The Death-Defying Friendships & Dance Clubs of Fortnite

Never mind that The New Yorker just published an embarrassingly, condescendingly bad article on Fortnite, there's a superb one from The Atlantic and novelist Robin Sloan, whose on the ground observations of the game echo the theme of Fortnite being a virtual world disguised as a multiplayer FPS:

I unlocked a critical upgrade: a single “emote,” an action outside the boundaries of run/jump/aim/shoot. It’s a heart. I can now press a key and cause a dorky cartoon heart to appear above my character’s head. In possession of a heart, I began to negotiate... Mostly I get blasted, but sometimes I don’t, and when I don’t, the possibilities bloom. Sometimes, after we face off and stand down, the other player and I go our separate ways. More frequently, we stick together. I’ve crossed half the map with impromptu allies.

Then there's the Fortnite dance clubs I die too soon to get close to:

Hidden around the island, there are dance floors, the lights still flashing and the music still oonce-oonce-ooncing amidst the desolation, and it is well-established that the dance floors are DMZs. This isn’t a rule of the game; as far as Fortnite’s code is concerned, a discotheque is as good a place for blasting as a dry creek bed. But the players disagree. If a renegade dares turn against the crowd, the crowd teams up against them, then returns to its revels. This norm isn’t absolute, of course, and it’s also a bit of a cheat, because it’s been established largely outside the game, on the message boards and streaming channels where Fortnite players gather.

The key here is the players evolving the world's social rules , and not the developers. (Though when the company added dance floors in the game, I suspect Epic was hoping their players would do something very much like this.)

Comments

[Fortnite Hack]

It’s hard to come by experienced people about this subject, but you seem like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks