The Man Behind “Fortnite”(wsj.com)
wsj.com
The Man Behind “Fortnite”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-behind-fortnite-11560571201?mod=rsswn
131 comments
> Somehow out of the blue, Fortnite became huge
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?)
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?)
> (I’m trying to think of other good examples of this effect in the business domain but coming up short. Anyone?)
Probably the most famous example is a company called Burbn. Here's a story (not mine) about that pivot:
Posting anon.
In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.
To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.
Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.
As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.
That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063362
Probably the most famous example is a company called Burbn. Here's a story (not mine) about that pivot:
Posting anon.
In 2009, the startup where I was working was hitting the skids, and our investors (correctly) were not willing to back us. We all kept grinding for a month or two in honorable futility, but after a while, my bank account depleted and I had to go.
To make various ends meet and to keep my mental health during the wind down however, I took up some contract work that I found through various friends in the SF startup scene. One company that I really liked and did some small stuff for was Burbn, which was a mobile-only location check-in that was hinged around taking photos of your location.
Missing my friends in NYC (I made a lot of friends in SF, but my inner circle were my college buddies from CMU; I went to tech and they went finance, sigh), I decided to leave SF to head to NYC and get a fresh start.
As I was leaving, I wanted to tie up a few loose ends, so I emailed my contact at Burbn and said I was likely to be unavailable for any more work, but that I liked the project and hoped for the best for him. He responded and said that he was near funding on a small pivot, and that if I was interested, there might be a full-time role available. I declined - I was mentally done with SF and the startup scene (Larry Chiang, 111 Minna, the rise of FB spam-crap like RockYou, etc.) as it was then.
That person was Kevin Systrom; that pivot was Instagram.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063362
I remember Larry Chiang. Whatever happened to him? He always seemed so lacking of substance but somehow figured out how to show up everywhere. Is he actually the international man of mystery who made it big but keeps his secrets to himself, or just a con artist barely making it by living in a cheap apartment? Obviously the world isn't that black and white but I really wonder what happens to people like him.
Sketch, from Bohemian, did something that feels like this.
They were working on a vector drawing software, targeted at making rich web2.0 type illustrations more easily. For an example, check out the screenshot of the early app for an idea of the kind of output they were showing off in 2012: https://www.macgasm.net/2012/08/16/sketch-2-1-update-adds-re...
They were competing with Adobe Illustrator at this time, which was extremely dense and less focused on that one thing.
And then skeumorphism fell away and product design workflows started evolving and absorbing the systematization practices from devops, etc, and designers needed a way to make mockups that was more advanced than hypersimplistic tools like balsamiq, but less dense/more focused than Illustrator. In 2019, their value prop is completely different (and better!), but the bones of that first application are very visible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EatUkHez0U
Since sketch's customers were making this journey, they software emerged along with it, and they deservedly dominated the early product design workflow. Now Adobe's competing with them instead of the other way around, but new entrants like Figma are building in features that are easier from a fresh start, like web collab and canvas items as react elements. Long term, they might get PUBG'd, to use a fortnight analogy – pioneering the category but getting usurped by bigger hits (fortnight) down the line.
They were working on a vector drawing software, targeted at making rich web2.0 type illustrations more easily. For an example, check out the screenshot of the early app for an idea of the kind of output they were showing off in 2012: https://www.macgasm.net/2012/08/16/sketch-2-1-update-adds-re...
They were competing with Adobe Illustrator at this time, which was extremely dense and less focused on that one thing.
And then skeumorphism fell away and product design workflows started evolving and absorbing the systematization practices from devops, etc, and designers needed a way to make mockups that was more advanced than hypersimplistic tools like balsamiq, but less dense/more focused than Illustrator. In 2019, their value prop is completely different (and better!), but the bones of that first application are very visible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EatUkHez0U
Since sketch's customers were making this journey, they software emerged along with it, and they deservedly dominated the early product design workflow. Now Adobe's competing with them instead of the other way around, but new entrants like Figma are building in features that are easier from a fresh start, like web collab and canvas items as react elements. Long term, they might get PUBG'd, to use a fortnight analogy – pioneering the category but getting usurped by bigger hits (fortnight) down the line.
Looks like it’s already happening: Figma and Framer X are quickly gaining ground.
I think the lesson is that execution (and marketing) are everything. Unreal is a quake rip. Fortnite is a pubg rip. But they executed extremely well. So well that they feel fresh and not like a rip.
A quake rip? Not at all.
Unreal games always meant to be tech demos so their primary business objective: licensing out the engine became successful.
The unreal engine was also one of the first engine with proper edit / scripting tools arround it. They already had them in the 90s with unrealed.
Id software with quake did not really have such a license model (apart from some examples)
Even today the idtech engine is not build to just license out to other companies.
I’d argue that the very first Unreal was a game first, a tech demo later. So was Unreal Tournament (based on Unreal Engine 1, IIRC), Unreal Tournament 2003, and – this one for sure – Gears of War.
Maybe I wouldn’t call them Quake rips though; However, all the Unreals certainly weren’t innovative in any meaningful way, gameplay wise.
The engine business exploded for Epic around Unreal Engine 3, I believe. Before that: they really wanted to sell those games. See the career of aforementioned CliffyB – he wasn’t Epic’s John Carmack, he was their John Romero.
As for Id Software, they did licensed their technology since early days (Half-Life, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, few others), but indeed Unreal surpassed them with tooling and support.
Id tried to recover their position, around Doom 3 they renamed their „Quake engine” to Id Tech, and was working on the user-friendliness of it’s offering. I think they abandoned that idea by themselves, nonetheless, soon after they were bought by ZeniMax and that was it: no more licenses for companies not related to Bethesda. They don’t even bother to allow their current games to be modded.
Meanwhile Epic’s engine business was flourishing, yet the games were flopping. Notice that only after Fortnite’s success they decided to open their Steam rival.
Maybe I wouldn’t call them Quake rips though; However, all the Unreals certainly weren’t innovative in any meaningful way, gameplay wise.
The engine business exploded for Epic around Unreal Engine 3, I believe. Before that: they really wanted to sell those games. See the career of aforementioned CliffyB – he wasn’t Epic’s John Carmack, he was their John Romero.
As for Id Software, they did licensed their technology since early days (Half-Life, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, few others), but indeed Unreal surpassed them with tooling and support.
Id tried to recover their position, around Doom 3 they renamed their „Quake engine” to Id Tech, and was working on the user-friendliness of it’s offering. I think they abandoned that idea by themselves, nonetheless, soon after they were bought by ZeniMax and that was it: no more licenses for companies not related to Bethesda. They don’t even bother to allow their current games to be modded.
Meanwhile Epic’s engine business was flourishing, yet the games were flopping. Notice that only after Fortnite’s success they decided to open their Steam rival.
> Notice that only after Fortnite's success they decided to open their Steam rival.
Had they done those the other way around, it probably wouldn't have worked- Fortnite is what sent Epic Games from the technosphere to Wal-Mart in terms of societal recognition.
Had they done those the other way around, it probably wouldn't have worked- Fortnite is what sent Epic Games from the technosphere to Wal-Mart in terms of societal recognition.
> Maybe I wouldn’t call them Quake rips though; However, all the Unreals certainly weren’t innovative in any meaningful way, gameplay wise.
No meaningful way, gameplay wise? UT had way more game modes than Quake3 did... two-team TF2-style objective with attackers and defenders, that football mode, betrayal mode, four-team domination, or the various vehicle modes... I had a lot of fun in those modes which they seemed to enjoy experimenting in
No meaningful way, gameplay wise? UT had way more game modes than Quake3 did... two-team TF2-style objective with attackers and defenders, that football mode, betrayal mode, four-team domination, or the various vehicle modes... I had a lot of fun in those modes which they seemed to enjoy experimenting in
I mean, just one big reason Fortnite doesn't feel like a pubg rip is because Fortnite's building/editing mechanic sets it completely apart.
Watch one of the Fortnite world cup matches going on right now [1] and tell me that you're watching a pubg rip :)
[1] https://www.twitch.tv/videos/436713934?t=42m25s
Watch one of the Fortnite world cup matches going on right now [1] and tell me that you're watching a pubg rip :)
[1] https://www.twitch.tv/videos/436713934?t=42m25s
Everybody here is missing why this game became so popular, and it's very common trap with the game. Its the reason why the game has also been so polarizing. I've played the game steadily for over a year now, so I have a bit of a grip on what happened/is going on.
- Fortnite is not a shooting game. This is the main trap of the game. It looks like shooter, feels like a shooter, can be played like a shooter, but is not a shooter. Fortnite is a fighting game and should be played like one. It has an incredibly heavy reliance on mechanical skills (ala fighting games) and failure to recognize this will just lead to disappointment with the game.
- Fortnite's success was a complete accident. The BR mode was a spun off "weekend project" for fun in order to attract players into buying Save The World. It was free and meant really just as an advertising tool. There wasn't much thought put into how it was supposed to play, but Epic 100% did not see where this was going, nor did the community at the time. And that was very much instrumental to it's success. Had Epic saw this coming, they would have totally destroyed the mechanics that made it so good right off the rip. I could write an essay about this, but the short of it is that the building mechanics were used in a totally unintended/unforeseen way and it lead to a wild success. Mark my words, one day in the future, free of NDA's, former devs will come out with some truly wild stories about FNBR.
- Fortnite became a runaway success with kids because they have the easiest time adapting to completely new game mechanics. It gets a little gritty here, but the short of it is that Fornite is a completely new type of game with a completely new type of play style. Older players were trying to shove a square piece through a seemingly square hole (see note 1 about shooter/fighter), while younger players could easily adapt their blank gaming slates to fortnite's play style. Yeah the cosmetics and stuff helped, but nobody likes playing a game they suck at.
TL;DR: Fortnite is deceiving in what it is. Fortnite was a total accidental success, because of accidentally awesome mechanics. Kids love fortnite because they were less prone to that earlier mentioned deception, and can pick up new things much quicker than older gamers.
- Fortnite is not a shooting game. This is the main trap of the game. It looks like shooter, feels like a shooter, can be played like a shooter, but is not a shooter. Fortnite is a fighting game and should be played like one. It has an incredibly heavy reliance on mechanical skills (ala fighting games) and failure to recognize this will just lead to disappointment with the game.
- Fortnite's success was a complete accident. The BR mode was a spun off "weekend project" for fun in order to attract players into buying Save The World. It was free and meant really just as an advertising tool. There wasn't much thought put into how it was supposed to play, but Epic 100% did not see where this was going, nor did the community at the time. And that was very much instrumental to it's success. Had Epic saw this coming, they would have totally destroyed the mechanics that made it so good right off the rip. I could write an essay about this, but the short of it is that the building mechanics were used in a totally unintended/unforeseen way and it lead to a wild success. Mark my words, one day in the future, free of NDA's, former devs will come out with some truly wild stories about FNBR.
- Fortnite became a runaway success with kids because they have the easiest time adapting to completely new game mechanics. It gets a little gritty here, but the short of it is that Fornite is a completely new type of game with a completely new type of play style. Older players were trying to shove a square piece through a seemingly square hole (see note 1 about shooter/fighter), while younger players could easily adapt their blank gaming slates to fortnite's play style. Yeah the cosmetics and stuff helped, but nobody likes playing a game they suck at.
TL;DR: Fortnite is deceiving in what it is. Fortnite was a total accidental success, because of accidentally awesome mechanics. Kids love fortnite because they were less prone to that earlier mentioned deception, and can pick up new things much quicker than older gamers.
This reminds me of a little-known game called Worms 2. Someone figured out how to hack the weapon properties and effectively created a surge in popularity around this game for a new type called a "rope game". It's still one of the most fun and skillful games I've ever played. But this was back in the 90s, so in-game purchases weren't a thing.
So to monetize on that popularity the creator of the game released "Worms 2 Armageddon", with a rope game. The problem was, they didn't get it at all. The official rope game had none of the elements of the hacked one, and was a complete flop. But oddly enough, Worms 2 (the original) was still being played almost a decade later.
So to monetize on that popularity the creator of the game released "Worms 2 Armageddon", with a rope game. The problem was, they didn't get it at all. The official rope game had none of the elements of the hacked one, and was a complete flop. But oddly enough, Worms 2 (the original) was still being played almost a decade later.
Huge Roper fan here since Worms Armageddon! It was all because the Team17 devs allowed to mod game maps and weapon configs so easily. Creativity then kicked in and roper games became a stable online thing! Also BnG and "Shoppa"
Oh I wouldn't call Worms "little-known". The whole series was a pretty big success in the 90s
Relatively speaking it was pretty tiny compared to the big EA games at the time. Apparently it only made $1.7M its entire life.
You are completely right about the mechanics, I've played it some with the step-son and I can't get the hang of it, I've played FPS on and off over the years and I'm not bad at them but it just doesn't fit my mental model.
Which delights him immensely how badly I suck :).
Which delights him immensely how badly I suck :).
Same - I don't totally suck in FPS and can put up at least decent fight all the way back to Doom II which we also tried in the interest of software history. But I get thoroughly spanked in Fortnite, every time.
Exactly right. I improved the most in Fortnite by just landing in a corner (pre creative mode) and practicing building, editing, build-shooting, the same way I would work on combos in fighting games.
"There wasn't much thought put into how it was supposed to play, but Epic 100% did not see where this was going, nor did the community at the time. And that was very much instrumental to it's success. Had Epic saw this coming, they would have totally destroyed the mechanics that made it so good right off the rip."
Similarly, combos in fighting games were originally a bug. In the original Street Fighter 2, you could attack someone two or three times before they could block or counterattack (I believe the initial term was called a 2 in 1). Capcom liked what it did to the game, and consequently kept it in.
Similarly, combos in fighting games were originally a bug. In the original Street Fighter 2, you could attack someone two or three times before they could block or counterattack (I believe the initial term was called a 2 in 1). Capcom liked what it did to the game, and consequently kept it in.
It's not so much learning speed, but it being a level playing field. Old gamers who have been fpsing since Doom / Quake / TF2 / whatever might be capable of learning Fortnite, but they won't dominate it without spending thousands of hours on it. Kids will spend time getting good, because they have more free time and they enjoy it because for once they don't get destroyed by the fps crowd.
I like this observation. You could argue that Salesforce did the same thing pivoting from CRM into the platform as a service market. They had the user management, security, configuration tools, reporting, etc, that they were able to take into marketing, call center, etc.
Blizzard with Overwatch comes to mind. But it's pretty much the same scenario.
Netflix might also be a good example shifting from DVD renting to streaming.
Netflix might also be a good example shifting from DVD renting to streaming.
Overwatch is an entirely new game that wasn't spun from another, existing IP. everything in that game is original.
a better comparison would be how DOTA spawned from Warcratft 3, or how Hearthstone spawned from WOW.
a failed comparison would be how valve released Artifact off of DoTA2. but DOTA auto chess is now a thing. that may take off.
a better comparison would be how DOTA spawned from Warcratft 3, or how Hearthstone spawned from WOW.
a failed comparison would be how valve released Artifact off of DoTA2. but DOTA auto chess is now a thing. that may take off.
Overwatch is only original in the sense that the IP didn't exist. There's a pretty decent (probably to be taken with a pinch of salt) article from Eurogamer which summarises an AMA and a few old articles and explains how OW came from "Titan" - https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-14-blizzards-jeff...
GP's examples are more applicable to the question posed about late-stage pivots. IP is not the point. It's about having a particular business objective / product in development whose assets were redeployed to realize a different vision.
Overwatch came from the assets in development for the cancelled Project Titan MMO.
DoTA was built in War3's map editor. Hearthstone used the IP from the Warcraft franchise. Artifact used the IP from Dota 2. Dota Auto Chess was built in Dota 2's map editor.
Overwatch came from the assets in development for the cancelled Project Titan MMO.
DoTA was built in War3's map editor. Hearthstone used the IP from the Warcraft franchise. Artifact used the IP from Dota 2. Dota Auto Chess was built in Dota 2's map editor.
Never heard of Team Fortress 2?
DotA spawned from Starcraft custom map Aeon of Strife using new mechanics from WC3, DotA:Allstars/DOTA 2 is a heavy revamp of the original map. Between WoW and Hearthstone there was WoW TCG, not a video game.
DotA spawned from Starcraft custom map Aeon of Strife using new mechanics from WC3, DotA:Allstars/DOTA 2 is a heavy revamp of the original map. Between WoW and Hearthstone there was WoW TCG, not a video game.
Overwatch is basically Blizzard's take on Team Fortress 2, which became a stand alone game from the old mod Team Fortress from Quake/QuakeWorld when Valve picked up the IP from the original creators John Cook and Robin Walker.
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This is a very accurate assessment. It was a real effective marketing team combined with a very smart pivot to an adjacent market and hitting product market fit.epic games tried and tried and tried (paragon, recent attempts to revitalize unreal tournament, etc) and eventually they got a huge hit.
Yeah, it's like the Picasso napkin thing. Fortnite wasn't an overnight success, it was decades in the making. I had so much hype for the new Unreal Tournament, but after seeing how that was handled I never even gave Paragon a shot. I'm glad Epic Games eventually figured things out.
Slack's creation might fit this formula, too. What started out as an in-game chat function in the ultra-competitive gaming world turned out to be a dazzling workplace communication tool.
Apple using its iPod and Mac experience to enter (smart)phones?
I disagree. There was no magic trick here. Unreal is a company built with the best and brightest in the games industry over a very long period. I don't think any other company could have replicated their success - they just don't have that level of talent density.
> 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.
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.
Let's be more honest - their success was largely due to the PUBG developers refusing to fix a broken game and tackle cheating.
I'm going to bet on technical debt and raw lack of experience rather than "refusal."
Yeah, but after making millions, instead of investing heavily in a crack team to shape things up, they just tackled mobile instead, completely rebuilding the game in another engine, and adding lootboxes, etc. all while slowly driving away their core fanbase.
It helps that epic had 800 employees to start churning out updates after it got traction. None of the previous BR games had studios working at that scale.
A true difference in knowing how to use the tool. Obviously, the creators of the engine are going to put out a more optimized game than pretty much anyone else using it.
Don't forget having the team work 90 hour weeks for multiple years to power the success.
Edit: I like that I'm getting downvoted by fanboys of epic for pointing out the large human cost to games being "updated as fast as gamers want it". https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-cru... if you don't know but games are very complex simulations and very hard to work on. Keeping fortnite up to date took a ton of effort by a ton of people in a not really sustainable way for peoples lives or careers to make it a success. Also can take irreversible impacts on help and psyche.
And really every time I played that game it was still massively buggy. For instance build to weapon switch issue that locked me out of controls for 1-3 seconds on a regular basis.
And epic got very good at the cheating stuff because they were helping blue hole solve the same issues and got to prototype it out on pubg and got a headstart there. Yeah that's a risk of using a team's engine but...
Edit: I like that I'm getting downvoted by fanboys of epic for pointing out the large human cost to games being "updated as fast as gamers want it". https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/23/18507750/fortnite-work-cru... if you don't know but games are very complex simulations and very hard to work on. Keeping fortnite up to date took a ton of effort by a ton of people in a not really sustainable way for peoples lives or careers to make it a success. Also can take irreversible impacts on help and psyche.
And really every time I played that game it was still massively buggy. For instance build to weapon switch issue that locked me out of controls for 1-3 seconds on a regular basis.
And epic got very good at the cheating stuff because they were helping blue hole solve the same issues and got to prototype it out on pubg and got a headstart there. Yeah that's a risk of using a team's engine but...
They could've hired more people and got the same work cranked out in similar time, long hours != popular. Plenty of companies have cracked the whip, but it doesn't always lead to success.
Hiring more people increases costs if everyone is on salary.
Making people work longer hours does not.
Making people work longer hours does not.
> I like that I'm getting downvoted by fanboys of epic
My suspicion is you're being downvoted because your comment comes across as bitter and irrelevant.
My suspicion is you're being downvoted because your comment comes across as bitter and irrelevant.
Sure, this is true. If it is one person. These games are huge, with multiple teams. So this is clearly not true. No one person knows one part of the game.
You easily get the situation where creators know better than the makers.
You easily get the situation where creators know better than the makers.
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How is raw lack of experience different from lack of experience? Greater risk of food poisoning?
"Greater risk of codebase poisoning" is actually an interesting way to put it.
Even if PUBG didn't have all the technical problems, Fortnite still would've been huge. They have different enough audiences - a lot of PUBG players don't like Fortnite (and vice versa). There's overlap sure, but not so much that it's a zero-sum game.
I don't disagree with that idea, after all the market for gamers is so large. But I do know that the ~30 or so people I regularly played with in PUBG left PUBG because of the poor code and cheating to go to other games (most of us went non-BR I think). And even now that we're told that it's better we have no desire to go back. The wounds go too deep. XD
Initially sure, but I think the building capabilities of Unreal and their underlying experience with the engine making contributed to their staying power.
Unreal is a hyper hyper smart games company. They built the frameworks that companies built games on. I think it's really awesome to see them win in the end like this after decades in the sticks.
Unreal is a hyper hyper smart games company. They built the frameworks that companies built games on. I think it's really awesome to see them win in the end like this after decades in the sticks.
Why did PUBG drop the ball? Do they regret that decision?
They got it to the market quickly and made a couple of billion. While we can hindsight now about some very poor choices they made -- choices that opened them up to rampant cheating with little ability to block it -- they made bank and have already had a success curve that has gone far longer than most games do, regardless of how perfectly they were executed.
Did they make a couple billion? I think that is grossly overestimated.
Depends both on how you define "they" and "make". PUBG Corp has made roughly a couple of billion USD in revenue, but definitely not a couple of billion in profit. (The 2018 numbers were $920M revenue, $311 in profit.)
But also, that's PUBG-the-company, not PUBG-the-game. The distinction is that the PUBG mobile version (with tens of millions of daily actives) is by Tencent, and PUBG-the-company gets some kind of licensing revenue from it.
But also, that's PUBG-the-company, not PUBG-the-game. The distinction is that the PUBG mobile version (with tens of millions of daily actives) is by Tencent, and PUBG-the-company gets some kind of licensing revenue from it.
What kind of bad choices are you talking about here? Was it things such as the engine giving too much information to the clients?
That and trusting client information with extraordinarily few server-side validation such as, for instance, impossible shots, impossible movements, impossible speed, etc. It does no client information culling (beyond a large circle of information around the player's position) enabling wallhacks, aimhacks, etc.
These are hard problems to solve on the server side, and require resources, so it was easier not to worry about it at all, and at most do post-game analysis occasionally to try to retroactively detect the impossible (with a very low detection rate, so much so that they rely upon user reports).
This is one of the selling points of something like Stadia (which has to be balanced with the downside of latency) -- by default a cloud renderer would give minimal information to the client.
These are hard problems to solve on the server side, and require resources, so it was easier not to worry about it at all, and at most do post-game analysis occasionally to try to retroactively detect the impossible (with a very low detection rate, so much so that they rely upon user reports).
This is one of the selling points of something like Stadia (which has to be balanced with the downside of latency) -- by default a cloud renderer would give minimal information to the client.
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Basically the battle royale game mode was all they had as an identity. Almost everything else about the game is generic. The graphics look like every asset-flip from the last ten years, music is utterly forgettable, there's just no style. I hate almost everything about Fortnite's style but it does have a distinct one.
Compare Wolfenstein 3D to Doom, except pretend Wolfenstein never had the "Nazis" idea and you were just fighting generic soldiers.
Compare Wolfenstein 3D to Doom, except pretend Wolfenstein never had the "Nazis" idea and you were just fighting generic soldiers.
PUBG and H1Z1 were the only BRs at the time before the whole BR craze and fortnite came out
PUBG was supposedly the "better" h1z1 but even ninja (the famous ninja that played with drake, former halo player etc.) went back to h1z1 solely because pubg was so garbo
then fortnites BR came onto the scene and the rest is history
PUBG was supposedly the "better" h1z1 but even ninja (the famous ninja that played with drake, former halo player etc.) went back to h1z1 solely because pubg was so garbo
then fortnites BR came onto the scene and the rest is history
Sure, but this isn't particularly different from any other multiplayer FPS throughout the history of the genre. There's a bunch of common game modes that have been around forever, like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, assault, king of the hill, etc. These game modes were reused repeatedly by pretty much any arena FPS that came out within a span of over a decade. Battle royale and team battle royale are simply the latest (very popular) game modes that most new FPSs are including. Zombie was the previous hot game mode, but that's cooled off a bit now.
I agree - a lot of it...it was the look of the game, the fact it ran smoothly and the building that made a lot of people try it out: I can feel some teenagers going like: "Hey look it's like minecraft but with guns"
but let's not forget the emotes/dances. Those went viral!
but let's not forget the emotes/dances. Those went viral!
Eh, and PubG got it from H1Z1 which got it from DayZ which got it from Minecraft which got it from the Hunger Games movie, etc. Welcome to remix culture.
What's interesting is that fortnite underwent almost exactly the same journey as H1Z1. Start as a paid PvE, release free BR, cancel survival and focus on BR.
What's interesting is that fortnite underwent almost exactly the same journey as H1Z1. Start as a paid PvE, release free BR, cancel survival and focus on BR.
Fortnite also was very good for having weekly updates of significance. This kept it moving.
Did epic pay the celebrities that used it initially.
Did epic pay the celebrities that used it initially.
PubG was not particularly popular with women. Fortnite is. The success of any social network lives or dies on that one item.
It's important, but I think even more important than women was children and the mobile story behind it. I hear all the time of kids playing fortnite at school and it have a cult like following.
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A lot of high school memories this brings up. I was a huge UT player, in a clan, competed, everything.
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.
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.
I still get the urge to play the original UT. It is weird that instinctively that era of games feels mere years ago but it is more like 2 decades. Perhaps it’s that the leap from ZZT to UT seems far more vast than UT to Fortnite.
People should pay more attention to Tim Sweeney. He appears to have a much better grasp on how to run a tech company using an open platform than the more well known Silicon Valley CEOs. The Unreal Engine may not be explicitly open source as in Linux, but it’s all viewable and the licensing terms are reasonable.
People should pay more attention to Tim Sweeney. He appears to have a much better grasp on how to run a tech company using an open platform than the more well known Silicon Valley CEOs. The Unreal Engine may not be explicitly open source as in Linux, but it’s all viewable and the licensing terms are reasonable.
Community is still around in fact the whole UT (from 99 to 4) fanbase hangs around a couple of Discords. Mind you, we're talking about 200 people globally probably so, it's tiny but big enough to play.
Arena shooters in general kind of died out, I don't think it is specific to UT.
Epic was also the creator of Gears of War - a game I thought was just going to be a tech demo for Unreal Engine 3 and turned out to be a masterpiece.
Related (to both Fortnite and Gears of War): some words from Rod Fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the...
Related (to both Fortnite and Gears of War): some words from Rod Fergusson https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/14/18679549/fortnite-save-the...
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 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.
> Cliff Bleszinski / Cliffy B: he's another big name from the Unreal scene but retired from Epic Games and "peaced out' after his career flops.
Cliffy B was an early investor in Oculus. He put a lot of money into Lawbreakers which flopped.
Cliffy B was an early investor in Oculus. He put a lot of money into Lawbreakers which flopped.
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 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?
I question how much of that transition they made though. They ARE decision makers by virtue of their knowledge and seniority, but they are not people managers. They still work mostly on technical problems (either as a lead or doing research). And from the little I read online, they strongly shun the managerial aspects of their positions, letting someone else deal with anything non-technical or that is not a personal pet peeve of them.
In many modern tech companies they'd instead be a (pretty powerful) VP of something and let someone else be the C*O to deal with the people/managerial aspects of the company.
In many modern tech companies they'd instead be a (pretty powerful) VP of something and let someone else be the C*O to deal with the people/managerial aspects of the company.
Usually they get propped into leadership positions when they have a track record of getting others to "dream more, do more, become more".
Engineers as a breed usually run to mgmt/blame mgmt when they can't get their brethren to do things. So when an engineer shows up, who can get other engineers to follow, then that's one special unicorn you take care off, protect and support.
Engineers as a breed usually run to mgmt/blame mgmt when they can't get their brethren to do things. So when an engineer shows up, who can get other engineers to follow, then that's one special unicorn you take care off, protect and support.
I’ve heard great things about https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Grow... as a general set of advice. The Rands leadership Slack is also a great community.
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.
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
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.
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.
Some players will even just gather around without shooting or killing each other to talk or mess around or whatever.
How does this work out with the map continuously shrinking?
There's a playground/sandbox mode.
You can also do it in the normal BR mode. It takes a few minutes until the circle starts shrinking and it shrinks in multiple phases, so you have 5-10min (more if you're lucky) to just mess around before it gets too small.
You can also do it in the normal BR mode. It takes a few minutes until the circle starts shrinking and it shrinks in multiple phases, so you have 5-10min (more if you're lucky) to just mess around before it gets too small.
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.
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.
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.
> Here, character Cuddle Team Leader, left, and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney.
I'm glad they clarified that, I wasn't sure which was which for a moment.
I'm glad they clarified that, I wasn't sure which was which for a moment.
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.
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.
> 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.
This is then considered the "meta", most efficient tactic available, and in some communities, it will be heavily frowned upon to deviate from the established meta as that's seen as "throwing the match".
That's why a lot of multiplayer games are really fun right after release: Most players are new with no clue what they are doing, everybody is enjoying themselves even if they are messing up, they are still having fun exploring how everything works.
But as communities mature, and more people understand the mechanics at play and how best to exploit them to their gain, the community becomes more "mature" and competitive. Which is completely at odds with "messing around for fun", a process most new players learn by.
This is then considered the "meta", most efficient tactic available, and in some communities, it will be heavily frowned upon to deviate from the established meta as that's seen as "throwing the match".
That's why a lot of multiplayer games are really fun right after release: Most players are new with no clue what they are doing, everybody is enjoying themselves even if they are messing up, they are still having fun exploring how everything works.
But as communities mature, and more people understand the mechanics at play and how best to exploit them to their gain, the community becomes more "mature" and competitive. Which is completely at odds with "messing around for fun", a process most new players learn by.
100% this. It's about replayabiliy. Some games have it in spades as the game elements involve interacting with other players making each play through experience somewhat unique. Others are very dull to play again. Single player offline games are quite rare these days for this reason, the last big one I can think of was half life 2.
...What? That was 15 years ago, there have been hundreds and hundreds of very successful AAA first-person games since then.
There are plenty of very successful single player games these days... but exactly like you said, they tend to involve the player interacting in unique ways to make the experience more varied. Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, Elder Scrolls games, Far Cry and Just Cause. Even Mario and Legend of Zelda have gone this route. Linear story-driven single player games are niche, but open world, player-driven, interactive, "radiant AI" style games bring the feeling of a living multiplayer world to the single player experience.
Not disagreeing with you, just adding on.
Not disagreeing with you, just adding on.
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.
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 took me a while to realize the same thing. I used to play video games a lot but stopped abruptly and a lot of this had to do with the missing social context (went from a "gamer" group of friends to a more diverse friend group).
This is actually super annoying to me, I love single player games, story driven fps or rpg or whatever, but everyone just keeps on churning out multiplayer or (even worse) co-op games. I don't have any gamer friends and I don't wanna play co-op with some random person but I do wanna have fun and experience some cool content.
Offhand - Spiderman, Red Dead Redemption, Detroit, titanfall 2,Sekiro, monster Hunter world (kind of - the multiplayer I'd pretty much optional) are all AAA games released in 2018/2019.
There's also a glut of indie games like Into the Breach,Celeste, Dead Cells - if that's more you're thing!
There are oodles of great single player games being released still, and the enteryainemtn value of them is massive - games like Red Dead Redemption have o er 40 hours of content just in the main storyline alone!
There's also a glut of indie games like Into the Breach,Celeste, Dead Cells - if that's more you're thing!
There are oodles of great single player games being released still, and the enteryainemtn value of them is massive - games like Red Dead Redemption have o er 40 hours of content just in the main storyline alone!
Titanfall 2 is actually from 2016 but still holds up extremely well.
I think that the strategy of focusing on multiplayer is failing. There are multiple recent examples of AAA games that created backlash, eg. Anthem, Destiny, Fallout 76.
Of course, nobody wants to play a dead game, no matter how fun. This has always been the case.
Yes. Second Life has that problem. Second Life has about 30,000 to 50,000 concurrent users at any one time, which is about equal to GTA V Online and would put it in 10th or 11th place on Steam if it were on there. But it's 16 years old and a "dead game".
Funny because lately I've seen way more people posting Second Life stuff than say Spider-Man or GTAV, but then again most of my online socializing is with furries.
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.
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.
> 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.
What games are you thinking about where this applies?
Many of the most popular games with which I'm familiar (Overwatch, PUBG, Starcraft II, DotA, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, etc.) seem to have very high skill ceilings. That is, high-level competitive players in those games are way better than the average gamer.
I think a big way these games bring in players/stay current is by having a very active esports scene -- which only really works when you have "pro" quality players.
With the exception of time-gated achievement games (most MMOs, for example), the trend I see is a low barrier-to-entry but a very high skill ceiling.
One tactic that seems pretty common is to get people in-game quickly (f2p), teach them the core gameplay mechanics, then make it a very time-consuming grind to achieve the highest levels of play.
What games are you thinking about where this applies?
Many of the most popular games with which I'm familiar (Overwatch, PUBG, Starcraft II, DotA, League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, etc.) seem to have very high skill ceilings. That is, high-level competitive players in those games are way better than the average gamer.
I think a big way these games bring in players/stay current is by having a very active esports scene -- which only really works when you have "pro" quality players.
With the exception of time-gated achievement games (most MMOs, for example), the trend I see is a low barrier-to-entry but a very high skill ceiling.
One tactic that seems pretty common is to get people in-game quickly (f2p), teach them the core gameplay mechanics, then make it a very time-consuming grind to achieve the highest levels of play.
You've listed mostly previous generation, or much older, games. Overwatch being somewhat the exception, though I would say it has a very low skill floor and a mediocre skill ceiling. Overwatch is nowhere near the skill ceiling of Quake 3, IMHO.
Consider that in Fortnite a junior player can outlive and outlast a seasoned player by avoiding conflict, and score reasonably well.
In Pokemon Go and other similar mass market games, skill is an after thought at best; it's all about the balance between engagement with your friends and community and grinding levels and awards; intrinsic versus extrinsic.
The prolonged death of arena shooters is the evidence of the importance of skill.
Consider that in Fortnite a junior player can outlive and outlast a seasoned player by avoiding conflict, and score reasonably well.
In Pokemon Go and other similar mass market games, skill is an after thought at best; it's all about the balance between engagement with your friends and community and grinding levels and awards; intrinsic versus extrinsic.
The prolonged death of arena shooters is the evidence of the importance of skill.
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.
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.
Psychology of game design - Sid Meier - YouTube. Games are so brilliantly built these days - designer for maximum addiction while keeping you constantly engaged at the perception of winning. Battle royal is brilliant in the way you describe it but also because you can finish 2nd just by doing nothing.
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.
I still think of Tim Sweeney as “the man behind ZZT”.
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.
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.
> I saw PUBG added new maps. Huge mistake. HUGE.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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An aside.
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"
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"
I read the article by searching for it on Google News and then clicking through from there. They must have a deal and the WSJ checks the referrer.
I guess they got a few C&D letters and decided it’s not worth the effort.
Adding ?mod=rsswn to the end of the URL delivers the full article, for now. No need for Outline. This submission added it for you.
I have the same experience.
Tim Sweeney is a huge programming language nerd. He privately experiments with functional programming, dependent types, stm and code gen.
EDIT: Removed possible demeaning sentence
EDIT: Removed possible demeaning sentence
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.
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.
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.