This is the way the world ended in Fortnite...it did actually end with with a bang, not a whimper. If you haven’t seen already, season 10 of Fortnite ended with a blackhole event, destroying the world and all the players that were in the game at the time. Right now, you can’t log in and play Fortnite, but it will come back, won’t it?
Of course it will! This event was such a brilliant move by Epic! The internet is buzzing with what happened, some saying this is the event where people will ask, “Where were you when the blackhole happened?”.
Epic keeps adding cool events like this, and it’s not easy to pull these events off. There is a lot of development and testing involved that would drive most dev companies crazy. And it’s bold! To take the servers down so that nobody can play until season 11 starts? That’s insane. Can you imagine if McDonald’s closed its doors with some epic event, before they launched a new menu item? Investors would freak out!
And this is why I love the idea behind Fortnite. The ability to add new things and create this world in which the story is driven by the experience of the players and not a story driven by writers fascinates me. When I was in college, I played a lot of Dark Age of Camelot, an MMO that released right before World of Warcraft. The game was fun, not because of the stories or missions (although those were interesting too) but because of the interactions that the players had with the events that happened in the game. And this is the first game that I experienced where the devs added chaotic events to throw a wrench in the game. In a zone where low to mid-level characters would be grinding to level up, the devs introduced a giant that smashed through the area. He wasn’t there at the inception of the game, but just like that, a “random” encounter occurred: you could then see a large, lumbering giant approaching in the distance. And hordes of players ran through the area, working together to take down the giant. It was epic! It was something that you will remember!
Therefore, I should love Fortnite, but I don’t. I can’t get into the game. Maybe it’s because I’m not good at it. I could practice and get good at it, but I don’t have the desire to do so. Everytime I log into the game, I find myself confused, asking myself, “What exactly am I doing again?” and when I finally feel like I figured it out, I get killed...quickly.
I think the reason I don’t like Fortnite is because it makes me feel old. There, I said it. I was trying to avoid this moment for as long as I could, the moment where I feel I’m not in the loop with the newest games. I don’t like that feeling. It’s my personal blackhole, where my world has been destroyed.
But maybe that’s ok too. It’s time for a new generation to experience the joys that I had when playing as a kid. Maybe it’s time that I take my place where I’m the one yelling, “Get off my video game lawn!” or “Back in my day we had to walk 1000 miles to play a game!” I hope the new generation of players realize what a special time this is when they can experience something as epic as well...Epic’s Fortnite.
Comments