Fortnite

So I’m going to rant about a handful of video games released this year that perpetuate the horrible and anti-consumer use of mictrotransactions. And the first is a game I reviewed for Checkpoint by the name of Fortnite.

Fortnite was a game I was very much looking forward to before release, and a game I still occasionally find myself playing today. It had survival elements, fort-building elements, tower-defence elements, third-person shooting, oh, and Loot Boxes (in the form of llamas). Fortnite fills this really odd place in my mind because I genuinely love a lot of what it does. But for every amazing item it brings to the table, it also brings something equally terrible. And those terrible inclusions almost exclusively have some kind of link to the Loot Llamas. The real crux of the problem with Fortnite is that the entire game is designed to get you to buy llamas. The progression of the game is gated behind rewards acquired exclusively through these zoomorphic Loot Boxes and the grind you face is deliberate and painful. What makes things worse is that you may have hit a progression wall where you need better loot to continue, but you can’t even straight up buy that loot. You have to buy llama after llama, hoping to get something worth your while.

In my review of the game I wrote that “some llamas jackpot rewarding you with a huge amount of loot. The system gives you an endorphin rush that could rival slot machines, so much so that I’d almost consider the system dangerous”. A statement that still absolutely rings true.

Epic Games made a decision during the development of Fortnite, and that decision was to tailor the player’s enjoyment and progression in the game around microtransactions. A decision that undeniably made the game worse in favour of earning the company more money.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War