Fortnite or no Night

“Fortnite or no night!”, my boyfriend (now ex-boyfriend) exclaimed before hanging up the phone on me after I called him one night when I was very upset and needed comfort. After this night I saw the game everywhere; everybody and their mamas were playing it and its presence on social media was explosive. I decided to give the game a try and I remember thinking, “Ah, this is why my boyfriend hung up on his crying girlfriend.” Fortnite: Battle Royale is an online shooter game, where 100 players are parachuted onto an island covered in towns, industrial estates, and forests.

The players’ goal is to fight until only one person remains while hunting for weapons and health items. As the combat rages, a circular storm closes in around the landscape, so that the playable area gets smaller and smaller, pushing the survivors together (Stuart, K. 2018). The game is available on multiple formats such as Windows, MacOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, XBox One, iOS and Android. Everyone is aware of this game and it is seen everywhere from middle-school playgrounds to teen boys dark rooms to frat house parties to million-view Youtube live streams. Fortnite has become one of the hottest pop phenomena and it will steal your boyfriend.

The Battle Royale game genre became one of the most popular and addictive game genres in 2017. Digital Trends states that battle royale games started off as an obscure mod into a mainstream game phenomenon in less than two years ( CITE ). Battle Royale genre is games that challenge multiple players – often a hundred or more- into killing each other till one player stands. Players in this genre usually start with minimal equipment or no equipment and have to search for weapons and health scattered across the map. The players then must compete to be the last standing by avoiding factors like other players or the map shrinking. When the movie Hunger Games was released in 2011, interest in Battle Royale as a gaming genre was born.

The earliest and most notable Battle Royale game is Minecraft, which was released in 2012. If you are living in a hole and never heard of Minecraft; it is a video game in which players are able to create or destroy things in block form in a three-dimensional world. The game consists of two modes, Survival and Creative. In Survival, players have to find food and building supplies and are vulnerable to monsters. In creative, they have access to flying an endless amount of supplies to create things. Minecraft led to the development of multiple Battle Royale games like PubG, that branched off of different ideas from Minecraft. Eventually, leading to the development of Fortnite.

Fortnite was created based off of a mixture of games like PubG and Minecraft. Fortnite Battle Royale was released September 2017 by Epic Games. Fortnite combines three fundamental video game components – exploring, shooting and building – into a fresh and compelling 99 vs 1 format (Stuart, K 2018). Fortnite has outgrossed multiple popular movies in the past year such as; Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle, Wonder Woman, Spider-man: Homecoming and Star Wars: Solo. Since the release of the game in September, the game has grossed more than one billion. The latest statistic as of June 2018 shows that more than 125 million people have played the game since July 2017. Fortnite is everywhere and has taken over the internet. Gaming channels are a large portion of youtube and videos of playing the fortune exploded on the app/website. The game also includes multiple dances, that the players can make their avatars perform the dance moves (if you’re curious here is a video: some of the dances https://bestfortnitesettings.com/best-fortnite-dances-emotes/)

The number one cause of why Fortnite has become such a popular game is because it is a free game offered on multiple platforms. The game attracts a wide audience of people from the fact that it is free for any players to play. Of course, people are going to try out the game since it’s at such a reasonable price, especially a younger audience like 10 to 16-year-olds. Another factor is the game allows you to play with friends or make friends. “I have peers who play four hours a week, and some teens devote much more time to the game. and several of my own friendships were actually strengthened by playing together in multiplayer “squad” mode. Laughing about our struggles and successes once the game is over brings us together–and I know that other kids feel the same way. In fact, nearly 8 out of 10 teens who play online games with real-life friends say gaming helps them feel closer to their pals.” Jessica Brown says in her article, ‘Is Fortnite Ruining Your Life?’ The appeal of the game is obvious it’s free to play, ables you to meet people, play with friends and is apart of the most trending game genre, Battle Royale.

Now, you must be thinking to yourself, “This game sounds absolutely great, how can anyone hate it?” Many girls have lost their boyfriends to the Fortnite epidemic, as have many parents lost their children. Apparently, boys find the daily challenges and being able to play with ‘the boys’ far more appealing than their girlfriends. Girlfriends out there in this world are suffering every day because their boyfriends not texting them back since they are playing the game. Girls have actually started petitions to end Fortnite, that’s how serious this is. Mothers have to take away game devices to try to get their children away from the game after playing hours of continuous play.

Fortnite is worth every second of my boyfriend ignoring me. After discovering the game to try to understand the hype, I started ignoring my boyfriend to play the game. Even if you are awful at the game, it is painfully addictive. I spend hours playing the game even though, I get shot again and again. The game is easy to play and free; there’s not much more you can possibly want in a game. I mean even Drake plays the game and he’s Drake.

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