The Fortnite phenomenon: where the most talked about game of the year came from and why it's so popular

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

About what is special about the project, which won over millions of players, and why Fortnite is still better than PUBG.

Recently, the record for the gaming video service Twitch was broken: more than 600 thousand people watched the broadcast of one game in it at the same time. It's about a project called Fortnite, which streamer Ninja played with Canadian rapper Drake.

Sergey Galyonkin, a developer at Epic Games, which released the project, wrote on Twitter: “My son told me that in the morning on his school bus, almost everyone was playing Fortnite on their phones. He knew the game was popular at his school, but he didn't understand how popular it was."

If you yourself haven’t played Fortnite yet, then someone from your environment is probably playing it. Classmates, classmates, colleagues - ask them around and, most likely, you will find a person who at least launched this game.

What are the merits of the project, which looks like a cartoon about people shooting at each other, that everyone is playing and discussing it? To understand this, you first have to talk about the Fortnite genre - Battle Royale, or battle royale.

What is Battle Royale

The genre did not even originate in the game or film industry, but in fiction. In 1999, Japanese Kosyun Takami published the book "Battle Royale", in which kidnapped schoolchildren are sent to a desert island and forced to kill each other until only one survives. At the same time, the poor fellows have to constantly change their location so that the bracelet with explosives attached to the neck does not explode.

In 2000, the book was filmed by Kinji Fukasaku. The film was a success, won several awards and was ranked # 1 in Quentin Tarantino's list of the best films released after 1992. Later, the idea was used in other films, such as The Hunger Games.

In the gaming industry, the battle royale genre only became really popular in 2017, when PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) was released. Although it is worth noting that other projects in this genre have come out before.

But it was PUBG that players liked the most. In it, on a sufficiently large map, there are up to 100 people who act according to the scenario described above. They, alone or in a team, explore houses, warehouses and other buildings in search of weapons and armor, dissect on foot or by transport, kill other players and try not to be outside the ever-narrowing deadly zone.

PUBG has grown in popularity at lightning speed. Despite the fact that this is a paid project, it is played by over 30 million people around the world. And yet Fortnite tucked him in the belt.

How Fortnite became one of the most popular games

Few people would have thought that the project from Epic Games will become what it has become. Initially, it was a game about a team of people exploring the world during the day, collecting resources and fortifying buildings, and at night fighting off monsters. It was believed that the construction should attract the attention of potential Fortnite buyers.

Around the same time, the popularity of PUBG was growing by leaps and bounds. Therefore, Epic Games made its battle royale, taking Fortnite as its basis: the engine, object and character models, construction and combat mechanics, and a whole host of other things. And success was not long in coming.

Soon, everyone who was more or less familiar with the gaming industry knew about the new rival PUBG. At first, Fortnite was too raw and looked like a mod assembled on the knee, but it was rapidly gaining shape and becoming like a full-fledged project.

In the end, the developer decided to shut down one of its main games, Paragon, and focused on Fortnite. In February, the latter overtook PUBG in terms of the number of concurrent users - 3.4 million people.

Why Fortnite is better than PUBG

One of the main advantages of Fortnite is that it's free. More precisely, the initial project about protection from monsters is paid, but you can play in the royal battle without investing a penny in it.

Of course, as with any free project, there are micropayments here, but they are almost always cosmetic. For money, you can only get some Nutcracker costume or the ability to gain experience faster. To play PUBG, you need to pay at least 899 rubles. Except for mobile devices, on which the action movie was recently released as a free application.

Another advantage of Fortnite is that the developer actively supports and improves it. This applies to both technical aspects and content. On powerful computers, the game becomes more and more beautiful, and on weak computers it starts to work much more smoothly. New weapons and modes appear in it, the battlefield is expanding.

PUBG, however, still, even after a relatively recent full-fledged release, is not launched on every computer. In addition, the project has problems not only with bugs, but also with unscrupulous players using prohibited software.

Fortnite, unlike PUBG, does not have UAZs or other vehicles, but it does have construction, which creates a lot of tactical opportunities and brings variety to matches. Nobody bothers to collect resources, destroying everything around, and then erect fences and entire fortresses before or even during the battle.

Of course, PUBG has a ton of strengths too, especially appealing to hardcore players. This is a fairly high level of realism and a darker and more serious atmosphere. Nevertheless, it is Fortnite that is visually attractive, relatively simple and free to play. She has a low barrier to entry, and this makes her a great option for unobtrusive pastime both alone and with friends.