Fortnite Was 2018's Most Important Social Network (theverge.com) 79
An anonymous reader shares a report: Epic Games managed to produce a hit, sure, but the genius of it is how it's rewritten the idea of what hanging out online can be. Fortnite is a game, but it's also a global living room for millions of people, and a kind of codex for where culture has gone this year -- it's a cultural omnibus that's absorbed everything from Blocboy JB's shoot dance to John Wick. It got Ted Danson to learn how to floss. This thing is here to stay, as a new kind of social network.
Fortnite has achieved such a massive scale partially because of those network effects -- if all of your friends are hanging out there, you will be too. The game is both free to play and available on every device -- consoles, computers, even phones. That's created a kind of lingua franca, a base level of understanding among a large group of people about the experience of playing the game. And even though it's hugely popular, the experience of playing is extremely specific -- not so many people outside your peer group are going to know what you mean if you reference a "chug jug" in casual conversation. There's an in group thing going on here.
Fortnite has achieved such a massive scale partially because of those network effects -- if all of your friends are hanging out there, you will be too. The game is both free to play and available on every device -- consoles, computers, even phones. That's created a kind of lingua franca, a base level of understanding among a large group of people about the experience of playing the game. And even though it's hugely popular, the experience of playing is extremely specific -- not so many people outside your peer group are going to know what you mean if you reference a "chug jug" in casual conversation. There's an in group thing going on here.
No, it wasn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll be gone in a few months and you'll all be drooling over the next meme platform, hard pass. This article is a joke. Find real content or die trying.
Re: (Score:3)
They'll be gone in a few months
I'd give it two weeks.
does anyone remember second life? (Score:2)
Does anyone remember "second life"? You know, the one where they told the industry "journalists" they were the biggest thing ever with a gazillion people using it, and it turned out they were simply using the advanced marketing technique known as "lying".
And the industry "journalists" were engaging in the common practice of "going along with it", because you know, you've got to write about something, and a phoney trend is better than nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Why yes, I remember Second Life, I last logged in on the 24th. It is still around and still is profitable for Linden Lab.
You think Valve has a thing with hats? SL has hats...more of them, and everything else and the kitchen sink. Really, you want a kitchen sink for your house, more choices than you can shake a stick at sold by SL users themselves.
Clothing for avatars
Hair for avatars
Improved body parts, heads, eyes, bodies.
"Makeup" for those enhanced heads.
Animation sets for avatars
Vehicles of every sort,
Re: (Score:3)
Re:No, it wasn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Fortnite is the latest "fad gaming." (Last year it was PUBG.)
Fortnite has two game modes:
* PVP: The popular Battle Royale (BR) mode - a free-for-all 3rd person shooter where the play field is constantly shrinking, and
* PvE: A lesser known Save the World (STW) where players cooperatively complete different missions.
What makes Fortnite different is that:
* you hit different objects in the environment to mine resources,
* build buildings and ramps to defend,
* have a map with different zones you unlock,
* supports up to 4 player co-op.
BR is F2P (Free-to-Play) while STW is in early access -- it will be on free "soon".
If you like L4D + Minecraft + RPGs then STW is a weird hybrid.
In a years time some other game will be popular with the streamers.
Re: (Score:3)
I think it will probably last longer than that, based on the run that relatively-neglected Team Fortress 2 had, because Fortnite is kept much fresher both in variations of modes under Battle Royale and in the challenges / achievements. TF2, and Valve in general, seemed to fall into the "Czech trap" of achieving success followed by investing further money and time into partying as hard as humanly possible. So far, Fortnite appears to be avoiding that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It has pretty game changing updates every couple of monts, and they update content almost every week (a new weapon would be a good example).
They just added straight up Mine Craft style building system (maybe not redstone level, I'm not sure). You can share you level designs.
And, they are into actual physical merchandising. Big time. Clothes, and tons of Star Wars style figurines. Building sets to actually build like in the game.
And the game is fun. We can have 4 people all playing in the same room (2 c
Re: (Score:2)
Fortnite is the latest "fad gaming." (Last year it was PUBG.)
Prior years it was ARK, Rust, Rocket League, and Minecraft. It's safe to say whatever the next fad game will be on video sites, it'll be multiplayer (probably competitive) with some unique twist that hasn't yet made the gaming rounds (some kind of VR stealth asymmetric team deathmatch game like Evolve maybe?). Battle Royale is an evergreen concept (remember Last Man Standing mode in Unreal Tournament?) so it's not going anywhere; AFAIK all battle royale games are shooters, and making one with primarily shor
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
and snap-to-aim on controllers.
It does NOT have snap-to-aim on controllers, at least not in Save The World. As far as I can tell it doesn't have it in Battle Royale either on PS4. Note that the PS4 version has keyboard+mouse support. It might have it on Android version of Battle Royale mode though.
Re: (Score:2)
In a years time some other game will be popular with the streamers.
That depends on the publisher's ability to keep things fresh. Team Fortress is now 11 years old. Last weekend had 110k players online. Weekly average 60k players. That has been quite steady since Steam started tracking these stats in late 2012. 2018 has seen an "all time low" of Team Fortress 2, of 50k players on average midweek, only 20k players less than in 2013.
Now it's true that Fortnite dwarfs that puny little effort, but the point is if they play it right they can expect a following for a long time to
Re: No, it wasn't. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Pedantry aside, the question is about Fortnite, a computer game; NOT about fortnight, a length of time.
--- ...Talk amongst yourself.
We now return you to your regular scheduled flame wars of which text editor sucks more? Emacs or Vim
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cosmetics for Battle Royale. They can be purchased with the premium currency called V-bucks. Which is short for Vindertech-bucks, but most BR players don't know about Dr. Vinderman/Vindertech. That's part of the Save The World storyline.
In Save the World, V-bucks are used to purchase various kinds of Loot Llama's, which can provide new heroes, Survivors, Defenders, Weapon & Trap Schematics, Crafting materials and so forth. V-bucks can also be earned in Save the World, so there's a subgroup of young
Re: (Score:2)
It's more likely just some shitty oblivious newfag who only recently discovered the concept of online multiplayer gaming and didn't bother to look beyond yesterday to see that pretty much any popular online multiplayer game can be described in exactly the same way.
I mean World of fucking Warcraft, anyone?
Re: (Score:1)
An “anonymous reader”... (Score:5, Interesting)
... who just happens to write for The Verge, perchance?
Re: (Score:3)
Myspace was the social network of 2006 (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget Friendster before that! I wonder when Facebook will lose its spot.
Got a PS4 today with BOPS4 (Score:2)
It's effin Christmas, I got a toy, I want to play with my toy. dafuq?
Tune in tomorrow, when I tell you how much I like BOPS4 (not expecting much, didn't like 1 and 2, skipped 3), and Fortnight (not expecting much, players with 1+ year experience will use n00bs like me to rank up experience po
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At least I can download Fortnight. 5 hour download? Really? And What's This Feature? It's downloading at 20% the speed of the internet I'm paying for.
You got a new PS4 and tried to download games/updates from PSN on Christmas...which is the WORST day to do so because of how many OTHER people are doing the same thing. PSN download server bandwidth is finite.
Every year, the various gaming websites do articles like "parents, you might want to open up the PS4 box and prepare it before christmas"
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-... [lifehacker.com]
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/1... [kotaku.co.uk]
Now generally, it's a bit better later on, say after 8pm, but if you have a big 50GB game to downloa
Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm old enough to have been playing online games for almost 20 years.
My experience is that half of the fun from an online game comes from the game itself, and the other half from the people you play with. What the article describes, I have experienced it with other games. For me, 5 years ago it was Minecraft, 7 years ago it was D&D Online, 10 years ago it was Day of Defeat Source, 12 years ago it was World of Warcraft, 16 years ago it was Diablo 2, 18 years ago it was the original Counter Strike. Fun games on their own right, but many days I would just play to hang out with people. Of those, Day of Defeat Source was the game in which I had the most fun, the community was small but fantastic.
Anyway, enough for the old time rant. Let the kids (and the adults) enjoy Fortnite. The fad will pass and in a few years few of them will still be playing it, but the memories of the good times will live on forever.
Re: (Score:2)
"I'm old enough to have been playing online games for almost 20 years."
Get off my lawn rookie. ;-P
Re: (Score:1)
Only 20 years (19 actually) ago because it was when home Internet access started to become affordable in Spain, but I had been wanting to play online for years :P
Well, not that many years, as I was born in 1985, but even at the age of 10 I knew that the Internet existed and I wanted to get online!
Re: (Score:2)
I personally didn't care so much about the online interaction, but being a bit older (60), I had a headstart playing on computers in high school as early as '73. Actually, they were teletypes connected via acoustic modems to the local community college, up until we built our own Altair in the electronics club.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Because (Score:2)
Just because The Verge claimed it was doesn't make it so. In fact it makes it completely unlikely and false.
If... (Score:2)
Late to the party (Score:1)
"Most important in 2018"...until 2019 (Score:2)
Fortnite is a fad. Hardly anybody outside of the gamersphere has even heard of it. My aunt in Kansas certainly hasn't!
Based on published statistics, Pokemon Go had twice as many players as Fortnite, but where is Pokemon Go now? Yeah, it's still around, but you don't see people wondering aimlessly around hunting for pokemon any more.
Fortnite won't be any different. If you're a Fortnite enthusiast, this article makes sense. To the rest of us, it's just another fad, or something we've never even heard of.