Huge milestone for Fortnite last Saturday:
A little over six years after it launched, battle royale sensation Fortnite just broke its all-time one-day player record — by going back in time. The launch of Fortnite OG, a special season which brings back the game’s original Chapter 1 map, drew an incredible 44.7 million players on Saturday, Nov. 4, who between them racked up 102 million hours of play.
I'm told Fortnite's daily/monthly user numbers have been trending down in recent months, but the clamor to play OG demonstrates the continued strength of the brand. Tens of million of people clearly still have it installed on their devices, or are perfectly willing to re-install, when there's a burst of new content.
This strength from Fortnite as a consumer brand is echoed by its continued strength as a metaverse platform:
- Roughly fifty-percent of time spent in Fortnite is in creator-made experiences developed by the Fortnite community and third party brands (Epic tells me).
- Nearly 1000 Fortnite Creative user creators are earning a decent part-time ($10K/year or more) or full-time income -- with many earning more than most Epic employees, some more than everyone except Sweeney himself.
A substantial number of those players who returned to play OG will also go on to explore community/brand-made content. So here's some advice (featured in my book) from Mackenzie and Simon of Alliance, a studio which has created Fortnite experiences for brands like Doritos and, well, Joe Biden's 2020 campaign: