The Rise and Fall of Fortnite
The Rise and Fall of Fortnite
8/18/20
DISCLAIMER: I like the idea of doing these "rise and fall" essays as an unofficial series when there's not much to talk about and I have a lot of time to pump out a quality essay. Let me know what you think by messaging us at our @randomcrazystudios Instagram and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. I also have one of these planned for TikTok and I might look back a bit and do musical.ly and/or Vine essay. Also, let us know whether you like these app or trend discussions because they're pretty fun and interesting to write, and we're always looking to branch out.
In July of 2017, a new survival game not much different from the recent "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds". This game was called "Fortnite", but it was much different from what comes to mind when you hear that game now. Today, "Fortnite" is known for its free to play battle royale mode, which was released two months later after the main game was failing. Wisely, the company pivoted, and made perhaps the most popular video game of the past couple years. Like Twitter's old app "Vine", "Fortnite: Battle Royale" is certainly a trend; a long and popular one for sure, but still a simple trend. For better or for worse, all trends die out eventually. For these big ones, hype has shown to completely deplete around the three year mark, which "Fortnite: Battle Royale" hits in just over a month. It's unclear when, or even if, this game will universally and officially die, but right now it's easy to see that this game is going downhill. "Fortnite" spawned its own array of mini-trends, particularly dances from the game, which completely died out in early 2019. Obviously, the greater trend has to die out, and it's just a matter of when.
"Fortnite" really saw its rise in early 2018, and reached what was probably its peak of fame in summer of that year. Unlike most app trends, video game trends tend to target a specific audience. While not as diverse as apps, video games are a pretty widely-consumed media. Though, "Fortnite" was very directly targeted at eight to thirteen-year-olds, which combined with TikTok made big. The game's dances grew strangely popular within the internet community. Overtime, the game grew a bigger and bigger audience to reach 250 million players, surpassing "Minecraft": the best-selling video game of all time.
There are many reasons for the wild success of "Fortnite", but the main reason has to be accessibility. The reason apps like Facebook have surpassed 2.5 billion users is because apps like that are all free. Anyone and everyone with these devices has completely free access to these games. While not every single person has this access to these apps and games, they're still widely accessible for the audience that would be interested. "Fortnite"'s target audience certainly brought it down, but not enough. It's pretty generic "battle royale" style made it, like all good games, easy to pick up, yet hard to master. How much people like it is subjective and relatively controversial, but it's still generally decent game design. It's idea to pivot its concept was also very innovative, and was something not many games or game ideas had done. It would be interesting to see more spin-offs like this that introduce people to new franchises. This game definitely got more people interested in purchasing the original "Fortnite" game wherever it was still available.
The main way "Epic Games" made money from "Fortnite", though, was micro-transactions. It had an abundance of skins and weapons for sale in exchange for the notorious "V-bucks", which do cost a hefty amount of real-world money. These said micro-transactions are thankfully not exactly the pay-to-win format like in most games, but they still are an annoyance. The downfall of "Fortnite" was never anything distinct; its internet hype faded out heavily by the end of 2019, and this year, any hype most old players had is almost completely gone. "Fortnite" is quickly going downhill, but perhaps that's a good thing. Old trends need to make way for new trends, and billions of dollars have already been made from this free game, so there isn't much left to milk out of fans.
Perhaps hype for "Fortnite" could spark back up at some point, but it's unlikely and hopefully not many people want it to. Again, old trends must move out of the way for new and fresh ideas. It's a little hard to find a standard with these sorts of things, but most of these bigger internet trends seem to almost completely fade out around the three year mark. Whether they are officially shutdown or not, this has shown to basically be the end of a trend. It's hard to imagine "Fortnite"'s servers even surviving too far past the end of next year. In conclusion, trends like this are highly unpredictable, and there's no telling where things will go from the start. With the first "Fortnite" game's lack of success, it may have looked like the series would fail, but the smart idea to pivot kept it afloat. By some miracle for the developers, this game managed to be one of the biggest games in the 2010s.
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