I’ll be looking at what might make Fortnite fun for its players. As someone who played plenty of Minecraft Hunger Games as a kid, the mechanics of Fortnite weren’t difficult to grasp. Since it’s usually a one-round fight to the death that lasts maybe 20-30 minutes, I found fewer storyline/narrative aesthetics fuelling it. What I did find includes:
Sensation: Haptic feedback on the controller when a player is shooting or senses a gunshot nearby makes the combat aspect of the game more palpable. The player is also able to see an intricately designed map, player skins, and weapon designs.
Competition: Players either go solo or with a small team and battle it out until one player/team remains, which makes it a highly competitive game at its core with a sole winner or winning team out of 100 players.
Discovery: With every update, the map changes slightly and will be greyed out for the players to explore until they are able to traverse those parts. The map on which players are allowed to compete acts like a nuclear world that takes players at least a few games to really get used to after each update. Players can also unlock new skins by playing the game and add them to their repertoire.
Self-expression: The game offers thousands of skins that release practically daily, to the point where I’m astonished by how many people they must need to employ to achieve this. There are thus near endless combinations of how a player may choose to present themselves in the game.
Fellowship: Fortnite allows players to compete alone, in random teams, or with their friends. Players not only have to survive but also protect their teammate and revive them should they die.
Go further:
In Chris Crawford’s classification of fun, I saw that the emphasis was on the concepts and terms related to game design and a more mechanistic description of what creates fun in its different forms. In Nicole Larazzo’s 4 Keys to Fun, the emphasis was more so on why certain games are played and what need it fulfils within the player. I agree with the focus on the player experience (PX) in the 2 Keys to Fun approach because I believe that something important to consider when looking at a game is what we seek from it. As for the categories, I do think they feel a bit obscure to me (like from the description of Serious Games, I’d think something like politics or competing in a hackathon, and for Easy Fun I imagine something like painting, none of which are necessarily games but fit these descriptions). But also I couldn’t get the link to open and just found a random source for this online so it may be my understanding that’s limited.
