Not related to the article but I just feel compelled to say every time it comes up that this game sucks, guys
Like it is personally offensive that the title of By Far The Biggest Videogame has descended all the way from Minecraft to this gormless piece of shit
It’s interesting how much my feelings about game messages these days are shaped by the inexorable math of design. How much the metaphor emerging from the play is dominant over design intent, and how powerless it feels when making games to change it.
The logic of Fortnite’s thematic content is brutally simple, as the author notes: applying a sharp, focused competitive structure adapted from DayZ’s descendants onto a failing Minecraft-inspired blend of competition and freeform crafting. And beyond that, guns and violence as competition because the simple thrill and a gun transcribe onto a 2D screen is one thing we’re really, really good at.
And within that no person at Epic had any agency to change it. And it’s not cultural shackles as much as decades of inherited design decisions shaping a genre and the limited choices that can be made to break out of it. Indeed, as vanilla Fortnite shows, it’s very hard to recombine these pieces in a slightly different way and resonate with people.
I’m way past being able to count the number of game systems I’ve designed as new and interesting stabs that, as they get revised and understood and integrated, accumulate more and more standard practice until I’ve walked back to conventional design. It’s almost nature, red-in-tooth, shaping these things towards AAA convergence; it’s mechanic a, which requires mechanic b, further requiring mechanic c, up to importing the superstructure of the genre.
When I had free reign as a student and when I hobby on my hobby games I feel (and am energized by) my social responsibility as an artist. I won’t make a game whose play tells a story the dressing argues against.
But in working like that I have to abandon entire edifices because design elements actually can’t be mixed without following the whole trail of logic and its carried, supporting mechanics. In a lot of ways, it’s a brand new trail through the wilderness or the interstate, and there’s no in between.
It’s never not been true that pop culture hits reveal something about their time, but these days – with distribution blockages much cleaner and an oversupply of good and even very good games in most every genre configuration, Important Games are near-mirrors, reflecting us more than the creators.
I mean yeah, the genre is called “Battle Royale” after a piece of dystopian near-future fiction (and influenced by Hunger Games as well).
Minecraft still has more MAUs than Fortnite if you care!
All I know is I got really obsessed with H1Z1 for a while and I found it to literally be sucking my soul out. I was a moody wreck. It was not all that pleasant, but was still very compulsive. Bad vibes in this free-to-play genre
This is good news at least
It’s too much to hope that Fortnite etc come to fantasise scarcity in the same way that teamsports fantasise bloody territorial combat but I’m gonna do it anyway
I think the character designs bug me the most. I get major Poochy vibes every time I have to look at one of those loading screens.
I thought fortnite would be half as fun as Starsiege Tribes.
i enjoy PUBG way more than fortnite, not sure what that says about me. probably that im too old to learn new mechanics
Game’s getting kids to dance, at least? Even if they mostly all just do the one
icy has a 2/5 review of FNBR up on his Patreon somewhere: mod edit: patreon link removed
Read it a while back. It eviscerates the game.
i guess i gotta wanna play it if i wannna talk about it huh
never stopped anyone
Just needs a podcast now amirite
Hey Now.
I grew up with free mmo’s and competetive shooters more than I honestly did any of the games people love on SelectButton.
Some part of this shohld resonate with me, and if not,
it is the children that are wrong.
go forth and investigate
He has 2.
General videogames: mod edit: patreon link removed
Planetary Annihilation: mod edit: removing this anyway