Fortnite: Battle Royale has taken the world by an increasingly intense storm. It's already the most viewed game in Youtube history , the most viewed game on twitch , its become incredibly mainstream, and it's making a lot of money. Why, like Hansel in Zoolander, is it so hot right now?
One way to get something into homes easily is to give it away. It's the same with sports rights on tv, with newspapers, with vaccines as it is with games. If you want a lot of people to have something, take away the barrier to entry. Sure you have to free up some space on your hard drive, you have to wait while you download the file, but trying Fortnite comes with very little risk. This, combined with a huge marketing push, and the virality of clips, streams and videos, means it's no surprise that it has surpassed 45 million downloads.
As with any free-to-pay game, there has to be some revenue stream, and Fortnite: Battle Royale gets it very right. Nothing you can buy will make winning games easier on the face of it. There is an argument that the colour of your avatar may have some psychological effects, but I'm unconvinced by the arguments in the case of Fortnite (supposedly red makes you more aggressive, blue makes you calmer, which is ideal in Fortnite really depends on the scenario and who you are, I can't decide). If anything, the default skins are the hardest to see, as most of the map is green fields and wooden structures, so green and brown clothes are ideal.
While the skins you can buy don't make you better, they are appealing, they have their own character and they add something to the game world. The most equitable thing about the in game purchases though, is how you know what you are getting and how much it costs you. There's no gambling, quasi-gambling, buying things you don't want in order to get the thing you do want etc. You either purchase the skin you want for the price listed, or you purchase the battle pass where the rewards are made clear from the start. Or if you don't want to spend money, you get a mechanically identical game.
Ultimately none of the previous paragraphs would be relevant at all if the game was rubbish. Nobody wants to buy skins in a game they don't want to play. A game won't become popular if people don't tell their mates how much they like it. Games have to be good games before any form of business model will help them.
The first thing is the format is compelling. Like horde modes and base building in the past, battle royale is the must have game mode to add to your game. It's a great genre, putting 100 players on an island together, having to scrap for every weapon they can get their hands on, before the other players shoot them with it. It starts intense, with that scrap on the ground. Then there's a build up, where players build up their inventory, having to make hard choices, including how much time they spend finding loot and how early they need to move into the zone. Get all the loot but fail to set up camp, you're a sitting duck, set up camp without the necessary firepower, you've got your hands full, that balance is the game in the middle. Then you get the finale, when the last 10 players are squeezed closer and closer together, with bigger and better guns, until just one remains, the victor.
Fortnite gets this right, with a map just big enough while you can get across the whole thing on foot before the storm hits you (if you run at the right moment), and supply drops, so the longer you wait the more, and better gear will enter the island. Add to this, the minecraft-ish building, which not only opens the map up vertically, but gives you the chance to defend yourself regardless of where the circle ends up. Building makes the fights varied, as you sacrifice shooting for getting the high ground, block rockets with wooden stairs and box enemies in to lay a trap for them.
Fortnite also gets multiplayer right. Not just that the servers usually cope pretty well with 100 players at the same time, but that your team mates in squads and duos are important. In some, especially older, shooters, team mates basically constitute cannon fodder and distractions. I remember playing Halo 3 and finding I won almost every Team Slayer game if people on my team quit or got disconnected, because numbers didn't really help that much. In Fortnite, having a team mate lets you shoot and build at the same time, it lets you cover multiple directions so you don't get shot in the back, it extends your lifespan if you get knocked down. Good teamwork trumps good shooting most of the time, and good Fortnite players know the value of keeping their team mates stocked with weapons and resources.
The other thing Fortnite gets really well is progression. Once you get the hang of the basics of Fortnite, you'll rarely lose a game and think "there was nothing I could do to change that". Winning is hard, only one in 25, 50 or 100 gets that victory royale at the end, that's what makes it so sweet, but it always feels achievable. The killcam helps, so you know where the person that killed you was, as do the clip archives if you really want to examine your mistakes and their successes. What gives you the real sense you can still win though, is the random nature of loot. It can be annoying, when you run into the first house you land next to and there's not a single gun, and the fella in the roof breaks down and kills you, but you'll be back in a game three minutes later and it probably won't happen again. Where the random nature helps, is you can always believe you'll have slightly better weapons. "If only I had a rocket launcher I would have won" is something I've said several times when I came second in solos. It's probably not true but it would have given me an chance against the guy at the top of his giant base. The truth is with almost any gun in the game there's a way of getting the kill with it if you build properly and shoot straight. That combination of always having a chance, but always having the chance to have a better chance, means the skill ceiling seems penetrable however good you actually are.
Lastly, it's worth noting how Epic Games are supporting the game well. New equipment, balancing the weapons, limited time modes all keep the game fresh and functional. The game gets fairer (as in more functional strategies, rather than just the old double pump dominating) every week, and with its continued success there's no sign of that stopping soon.
