I played Fortnite which is developed and released by EpicGames. It’s available on MacOS, Windows, game consoles (PS4, PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switches, etc), and Android/iOS! I played on a friend’s PS5. The target audience is teens and young adults, and I actually saw a blog post that claimed the target audience is “young male gamers between the ages of 12 and 25”. I thought this was an interesting point, probably suggesting that the game is stereotypically “male”, including concepts of violence, shooting, etc, which is interesting point of discussion (and controversy). In general, gaming communities are already predominantly male, so this makes me wonder if Fortnite’s marketing or mechanics make the game come off as preferable for male players. I took this into account when playing, but honestly felt that blogger might just be sexist.
Playing this game was really overwhelming. I didn’t go through any tutorial since I played with someone who already played Fortnite. I played on a PS5 and was just instructed verbally while in the world. From my time playing, I could tell that there are so many components to Fortnite, and I imagine that more and more features continue to get added as the game blows up more. I would argue that Fortnite’s addictiveness stems from the randomness in the world that makes each new game fresh and unseen for players, social dynamics like reciprocity in friend building design, as well as the norms that force players to look or act a certain way in order to have “clout” in fortnite.
There is an abundance of randomness throughout Fortnite. No two games are the same because each game has 100 other live Fortnite players. Each game you play will have different players. In addition, the world is different each time, with weapons hidden in different chests, chests in different places. Additionally, the whole concept is that the world is a circle that shrinks, so there’s many obstacles that make the game’s trajectory different every time. In class we talked about input vs output randomness, and Fortnite very heavily relies on output randomness. These are things that the player can’t control, but impact the player’s game play. Those random storm eyes, weapon chests, NPCs are all output randomness.
One thing I noticed is that the game used the design concept of “near misses” to draw me in. When I played my first game, I got 6th place. I knew this was out of 50 teams, so I felt pretty good about myself so I wanted to play more.
Another mechanic I felt added to the game was how teammates can revive you. I felt this, along with the fact that you can chat with other players online really upheld many of the concepts from the game design for friend building paper. I feel like when you have/make friends, you feel more invested, and feel more pressure for “reciprocity”. If your teammate or another player wants to play again, you have to play again, feeding into a loop of replayability. Additionally, if you’re the reason that your team loses, you might feel pressured to play again to make sure you haven’t let them down. I think this is a unique psychological tool to keep people hooked.
Finally, Fortnite is a live business model, so there were lots of places for in app purchases. During my playing I felt that for Fortnite all of the in-app purchases were “clout”-related, like your character’s skins. One thing I really liked when playing Fortnite was how you could get your player to dance. The dance moves were super silly and the music in the background made it really funny for me. 
But of course, you also need to spend money to get more dance moves. But, people are willing to pay for things even when it’s just something cosmetic.
Of course, you can also make in-game purchases for things like weapons, healing items, ammo, etc. I imagine that if there is an instance where someone is super into a game and they just really want to survive so they are willing to pay to make it through. The more someone cares about how well they do in fortnite, the more money they spend, and the more addicted they get. It’s just a loop.
Morality of randomness
In Fortnite, randomness almost seems necessary. So many players play the game live at the same time, so they must be randomly assigned to games. Additionally, the game would become boring if each time everything was in the same place. There wouldn’t be any replayability. I felt that since the chance outputs randomness, the player just gets a new game to play each time, with the same rules. If it was the opposite, ie shooting someone might not kill them for example, then the game might get frustrating. I want to say that the randomness in this game matches a lot of first person shooter games. It is familiar and seems customary. Therefore, in this context, I feel like randomness is certainly morally permissible since everyone still has an equal opportunity to win! Of course, when addiction and monetization come into the same conversation, there are times where the game can veer towards manipulation. If the randomness obscures the game too far, then Fortnite (especially since it’s targeted towards young players), can cause problems. I don’t think Fortnite does this, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to do that.
Ultimately, Fortnite blends together randomness, social dynamics, and monetization into a well packaged game that all work together to keep playing attached and addicted!
