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> It’s the epitome of “designed by committee”

I disagree with this, Fortnite figured out how to deliver a video game in an agile way.

The techniques developed around building and combat are top-notch, the game manages to feel very challenging without being miserable to play. It might not be your cup of tea.

> I don’t like how it’s shoved everywhere imaginable via advertising

Not Epic’s fault. You can thank the tech industry for figuring out how to put ads on everything, I don’t see how this is Epic’s fault. Don’t shoot the messenger when your problem is with online ads.

> I don’t like the fact that “default” is now used like a slur

Again, Epic didn’t make those kids shitty. When I was a kid, it was all who had which Pokémon cards, the fact that the goods are digital now doesn’t make a difference. That behavior existed when I was a kid.

> Not Epic’s fault. You can thank the tech industry for figuring out how to put ads on everything, I don’t see how this is Epic’s fault. Don’t shoot the messenger when your problem is with online ads.

That's fair.

> Again, Epic didn’t make those kids shitty. When I was a kid, it was all who had which Pokémon cards, the fact that the goods are digital now doesn’t make a difference. That behavior existed when I was a kid.

I mean, Epic didn't make kids shitty, that's true. But they did explicitly create a situation where the ability to express yourself in their social space requires financial investment. Don't tell me that wasn't intentional.

> a situation where the ability to express yourself in their social space requires financial investment

Thankfully adults don't judge each other by the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, etc. /s

But adults have money. Children do not, usually anyway. They either work chores or more likely, beg their parents, who may not be in a position to spend that money, and if their kids are playing free games, I'd say the likelihood is they aren't.

Selling crap to kids by way of their parents wallets is a time honored tradition in our society. Epic knew what they were doing. All the games like Fortnite do.

It's always been like this. Once it was Pokemon cards and a Gameboy, now it's a Fortnite emote.

That doesn't make it less gross.

Pokemon cards and Gameboy are more direct. Nintendo never gave away crippled gameboys for free, with an option to unlock features incrementally.

You don't remember all the gameboy accessories? The lighted screen especially was incredible back when a backlight wasn't built in. I was jealous of the kid who had the light, the printer, and tons of games.

If you think the kids who didn't have gameboys at all didn't get bullied because they weren't in the ecosystem, you'd be gravely mistaken.

True with the Gameboy, less so with the Pokemon cards. When you buy a pack, you're essentially pulling a slot machine lever. You hope to get one of those super rare cards (e.g. holographic Charizard).

Even if you weren't into collecting, it was difficult/more expensive to just buy the cards you needed for a good deck. You'd have to keep buying packs until you were able to build a deck you were happy with.

Probably the only thing that's changed is the immediacy and the scale: both of purchasing and of the social effects that come from the purchase.

I wish Nintendo gave away free to play Gameboys where you had to pay to get extra skins. I would have been happy to play Tetris with my default skin while all my friends with wealthier parents had custom levels and Tetris emotes.

> I mean, Epic didn't make kids shitty, that's true. But they did explicitly create a situation where the ability to express yourself in their social space requires financial investment. Don't tell me that wasn't intentional.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. They built a game and tried to make it as popular as possible, and succeeded. We should be upset that a capitalist entity requires money to participate? The craziest part about that argument is that the game is completely free to play. Are you saying that Epic built FN and monetized it specifically for kids to bully each other?

You are wrong, Epic has given away skins for free in the past, including letting people get an entire battle pass for free just by completing a bunch of in game challenges. You don't need to pay to stop being a "default".

I think service-based games have been the only ones to really mesh their production with an "agile" software development. Most traditional one-and-done games that "ship" usually have a more big-deadline schedule, even if deliverables are broken up into smaller sections.

I think Fortnite is the opposite, its designed by rapid iteration and prototyping. Epic had almost a decade to develop this game - and others - and iterate on them while they were financially supported by external investment and the success of Unreal Engine. It paid off when they finally found the right combination; skilled developers, excellent tech, accessible artstyle, free to play, battle royale, and construction. The only other studios that can really accomplish something like this are Blizzard and Valve.

Yeah, the idea that Fortnite is somehow "designed by committee" or less legitimate when Epic has spent the last 20 years iterating Unreal Tournament and Gears of War is ridiculous.

Epic knows how to make a hit game. Their games are almost always extremely well made and fun. Gears of War pretty much invented the cover mechanic in most modern shooters. To denigrate them just sounds out of touch, frankly.

I played Fortnite for a few hours because, hey, it's free, and it definitely has Unreal's genes with some building and last-man-standing techniques piled on top.

The difference in skill between me and the players who won was outstanding, just like it was back when I used to play UT after school. It's a solid game.

Like with most things in games, Gears of War popularized the cover mechanic but did not invent it. The cover system was inspired by KillSwitch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Switch_(video_game)), and there are earlier titles like Win Back that feature cover systems.

From the Wikipedia article...

In the design of Gears of War, lead developer Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games credits Kill Switch's cover system as one of the influences they put into the game's design, as Kill Switch's lead designer Chris Esaki was employed by Epic Games and was involved in the development of Gears of War.

Fortnite started as a cooperative tower defence kind of game, it's still out there with a name I can't remember, but it was not a good game. AFAIK, the battle royale mode was someone's side project, thanks to PUBG being all the rage back then. The fact that fortnite even exists seems like dumb luck to me.

I might be getting old. I hate Fornite as well. I tried it out, played a couple of hours, and my impression was "meh". It feels like a bunch of ripped off ideas from other games that do them better. And there's a problem with media that has mass appeal - it's the same with art or music. The more accessible the product, the more bland it's going to be. There really is nothing surprising in Fortnite.

It's because Fortnite is a soulless ripoff of GTA V and it has zero substance. The game is an empty void sprinkled with idiot celebrities who aren't discerning enough to understand that it's garbage. Fortnite at it's core is a game without a narrative, nothing subversive, no controversial elements, no meaning.

> soulless ripoff of GTA V

What? It started a base building tower defense. I'm not a fan but this is way off, it's not like GTA in any way.

And you don't need story to have great gameplay. If you shoehorned a story into something like Rocket League it would actually be hilarious.

> It's because Fortnite is a soulless ripoff of GTA V and it has zero substance.

I can't imagine how you'd come to that conclusion unless you think GTAV invented "multiplayer on a big map."

You missed out on the best part of Fortnite, the building. It's an incredibly unique, strategic, and skillful mechanic. No other competitive game has anything that is similar at all. I think they kind of came into it by accident but it's really quite incredible once you learn how the game works for high tier players.

> Articles like this fall into one of two categories: either paid promotion by the author, or the author's unwitting corroboration of Epic's marketing with this game.

> It's designed from it's core to have as much mass appeal as possible and the barrier to entry is downloading Epic's launcher, so naturally it's popularity is off the charts.

There's ten gazillion cynical, manipulative free-to-play games out there. None of them blew up like Fortnite. When it first launched, the gaming press was genuinely excited about it. It was the first really polished, professional entry in the (effectively) brand-new battle royale genre, finally pulling away from the jankiness and generic brown "realistic military" look of PUBG and its mod predecessors.

The game has become inextricable from the social phenomenon, at this point. It was mostly luck and good timing that pushed into into mega-success territory. But it was never bad or even mediocre.

Edit: Basically I'm saying that it's pretty silly to assume that just because you don't like something, anyone who does like it must be either an idiot or a shill.

It's a not-good commentary on you, not Fortnite and Epic, that you can't see past the cynical.

Fortnite is pushing boundaries for how to tell a story, it's creating a new kind of narrative, a new immersive way of writing that is worth seeing how it plays out. It's too young to know if it's any good, but it's distinct, and in something as old as storytelling, new things are insanely rare.

I've literally never played Fortnite, but it seems like a lot of people do, and if Epic can parlay that into something new, I'm very interested, even if I continue to only watch from the rafters.

I can see past the cynical fine. I've played it. It's alright, that's honestly my impression of it. The shooting mechanics feel a little loose, the framerate can jump around a bit, vehicle controls are wonky and change depending on the vehicle.

It's not bad, it's just aggressively okay. If this had a list price I doubt it would've been nearly the success it is. It's the upper echelon in quality for free-to-play.

I think you're looking for a more direct (verbal) story, and mistaking the absence of such as a fault of the game.

The point of the article, as I read it, was to describe how Fortnite uses its play area over time to build a lore, without words, and as a pretext of "battle royale" happens around it. The novelty here is how immersive the experience seems to be, from the author's perspective, which is something he doesn't believe has historically been possible with writing as we understand it currently.

> I think you're looking for a more direct (verbal) story

I'm really not. The "plot" involved in any multiplayer only shooter is at best, incidental to the game. It's almost never a selling point.

> The point of the article, as I read it, was to describe how Fortnite uses its play area over time to build a lore, without words, and as a pretext of "battle royale" happens around it. The novelty here is how immersive the experience seems to be, from the author's perspective, which is something he doesn't believe has historically been possible with writing as we understand it currently.

And I agree with all of that, my problem is that it's all centered around a game that I believe is fundamentally unworthy of that honor. A cynically produced product designed from the get-go to pry money from people's wallets, by way of manipulating their children. I find it inhumane and cruel especially to the kids who's parents aren't financially well-off enough to indulge them.

Games have a tremendous potential that I think is largely yet untapped, and it grosses me out that one of the first games with mass appeal to accomplish some of that is this... thing. This gross, manipulative, soulless little mediocre shooter.

It sounds like you're upset a game with mass appeal has mass appeal, because the very things you don't like about the game are what make it popular: you can play it on your phone, you can bling out your character with various skins (paid and unpaid), it appeals to the group of consumers with the largest amount of free time (and who set the trend for the gaming industry as a whole), etc.

That's how Fortnite got popular, and now it's using the spotlight it grabbed to innovate in the storytelling space, but all you want to talk about are the very things that end up being true about nearly every single AAA game released by any major studio in the past 5 years.

In other words, you sound grumpy, and you seemingly would rather take away the imperfect toy (and completely ignore its storytelling style) than see the incremental progress it's making as something of potential genuine literary value to be nurtured and grown.

You didn't mention the building. The building is what sets the gameplay apart and makes the game absolutely fantastic from a game design pov. (I say this as a professional game designer)