode was inspired by Among Us in the patch note of update v18.20. [27]

This is not the only copying issue related to Fortnite. In May 2018, PUBG Corp, the company that made the famous game PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG), submitted a lawsuit to South Korean court to determine “whether Epic Games copied its intellectual property”. [28] However, PUBG Corp dropped the lawsuit in June without explanations. Some people attribute the withdrawal to the potential weakness of the lawsuit claim: Fortnite “does not use similar graphics or audio assets” and “its cartoon look contrasting with the latter’s [PUBG] realistic, militarised visuals”. [29]

Martin Luther King Event Controversies

In August 2021, TIME studio released a “March Through Time” event in the creative mode. The players can join an island and participate in the reimagined 1963 Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech. The players can also make a tour in a replicated MLK museum filled with photos and historical documents in the game. According to the Fortnite team, such an event is “in anticipation of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2022”, and the players who visit this event for at least 20 minutes will receive the “March Lobby Track”. [30] The MLK events had received a lot of controversies and backlashes. A Twitter user expressed his anger at this event and said “The Fortnite MLK event is so disrespectful it makes me genuinely sad”, while others doubt whether such an event is effective for the children to learn civil rights history. Also, some people expressed their concern about whether such an event may change the children’s perception of history so that they may think that Martin Luther King is from Fortnite. The YouTube user YongYea expressed his concern in his video “Epic Games Face Backlash Over Fortnite's Messy Martin Luther King Event”. He stated that since players can dress up and use emotes freely when they make the virtual tour to MLK museum, there can be a lot of “silly imagery” that “goes counter to the seriousness” of celebrating such an important historical person. In his videos, he showed footage from Twitter that a player dressed like an alien and perform emotes and silly acts in front of a monument of Martin Luther King Jr.’s saying. He said that Fortnite “cannot be anything” because it is not a serious place to learn history by its nature, and Epic Game was trying to make money by “drawing positive attention” to their game and “sell their skins to the players”. [31] In response to public oppositions, Epic Games banned all emotes in the Martin Luther King event except for eight of them which “are part of the experience”. [32]

References

  1. ↑ Iqbal, M. (2022, January 11). Fortnite Usage and Revenue Statistics (2022). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.businessofapps.com/data/fortnite-statistics/
  2. ↑ Koetsier, J. (2020, August 13). Google kicked fortnite off google play hours after Apple banned it from the app store. Forbes. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/13/google-kicked-fortnite-off-google-play-hours-after-apple-banned-it-from-the-app-store/?sh=71a50a466d99
  3. ↑ What is creative mode in fortnite? how does it work? What is Creative mode in Fortnite? How does it work? - ฝ่ายสนับสนุน Fortnite. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.epicgames.com/help/th/fortnite-c75/creative-c96/what-is-creative-mode-in-fortnite-how-does-it-work-a3428
  4. ↑ Valentine, R. (2021, May 3). Fortnite made $9 billion in two years, while Epic Games Store has yet to turn a profit. IGN. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.ign.com/articles/fortnite-made-9-billion-in-two-years-while-epic-games-store-has-yet-to-turn-a-profit
  5. ↑ Dhar, A. (2021, March 26). Fortnite Wager Matches are now a thing of the past as epic games cracks down on 'underage gambling'. Sports news. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/fortnite-wager-matches-now-thing-past-epic-games-cracks-underage-gambling
  6. ↑ People's Voice Winner. The Webby Awards. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://winners.webbyawards.com/2018/games/general-games/best-multiplayercompetitive-game/61000/fortnite
  7. ↑ Faller, P. (2018, June 28). E3 2018: Game critics awards nominations revealed; Anthem, super smash bros.. Ultimate top the list. GameSpot. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.gamespot.com/articles/e3-2018-game-critics-awards-nominations-revealed-a/1100-6460089/
  8. ↑ Park, G. (2018, December 27). Fortnite was the biggest pop culture phenomenon of 2018. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/27/fortnite-was-biggest-pop-culture-phenomenon/
  9. ↑ Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, February 8). Metaverse. Wikipedia. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
  10. ↑ Williams, O. (2021, October 23). The metaverse is already here - it's called fortnite. Medium. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://medium.com/@ow/the-metaverse-is-already-here-its-called-fortnite-3a7d92e4acfd
  11. ↑ Ariana Grande. Fortnite Wiki. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://fortnite.fandom.com/wiki/Ariana_Grande
  12. ↑ Fortnite V-Bucks: Redeem V-bucks gift card - fortnite. Epic Games' Fortnite. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/vbuckscard
  13. ↑ Golsin, A. (2018, March 27). Fortnite Battle Royale Review. IGN. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/27/fortnite-battle-royale-review
  14. ↑ Golsin, A. (2018, March 27). Fortnite Battle Royale Review. IGN. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/27/fortnite-battle-royale-review
  15. ↑ Matthews-King, A. (2018, June 28). 'predatory' payments in popular games like fortnite use gambling techniques to make children spend. The Independent. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/fornite-loot-llamas-payments-upgrades-items-gambling-addiction-a8421201.html
  16. ↑ Kelly, M. (2019, March 1). Epic games sued over 'predatory' llama loot boxes. The Verge. Retrieved February 11, 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245574/fortnite-epic-games-sued-lawsuit-predatory-llama-loot-boxes
  17. ↑ Killingsworth, C. (2019, October 8). Parents Sue Fortnite creator for 'knowingly' making an 'addictive game,' comparing it to drug. FOX 11 Los Angeles. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.foxla.com/news/parents-sue-fortnite-creator-for-knowingly-making-an-addictive-game-comparing-it-to-drug
  18. ↑ Khayyat, M. (2021, March 26). Why did epic games shut down Fortnite wagers matches? Gaming News. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.dualshockers.com/fortnite-wagers-matches/
  19. ↑ Dhar, A. (2021, March 26). Fortnite Wager Matches are now a thing of the past as epic games cracks down on 'underage gambling'. Sports news. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/fortnite-wager-matches-now-thing-past-epic-games-cracks-underage-gambling
  20. ↑ Behind the numbers: Fortnite may be as... Caron Treatment Centers. (n.d.). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.caron.org/blog/fortnite-may-be-as-addictive-as-heroin
  21. ↑ Keeley, G. (2021, September 16). Spanish boy's fortnite addiction like Heroin Dependency, study says. The Independent. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fortnite-spain-teenager-drug-abuse-b1921367.html
  22. ↑ Barbour, M. (2018, June 10). Girl in rehab for fortnite game addiction after wetting herself to keep playing. DevonLive. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/girl-9-rehab-fortnite-game-1660716#ICID=sharebar_facebook
  23. ↑ Thomas, B. (n.d.). Cyberbullying: Focus on fortnite. Artefact. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.artefactmagazine.com/2019/03/01/cyberbullying-focus-fortnite/
  24. ↑ I helped a 10 year old girl destroy toxic ... - youtube. YouTube. (2019, January 19). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pg2zGEvXzA
  25. ↑ Hernandez, P. (2019, May 7). Fortnite is free, but kids are getting bullied into spending money. Polygon. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-default-skins-bullying-harassment
  26. ↑ Scullion, C. (2021, August 18). Among US developers accuse fortnite of plagiarism. VGC. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/among-us-developers-accuse-fortnite-of-plagiarism/
  27. ↑ Yeung, J. (2021, October 13). 'fortnite' finally credits 'among us' for inspiring impostor mode. HYPEBEAST. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://hypebeast.com/2021/10/epic-games-fortnite-credits-innersloth-among-us-feud
  28. ↑ BBC. (2018, May 29). Fortnite sued for 'copying' rival game pubg. BBC News. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44287860
  29. ↑ Stuart, K. (2018, June 28). PUBG drops Fortnite game lawsuit without explanation. The Guardian. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/jun/28/pubg-drops-fortnite-lawsuit-epic-games
  30. ↑ Time Studios Presents' the march through time in Fortnite Creative. Epic Games' Fortnite. (2021, August 26). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/celebrate-mlk-time-studios-presents-march-through-time-in-fortnite?sessionInvalidated=true
  31. ↑ Epic games face backlash over fortnite's ... - youtube.com. Youtube. (2021, September 1). Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e95QhbdNFlM
  32. ↑ Twitter. (2021, August 27). All emotes have been disabled in the march through time experience except the 8 that are part of the experience. pic.twitter.com/xqzmx1abyp. Twitter. Retrieved February 10, 2022, from https://twitter.com/FortniteStatus/status/1431275274788876293
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