I've played Epic's Fortnite: Battle Royale long enough to enjoy its art direction and gameplay, but not long enough not to usually get killed by some random hippity-hopping jackass in the first 5 minutes -- and more key, not long enough to realize it's actually a new kind of cross-genre MMO:
Focusing on world-building and giving players a communal story to rally around is a business imperative for a free-to-play game like Fortnite. The game can only stay relevant so long as players feel invested in what they’re doing. That doesn’t just mean playing the competitive multiplayer every day to unlock challenges or try and win a match. Being invested in Fortnite also means caring more deeply about what story Epic is trying to tell, where the game is headed, and how that interplay between narrative and gameplay will help the title evolve over time, like just the best of MMOs... So when people say the future of online gaming looks like Fortnite, they’re not just talking about the battle royale genre, which won’t feel so shiny and new a year from now. They’re talking about the blending of every good idea from the last decade of online gaming, from both the East and West. Like most MMOs, Fortnite is free-to-play, constantly updated, and massive multiplayer.
Good analysis from the Verge's Nick Statt. I think many old school MMO/virtual worlders assume "persistent world" assumes that the world will keep running even when players are logged off. With Fortnite, the world restarts with every new battle royale match -- so while the world isn't persistent, the experience is. And clearly, that's a more appealing kind of persistence for more people: It's played by over 30 million people a month.
My SL Game design partner and I play fortnite together and it's super fun, we've both made the comparison to SL. The game characters don't have nearly as much detail, so it seems, as the SL avatars, but the maps are fully optimized for performance.
Posted by: Grid Famous Games | Wednesday, May 09, 2018 at 10:26 AM