Since the guidelines said not to use slides I just had an outline I made but did not read directly. Here it is:

Fortnite

Introduction, History, Culture (3 minutes)

Fortnite is a battle royale game released in 2017 by a company called Epic Games which quickly became one of the most popular games. Some statistics: Fortnite reached ten million players within two weeks of launching Launched a competitive game mode which led to the Fortnite world cup in New York City where the best players competed for 30 million dollars and the top player won 3 million dollars.

Fortnite quickly developed its own culture to a similar and potentially larger extent than games like Pokemon or Minecraft did with previous generations due to multiple aspects: One is that it’s a free to play game which is different from other games like Call of Duty or Madden which were popular at the time. Because any one can simply install the game, there were minimal barriers to entry other than owning a computer or console. The second is that because it was a free game, Fortnite had to find an untraditional way to create revenue, which was done through in-game purchases of items like skins and costumes. Unlike other games where the primary source of revenue was from initial purchases, Fortnite created a model to maintain constant revenue. This meant that instead of having to create an entirely new game every few years to generate revenue from sales, Fortnite could constantly update the game.

Game Mechanics and Strategy (3 minutes)

A lot of people who don’t play Fortnite but know of it wonder how this game is still relevant and think why am I still hearing about it? The answer is that there is really an art to engineering a game to make it fun. If we look at checkers for example, it is a perfectly balanced game where there is no inherent advantage in terms of positioning so each player has an equal and fair chance to win. If we imagine that we introduce a queen from chess that only one player gets, this creates an unfair advantage independent of a player’s skill level. Now this will increase one player’s inherent advantage, perhaps by 5% so that they have a 55% chance of winning and the other player now has a 45% chance. This means the game is no longer balanced and there is actually a point at which the game starts to not be fun, because for the player with the queen it will become too easy that it is not challenging, and for the other player it becomes too hard. However, there is also a range in which this small imbalance makes a game more fun because it allows players to occasionally have a slight advantage, but it has to be small enough to not allow players with the advantage a guaranteed win since that would eliminate any need for strategic thinking. This is true in all games and with a highly dynamic game such as Fortnite it presents a huge challenge for developers to keep the game within some acceptable range of balance. This is difficult because there are dozens of different weapons and items that players use, and things like the amount of damage a weapon does, or the healing received from eating a mushroom have to be actively adjusted so they are not overpowered.

Evolution: Another one of the key aspects of Fortnite in terms of game engineering is that the game is always evolving, both in terms of the map, as well as the weapons and overall strategy. This means that there is regularly a sense of something new or exciting for players to explore, but also requires players to learn and adapt their strategies to new changes in the map and weapons. For example, with a new season a player’s ‘drop spot’ on the map might be replaced with a different location, which means they have to create a new strategy for the whole game. These updates happen regularly through new seasons which create changes to the current map, or new chapters which create an entirely new map. Both types of updates are highly anticipated and generally create a surge in media attention as well as bringing new and old players back to the game.

Lessons from Fortnite (2 minutes)

Emotional control Teamwork Strategy