Fortnite: Gamers battle for supremacy

Fortnite+screen+capture

Mason Lucas

A screen capture shows a victory during a Fortnite battle.

Ask any gamer the most popular game or hottest game on the market right now, and you will probably hear Fortnite. Fortnite is a  game available for free that features a battle royale between 100 players who battle to the death until one person, duo team, or squad is left.

People can find people playing Fortnite anywhere, and IVCC students can find Fortnite on campus. Students are packing in the gaming center to play and watch others play a plethora of games, including Fortnite.

Kyle Follmer, a first-year IVCC student who plays in the gaming center on Wednesdays, said, “Fortnite, there is nothing really like it. It’s one of a kind in the fact that you can build, and everything is destroyable… if you get shot at you can build cover unlike PUBG where you have to find cover.”

Follmer has been playing the game since it came out and has spent more than $300 on cosmetic skins that do not help game play. And while some may think that’s crazy, that is how Fortnite makes its money: microtransactions in skins, cosmetics and season passes. So, Follmer is not the only one who has spent a lot on cosmetics.

However, not everyone is in love with Fortnite. Some prefer the more realistic shooter game play of PUBG (the first and more realistic 100-person battle to the death.)

Brett Gustafson, an IVCC student and avid gamer who plays on multiple consoles, is not a huge fan of Fortnite, saying, “The main thing is the whole building aspect. When I’m shooting and in a gun fight with somebody, I don’t want have to be an architect at the same time.”

Gustafson notes that the realistic aspect of PUBG, along with it being a first-person shooter (third-person is optional in the game), drives him more towards PUBG than Fortnite.

Victor Campos, another IVCC student and avid gamer, agrees with Gustafson. He said he prefers PUBG because “It’s a more realistic Fornite. It takes out the building which is a skill, but you need more skillful communication with teammates and shooting.”

However, Campos also is a fan of Fortnite, saying the skill in the game goes beyond any other game outside of PUBG.

While Fortnite has its critics, like it being a cartoonish knock-off of PUBG, the game is still soaring to new heights.

According to a CNBC gaming article in March, at some point in February 3.4 million people were playing at the same time. Epic Games, creator of the game, said it likely made it “the biggest PC/console game in the world”

They also stated in the article that since January until the story was published by CNBC on March 15, the game has been played by more than 45 million people.

Fortnite has been so on fire that many gamers, who stream their gameplay through Twitch, are making great money. In fact, CNBC had an interview with arguably the best Fortnite player in the world, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins.

Blevins confirmed to Forbes that he was making more $500,000 a month in twitch subscriptions and donations, as well as YouTube subscriptions.

Blevins was asked why the game is becoming so popular in his CNBC interview and said, “The fact that it is free to play is super huge, and it’s already across all the [major] platforms. Just [the] accessibility and how friendly the game is, they are just hitting every single mark perfectly.”

Plus, professional gamers are not the only one jumping in on the action. In fact, Blevins broke the most viewers for a single gamer when his stream was joined by Steelers wide-receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, rapper Travis Scott, and Drake. Twitch confirmed at the stream’s peak it had 628,000 concurrent views.

If Fortnite continues at its current pace, when it comes to the gaming industry, Fortnite will have its own victory royale.