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Comment by TheGRS | Hacker News Reader

Seems weird that its all happened with a shooter. They've been pretty much there the whole time. Battle Royale as a game mode/genre isn't the most unique idea to ever come along either. The visuals sort of set it apart, though I've seen plenty of cartoony shooters that have come before.

I can't really put my finger on what makes Fortnite work so well with teenagers, other than how the game happened to seize on a fad at just the right time, and then went all-in with teenager-pleasing updates.

The only other game that had this sort of success was Minecraft. Just perfect timing with a game that was highly moddable and became a digital hangout spot for kids.

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Fortnite is one of the few games that is available on all major platforms, including mobile, which allows online cross-play. I believe its accessibility, cost, and scarcity of alternatives is what makes it appealing to younger audiences.

The portability of Unreal Engine 4 places Epic Games in a unique position where they can deliver this kind of experience.

I think what's kind of odd though is that it didn't happen sooner. Nothing technologically-speaking today is much different than, say, 15 years ago. Other than bandwidth and console-maker's willingness to work with each other for the greater good.

I don't know why they did it, to be honest. IIRC microsoft tried halo 2 or 3 briefly play testing xbox vs pc, and pc won everytime due to how much more accurate a mouse is vs a thumbstick. In this gen, microsoft finally allowed cross platform play with fortnight and PC players still win every engagement.

Exactly this- I don't particularly enjoy the game, however it's an easy way for me to stay in touch with friends who live far away and play on different mediums than PC.

> I can't really put my finger on what makes Fortnite work so well with teenagers

Free To Play!

Exactly, combine it with cross platform play and everyone can squad up and play a round at the drop of the hat. No longer are you locked into buying whatever console your friends play either.

I suppose, though that concept has been around awhile too.

Concepts don't have to be new to be successful. Often it's the right combination of factors coming into the right environment that catches fire like Fortnite.

Part of it is the whole battle royal system plays on sunk cost fallacy pretty hard. Depending on how long you last you get pretty invested in a given game, and if you get killed over some bullshit mechanic (and there are a LOT), the first thing you want to do after screaming is jump back into another 5-15 min game, because it will be different this time of course.

In games where you respawn and can keep trying to play well an entire game, if you have a couple bad matches you are probably going to stop playing for the day. I know people who've only won fortnight a couple of times yet still play religiously, chasing that dragon, screaming at the TV when they get eliminated by a single point blank shotgun blast. I tried to get into fortnight but it seemed pretty unhealthy, imo.

I'm pretty mediocre at skill based games in general, and the whole time playing fortnite and games like it, it just felt like my only purpose in the entire game was to be some fodder for a "more important" player to shoot for their entertainment.

Non battle royale games at least give me a chance to have my own moments of "glory" instead of consistently using me to avoid having to build any actual gameplay

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