B is for: Boosting off of Fortnite’s success

Now, the thing you need to understand about Fortnite’s success is that it did not become popular simply because it was just the first Battle Royale game, because it wasn’t. PUBG was released 4 months prior to Fortnite’s Battle Royale gamemode was dropped, and if all it took was to be the first of these games released, then PUBG should be far more mainstream than it really is (not to mention that PUBG technically wasn’t even the first of its kind, as the DayZ ARMA II mod and Hunger Games Minecraft mods were heavy inspirations for Battle Royale and share many similarities with the genre).

See, the reason I believe Fortnite was (and still is) such a hit is because of a bunch of small moving parts that bundled up to form a strong foundation for the game.

Credit: Epic Games

Firstly, much like how Battle Royale games are made accessible enough to pander to the lowest common denominator, so too is Fortnite’s art style.

It’s no lie that the cartoony and colourful art style used by Fortnite is (at least partly) used to appear more inviting to a younger audience. A stark, dusty, realistic shooter like PUBG or CS:GO is far less likely to grab young audiences’ attention compared to the bright and flashy art offered in Fortnite. This art style, while being inclusive to younger players, does not exclude older players, because much like how in graphic design bright colours are used in logos (famously the bright red and yellow colours used in the McDonald’s logo) to grab people’s attention, so too do the bright colours in Fortnite.

Credit: Digital Trends

Another major contributing factor to Fortnite’s wide-spread success is how easy it is to run, which again adds to its insane accessibility. 8 GB of RAM and an outdated graphics card will easily run Fortnite. I mean, you can even play it on your phone! Additionally, making the online aspect of the game cross-platform friendly is a genius move. By allowing entire groups of friends to play a single game, you not only enhance their drive to play (and compete with their friends), but it also enhances the actual sheer number of friend groups who will cooperatively play the game. There are so many game titles that I or a friend of mine have wanted to get to play together on, but the console-to-computer gap kept us from ever actually buying the game because one person would have a console and the other would not (for example). Allowing the game to run with low computer specs and including a cross-platform feature are two very simple ways to get more active players, even if it tampers with the game balancing a little (i.e. mouse and keyboard are objectively better for shooters than controllers are).

And finally, celebrity endorsement. When fans of the game exclaim “C’mon dude, everyone’s playing Fortnite!” it’s really hard to argue with them. From Drake to popular YouTubers, it really did feel like everyone was playing Fortnite at one stage. And when a large portion of a game’s target audience is made up of a young, impressionable audience, celebrities (and Internet celebrities) playing that given game will draw in so many new players. Just think of how many people Drake “inspired” to download Fortnite, and if you doubt there’d be many… then I’m gonna have to quickly remind you that Ninja’s stream where he played with Drake still holds the record for the most concurrent viewers in a single-channel Twitch stream.

Okay, so we’ve established that Fortnite’s success wasn’t a fluke based on it being the first of its kind, and because of this massive success, I believe this spilled over into “similar” games to Fortnite (a.k.a. other Battle Royale games). It’s clear that a large handful of former Fortnite players have transitioned into the newly released Apex Legends (at the time of writing this), thus proving that a similar game to Fortnite is exactly what many people are looking for once they’ve grown bored of Fortnite. We didn’t see any other new games that have come out recently start breaking all these records; not for Anthem; not for Far Cry New Dawn; not for Jump Force. No. Apex Legends was the hit game of the month. And what do you know? It’s a Battle Royale.

In other words, the large-scale success of Battle Royale games as a whole is partly because of the large-scale success of Fortnite. Whether you like that or not, it’s hard to dispute that Fortnite made Battle Royale games mainstream.