Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think
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I don't even know what to do with this comment. All multiplayers games are designed to be a third place, that's why they have groups that stay together between rounds, integrated voice chat, and friend systems. Multiplayer games have been designed to act as third places for ... a long, long time now.
> Epic has also built up another great and particularly hard to establish advantage: some 200MM+ registered user accounts.
I don't think that Fornite players as a group think that setting up a new user account is a big deal. Having an account is not a particularly big point of friction any more.
> Third is the threat posed by the shift to cloud-based gaming
do players actually want this? I've only heard that players want this from "thought leader", technology speculator types. Never in my thousands of hours of online gaming have I ever heard another player talk about this.
> they will be able to support Unity and other engines as well (interoperability will obviously be critical to any Metaverse and has long been a passion point of Sweeney’s).
this seems pretty divorced from technical and political reality.
What makes companies the most money?
One shot games? Or never ending games with repeat buys?
I see more of the later and not really the former...
That tells me that whether or not what gamers 'want'... what they spend on is cloud based.
That's not what cloud based means here. "Cloud based", in this context, refers to video streaming of a game rendered within a data centre, remote-desktop-ed to your computer like a YouTube video. (The article calls it a 'cloud-based streaming solution'). Lots of companies offer this (GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, etc). But almost no players actually play that way today.
Lots of players are spending money in online "never-ending" / "repeat-buy" games. (Fortnite, Apex, Blackout, Destiny, Warframe, Path of Exile, WoW, etc). But approximately 0% of players are spending any money on "cloud-based" ones (using the articles definition of cloud-based).
Ahh, I misunderstood then... I hear cloud and I think server based.
I would think cloud-hosted "gaming" - as in RDP type gaming?... the latency alone would kill it for me.
I stand corrected :)
Trying out ParSec gaming was game changing for me and I've played 3 AAA titles with max settings in the last 3 months on the same PaperSpace cloud I use to do my personal ML projects. for a total cost of $30 in cloud credits, from my MacBook air sitting silently on my lap.
For some reason the convenience and peace of mind from having a console+game is sinful.
However, if one plays a lot of games then the difference of prices between console and PC adds up.
PS4 * €200 for the system * €135 for 3 x €45 for PS+ * €360 for 12 secondhand AAA games €0 for ~7 good PS+ games (36 months x 4 PS+ games x 5% average chance its a decent game) * €695 total cost to experience 19 games
PC * €650 for the system * €180 for 18 AAA games via Steam / Kinguin / whatever * €0 for 1 AAA game free with your GPU * €830 total cost to experience 19 games
Now at this point avid PC gamers will huff and puff that their games will pretty much be eternally compatible, console gamers will gleefully point out how you need to constantly fidget with your PC for optimal graphic / driver settings on the PC, etc etc; Those are for yourself to decide. But purely on price, a PC can’t compete with a console.
The extra cost is only associated with getting the new GPU.
That is an average of $185 a year for 80 hours of fun or little more than $2 per hour.
One can also get or build a a micro atx machine that does not use much room and hook it up to a kvm switch and a keyboard.
At the touch of a button it goes from an extra monitor for your laptop to connected to your micro desktop.
If you like old games even better a $500 machine could provide hundreds of hours for years.
Say 100 per year and a few hundred hours per year = 50c an hour.
There are a ridiculous amount of classic games.
How is the experience with online gaming? Is it possible or is the increase in latency to much for e.g. FPS?
edit: wait don't you still have to actually buy the game if you use parsec?
I play exclusively on the PC, and only update the majority of hardware (CPU, RAM, motherboard) every 7ish years. GPU about every 4 to 5 years. When a system is first built, enjoy the new AAA games on "ultra" settings, and lower settings on new games do that at 5 years you're picking "medium" or "low" for quality settings.
80 hours for 2 games? Most gamers log hundreds of hours into a game over a year, not 40. Games like fortnight, pubg, destiny 2, far cry, sky rim, Witcher 3, etc, can easily rack up several hundred hours of play thanks to exploration of deep content or multiplayer modes.
If I do the math, it's a few cents per hour of entrainment. Much cheaper than any other venue. Even hiking at the local forest preserves charge more money for bringing in a car and parking.
It's success will not be emulated even if better games (Like; Apex Legends from Respawn/EA) come to the fore.
It's unwise to use their model because, like world of warcraft, it only really works once or for one incumbent.
Fortnite works because "it's fortnite", it's already successful as hell, any monetisation, even small amounts is enough to catapult it to profitability.
Time will see if I'm right or not, the industry is changing, large studios need more money if they're to continue making AAA games and it's clear that people begrudge spending $60 for a game and then having monetisation inside. I hope EA's gamble with Apex works, not to prove me wrong but because I think it's a good game.
Fortnite on the other hand.. I just don't get, the combat/controls/graphics/hitboxes/animations are kinda dirt. But I think it's popular because it's popular, like Paris Hilton.
You invest into fortnight the same as you invest in anything, you specialize your skill for this one game, your social circle revolves around it etc. You don't need gear to invest in a game
In the world of games, being free (legally or otherwise) is pretty much requirement of exorbitant organic popularity.
It must have done well because I heard of it despite never playing it.
Guess most people just did not experience games like these the way we both did.
You can still download it to this day: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=14491...
> PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) [...] is based on previous mods that were created by Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene for other games, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, and expanded into a standalone game under Greene's creative direction.
> [...]
> Lead designer Brendan Greene, better known by his online handle PlayerUnknown, had previously created the ARMA 2 mod DayZ: Battle Royale, an offshoot of popular mod DayZ, and inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.
Gamers like to discuss the mechanics and gameplay and who copied who but all of this misses the major point- it was F2P first and foremost, in a category where there aren’t many if any free games, (+ was well executed, + multi-platform). But the F2P, that’s the real unprecedented aspect IMO.
If the App Store market has taught us anything about today’s game market, it’s that F2P titles (esp quality ones) will outperform paid upfront apps in sheer volume by multiple magnitudes (100-1000x if not more)
Instead, PUBG Corporation doubled down on extracting revenue and added lootboxes, a similarly broken mobile PUBG (yeah let's totally rewrite the game in another engine before we bother to fix the one we've got) and in-game cosmetic purchases.
This angered people twice as hard, because A) the sentiment surrounding in-game monetization with paid games and B) the fact that a free game had less buggy game logic and mechanics, while constantly adding new features and refining gameplay as it settles into its market.
> But the F2P, that’s the real unprecedented aspect IMO.
Not unprecedented. There were already F2P battle royales, they were just shitty and not marketed well.
> If the App Store market has taught us anything about today’s game market, it’s that F2P titles (esp quality ones) will outperform paid upfront apps in sheer volume by multiple magnitudes (100-1000x if not more)
Ok, that's just not true. I mostly play paid games on mobile. F2P worked for Epic Games because the Battle Royale genre was exploding and they provided the path of least resistance to becoming part of the scene, but after things have died down people will end up gravitating to more niche expansions on the genre which refine the gameplay in ways they prefer. Don't take this one data point and form an entire conclusion. That's bad business.
> Don’t take this one data point
A little irony there ;)
I’d like to see some evidence to the contrary. Perhaps you mostly play premium titles, but I wasn’t making a claim that people like you don’t exist. The fact of the matter remains that F2P quality titles outperform in download numbers, and the majority of top apps in the App Store support this claim.
I also misread your post a bit, and didn't fully understand the point you were trying to make. I agree that volume-wise, F2P outperforms but that's a given. I don't think that won't ever be true if we only look at the mass market as a whole. But once we start examining niche categories such as the competitive scene, I think this assumption becomes less accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAG_(video_game) (2010, Playstation 3)
> MAG used a new server architecture[8] to support online battles with up to 256 players
H1Z1 could, I believe, support 200-250 characters. PUBG superseded it with 100 players, then came Fornite. Arma 3 (2013), which housed the predecessor mod to PUBG, has a max player count of 255 IIRC.
In short, while it's important to have lots of players, I suspect it's not a large part of why Fortnite was successful.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Operations:_Typhoon_Risi...
It's really not; Delta Force: Land Warrior was doing 50 player multiplayer in 2000 and a number of games were doing 100+ within a couple years after that, and a few even before.
Of course this is really generalized, but I can't imagine Drake playing TF2 back in its heyday.
That's fair, and if that's the case, I'd still say Overwatch has a better claim to that title (beyond the initial purchase price, anyway-but Blizzard routinely opens the game up for extended F2P periods).
What's going to be interesting to watch in the purely F2P arena is this newcomer Apex from EA. I tried it out last night and it has a lot of interesting features and motifs that seem to be a collection of all of these games; you've got the dedicated classes from TF2, the "hero" theme from overwatch and the overarching battle royale/last team standing from Fortnite, PUBG and others.
Fortnite definitely getting there, but competitive Overwatch is reaching StarCraft levels of intense (or what competitive StarCraft was in the 2000's), there was a team from Europe I think that won over a million dollars in an Overwatch pro match back in 2017, teams are getting sponsored[1], even ESPN-"the worldwide leader in sports"-is getting into broadcasting Overwatch matches[2].
None of this is to take anything away from what the team over at Epic is doing or to say anything less of Fortnite, for what it's worth. It's definitely a phenomenon in its own right, but there's serious amounts of money being moved around for competitive OW gaming.
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[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2019/02/08/overw...
[2]http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24062274/overwatch-le...
TF2 -> Overwatch -> Apex Legends
PUBG is almost intimidating, fortnite is the opposite.
They really nailed it.
This is just wrong. The game became popular because its a pretty damn good game and quite fun. Yes, it is somewhat derivative but most things are. People forget that Epic is an old school titan of the gaming industry that pioneered a lot of what we see in FPS titles today. They know what they're doing, even if they lifted some inspiration from other titles.
I'd argue it's a lot more than somewhat derivative.
The game mechanics are a direct rip-off of Player Unknown Battlegrounds, except more 'kid friendly.' The only notable differences are being cartoonish and the addition of a building system (which looks a whole lot like the one in Rust). Here is a side-by-side video of gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KN6_Ibxnpk.
Their main source of income is selling in-game emotes like dances, which are all stolen without paying any royalty to their creators.
Probably missing a bunch of steps but you get the picture.
COD Zombies doesn't have building other than at specific points where you could reinforce barricades.
At the time the first COD Zombies game mode was released (Call of Duty: World at War) Battlefield did not yet have a barricading system (like it does now) or any sort of wave-based survival mode.
Quake is a deathmatch shooter, Battlefield is a tactical shooter. Very little resemblance.
Quake was made by the same people as Doom.
My point is that Fortnite copies very much from PUBG. I didn't make any arguments about whether that is acceptable or precedented.
Please read what I said and don't put words in my mouth.
The author might be missing an important part of the history here. PUBG and Fortnite both use the unreal engine.
Part of the development of the unreal engine during this time was related to adding features and performance improvements to the engine for a game like PUBG.
PUBG had many performance problems originally and they did not seem to have the technical ability or the access to make needed structural changes to the engine. This means PUBG developers had to work with the unreal developers to improve PUBG. It's entirely possible that the unreal developers used fortnite and started converting it to a battle royale game at this time. They would've needed a similar kind of game for testing the engine changes internally.
The next logical step was to complete the fornite BR mode and release it. Good for Epic games, questionable outcome for PUBG. In a way, it is similar to Amazon basics knowing what third party products are popular and finding a way to put a cheaper clone in the marketplace.
Epic started as a pure games developer. They somewhat accidentally fell into the engine business on the back of Unreal but turned it into a major part of their business in a way that id did not despite similar interest in licensing the Quake engine around the same era. They always continued to develop their own successful games however (the article does at least mention Gears of War) and in the past were sometimes accused of being more focused on shipping their own games than supporting engine licensees.
They have always maintained a business model built both around successful in house games as well as successful games from licensees. In this regard they differ from a purely engine focused company like Unity who don't have in house titles only licensees and engines like Lumberyard that have neither.
And cloud based gaming streamed to a thin client will always be a dumb idea and will never succeed for similar reasons that thin clients in general never take off but more fundamental. Games require low latency and it it will always make sense to have significant compute on the client because physics.
Curious to see what's the future of Fortnite now.
[1] https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/apex-legends-10-m...
The Penetration fortnite has had across ages 10-20 is almost surreal. Anecdote: I was playing Apex (and Siege, for balance...) and I can hear my friends younger brother playing fortnite with his friends - across the room -through the chat.
This also helps explains why you're younger brother was still playing Fortnite and why it's not gonna die to Apex.
My 14 year old cousin visited this week and has already shifted to Apex Legends... After months of being invested in fortnite.
Loyalty in non-rpg fps games is fickle.
No game may shine the way fortnite is in its peak for a while, but I do not see it having the longevity that the industry believe it will have.
In other words, it's a topic of the chattering clases trying to understand the youth.
everyone at my office plays Fortnite and we're from 30 to 50 years old.
My own anecdotal experience in squads is that half are probably teens. So - the parent comment is certainly conceivable.
I've played a bunch of fortnite last year, even spent a bit of money on some outfits and got a better mouse for builds - don't want to be a default ya'know ;).
It was "fun times" for sure - even met a few people I tried to play with regularly if I saw them online. Ultimately, the fun factor sort of wore off....next.
- is way faster to get into the game by being much more optimized.
- a typical game is between 15-25min, There are much less dead times when compared to PUBG and Fortnite
- The characters are fun and they bring an interesting approach to BR.
- The ping system is great. You don't need to explicitly use Voice communication. I've won a number of games without using Voice.
Give it try, its really a fun game.
They basically built a BR game from ground up, and James in the best bits of Titanfall 2 (a highly acclaimed fps shooter)