Fortnite, a player versus environment game and battle royale game developed by Epic Games, has become a juggernaut in the gaming community. It was originally released on the 26th of September of last year, and since then it has become the biggest video game since Minecraft.
Fortnite’s battle royale feature was the spark that made it a household name, however, it was not the first of its kind. A battle royale is basically many people battling it out, killing each other until one person is left, making him the winner. This type of game has taken over the gaming community, making it the new famous thing.
Many gamers have deemed that the first battle royale type of game was Minecraft: Hunger Games, a server-made mode of Minecraft that loosely adapted the famous novels of Suzanne Collins. This was back in 2012.
H1Z1 was the next game to adapt the battle royale type of game back in 2015, and last year PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, also known as PUBG, was released, initially being the most famous battle royale game.
Only a few months later, Fortnite was released, and it slowly defeated PUBG as the most famous and most played battle royale game. This was very controversial, as Fortnite was very similar to PUBG. The style of PUBG itself was almost the same as Fortnite, but Fortnite had many more innovations, which made it triumph over its rival game.
Instead of just finding weapons and killing each other, Fortnite has placed a new strategy in itself that made it better. This is by actually building structures to protect yourself from other players. This simple addition made it influential. Building structures requires skill that players need to practice to be very good at.
Twitch is a website where you can stream yourself playing video games, and this has led to many twitch streamers to hop on the bandwagon and play Fortnite. The game slowly picked up its steam, but there was one certain event the made it truly famous overnight.
One famous Twitch streamer by the name of Tyler Blevins, who is famously known as ‘Ninja’, played with famous musician Drake last April of this year, and this set the record of most people watching in a Twitch stream. This also propelled the game to be played more by people.
Fortnite is also unique for its ‘battle pass’, where players can pay for $10, around less than 600 php, to unlock a set of challenges where in if they complete challenges, they can get numerous in-game items such as new characters to use.
This battle pass is good for around a few months, until there is a new ‘season’ in the game. When there is a new season, people have an option to buy a new battle pass. But not to worry, you can make your money back as there are also rewards of in-game money in the battle pass. Which means if players save up their money rewards, they won’t have to spend real money to buy the next battle pass, instead, they will use what they saved up.
The game itself is free to play, which is the main reason why people play it, unlike PUBG which costs around 800 php. Another reason why players have stuck around Fortnite, is because it has a story into it. Every new season, there is a new theme and story that makes players totally invested in it.
The developers will also update the game from time to time, making it wholly playable without getting bored. There are so many things to do in Fortnite, and so many more things will be added as time passes.
It hasn’t died down yet, and doesn’t look like it’s close to. Epic Games is also planning Fortnite to join in the E-Sports competitions very soon. With a said prize pool of millions of dollars, many players are wanting to be the best to compete for the prize money.
Fortnite is still merely in its beginning stages, it hasn’t reached its peaked yet either. But only time will tell what will become of this video game that has taken over the world by storm. –Gio Miguelo E. Ocampo