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A phenomenal game is hit, and then there will be a lot of games to follow.

It is conceivable that countless game companies have made countless Battle Royale games, and even some people do martial arts, cold weapons, medieval Battle Royale, and some p

Chier Hu, Blogger

January 22, 2021

12 Min Read

Why does "Fortnite" stand out among the follow-up games of Battle Royale games? 

 

A phenomenal game is hit, and then there will be a lot of games to follow. 

It is conceivable that countless game companies have made countless Battle Royale games, and even some people do martial arts, cold weapons, medieval Battle Royale, and some people do racing cars that collide with each other or Battle Royale that allows players to shoot each other in boats. 

In our general understanding, it is difficult to follow the trend of plagiarism more than the original case, but "Fortnite" as a follow-up work, it can be said to be more than ten times the popularity of Battle Royale! 

It is a rare case in which micro-innovation surpasses the prototype game. What is the right thing to do with this game?

 

The success of "Fortnite" in the West alone is already frightening. Let me read you a number-the income in April 2018 is more than 200 million US dollars! 

It collected $300 million in May! 

The number of monthly active users exceeds 100 million in just a few months! 

It should be said that it has set a record in the whole history of western games.

 

Four elements of the popularity of "Fortnite"

 

Why is "Fortnite" so popular? 

I have summed up four elements for you, which are. 

1. The core play of construction elements has been added. 

2. Cartoon style suitable for the whole age, 

3. Ultra-fast update speed. 

4. Creative Battle Pass design. 

As we said earlier, the popularity of "PUBG" has led to the emergence of a wide variety of Battle Royale games on the market. What are the characteristics of "Fortnite"?

 

"Fortnite" adds the core play of the construction element, which is the first element of its popularity. 

Other games, whether Battle Royale games or shooting games in a broader sense, are trying to simulate the real world, with all kinds of guns, and you have to consider recoil when you shoot, and so on. 

But by building the element, Fortnite completely breaks this pattern and creates a new world. 

In the game, you can tear down everything you encounter, then collect the materials, build them freely, build walls if you want to build walls, and build a ladder if you want to build a ladder. it's just like magic! 

The innovation in this game is awesome, which greatly satisfies the players' sense of control and creative desire. 

In "Fortnite", you see an enemy in front of you and you want to take a shortcut to get there. What should I do? 

You can build a ladder and climb it quickly; 

what if someone in the distance is ready to attack you and there is no obstacle between you two? You can quickly build a wall to block the enemy's bullets directly, and if you think about the fun of the game and the way to play it, it will create a lot of different ways to play it.

 

When it comes to why this game is so novel to add building elements to the game of Battle Royale, there is a short story is very interesting. The company that created the game "Fortnite" is Epic, the main business model of the company, not the game company. They have always focused on selling game engines. In fact, they are not willing to do technical support for others, and others make a lot of money. 

He can only earn some engine fees, so he has been trying to develop his own games. Most companies like Epic, which make engines in the industry, have been trying to make their own games because games are more profitable. 

However, the games made by Epic were not successful in the past, including the game "Fortnite". In fact, they were already in development seven or eight years ago, and they all went online and operated about five or six years ago.

 

Why is this game called "Fortnite"? 

That is, the combination of the words fortress and night, that is to say, building castles and arranging organs during the day and defending against zombies who come to attack at night is actually a multi-person cooperative game of building tower defense, which is not at all the way Battle Royale gameplay now, and this game, uh, should have been in operation for a long time, but it was not successful. Almost the company was about to give up the game, but suddenly found, "Yo, Battle Royale is becoming popular. Battle Royale is a good way to play. Can we try to add a Battle Royale game to the game Fortnite? " 

This is also an idea put forward by an employee of the company on a whim. Give it a try. Anyway, the cost is not high. Adding a way to play a game that has been mature and in operation for several years is much easier than making a new game from scratch, so it is actually fast. In a few months, the Battle Royale method of the game "Fortnite" has been made. 

As a result, it became popular unexpectedly.

 

Wait, isn't "Fortnite" a game that was launched seven or eight years ago? 

After so many years, the painting style has long been out of date, how can it still attract so many players? 

The second hit element of "Fortnite" is the cartoon style of the game. 

The greatest advantage of cartoon art is that it is not easily out of date and has a wider audience. 

If you switch to other styles of games, the art made seven or eight years ago is generally out of date. 

Coincidentally, the game "Fortnite" uses a cartoon style, and the cartoon art style does not need to pursue the degree of special refinement of the picture, so even the art made seven or eight years ago will not look out of date. 

On the other hand, precisely because of the cartoon style, coupled with the elements you have built, a large number of primary and secondary school students poured into the game, and these young groups suddenly swarmed into the game.

 

Then, in addition, this game does not require a high level of machines, and the cartoon style, so it happens to be relatively easy to transplant to mobile phones. These relatively young primary and secondary school students and children, they do not have access to computers and game consoles often, so they often use mobile phones to play games. 

In addition, the game is quickly transplanted to the mobile phone, which greatly increases the user base of the game. 

A large number of primary and secondary school students who used to play other games turned into playing "Fortnite" in the whole class. 

With its unique way of playing games and a wider range of painting styles, Fortnite will inevitably have to compete with a large number of "Battle Royale games" in the same period, so what does it have to rely on to stand out from these "Battle Royale games"?

 

The third important reason for the popularity of "Fortnite" is its update speed. 

One of the advantages of this company has to be mentioned here, that is, the company happens to be large, and then it does not need to find its own agents, and then it is the company that makes its own engine. It is easy to modify any problems with the engine, plus the game has been online for a long time. 

So many possible BUG of the server and possible holes in the operation have been solved a long time ago. 

Then they made an important decision to provide updates as quickly as possible. 

They bet almost all the R & D efforts of the whole company on this project, and no European and American game company in history has been able to update a game with such a strong and fast speed.

 

Let me give you a few numbers. Since its launch, this game has been updated almost every week, with a large version iteration every two weeks, and it constantly adds new weapons and deletes some old weapons. in two years, nearly 200 weapons and props have been updated, and new game modes have been constantly made. in two years, it has updated more than 20 new game modes. 

Let's take a look at the update speed of the same other games. PUBG only updated 4 maps and about 50 weapons or props in two years. 

As for "Overwatch", only four new heroes and five new maps have been updated in two years. 

There is also a particularly popular new Battle Royale game at the beginning of 2019, "Apex Legends" produced by EA, which has done well, attracting players at a record pace in about two or three months than when "Fortnite" first came out. 

However, because it was updated with a new gun and a new hero several months after it was launched, its popularity quickly fell off. 

It also proves that "a game that can be updated quickly is how attractive it is to players and how effective it is to a game that can continue to be popular." 

Employees who work at Epic really often work 80 hours a week. Anyway, the company has the money and gives everyone a bonus. You can do it anyway, which is extremely rare in the western video game industry.

 

Why can "Fortnite" charge more than 300 million US dollars a month? 

Such a scary record peak of income is closely related to the third feature I'm going to talk about next, which is that it has designed a new payment model. 

First of all, "Fortnite" simply said, "I'll choose the free model." 

Because the Battle Royale game is a paid game, if you want to enter this game, you have to pay for this game before you can play it, but Fortnite says, "you see, I have so many children's players now, they have free time and no money anyway, so I might as well catch up with the latest trend, and I might as well learn from the free online games that Asians often do." 

With this decision, it has greatly expanded its user base, and its number of active users has reached many times that of Battle Royale! 

In particular, you should pay attention to thinking that "there will be 100 people every time this game is matched. If you don't have a large number of users as a support, then the general game can't be done at all." so in fact, free of charge should be a crucial decision for this game, a valuable decision, it is right to choose a free game.

 

As a free game, many players are still children, why can it charge so much money? 

This is why it has made a major innovation in the payment model, called Battle Pass. 

It is equivalent to making an expansion, with new game mode, new equipment, new skin, new badge, many game currencies, etc., and it is not original. 

Battle Pass, what does this Battle mean? 

It's not like "if you buy a Pass, it's like I go to Disneyland or I go to the cinema, anyway, I buy a ticket, I pay for it and I have it." it's not like that. 

Battle Pass means that you have to fight, you have to follow my rules, you have to keep a lot of quests, systems, and battles in this game, and finally you unlock the Pass. 

In fact, this model has been used in games before, and although it works, it is not as successful as "Fortnite" because "Fortnite" has made some important innovations in this mode.

 

The most important thing is that he added a Free Pass to this Battle Pass. 

Free Pass gives players the possibility of getting the pass without paying at all, but you may have to take a little more time or stronger skills. 

However, note that although you play the same content as paying users, many of the rewards you accumulate cannot be unlocked. There are some special clothes and props that can be unlocked only by spending money on Battle Pass, and some cool and cool things that you can't get. The longer you play Free Pass, the more rewards you accumulate, and the game will keep reminding you that "at any moment, as long as you spend money on Battle Pass." 

All the rewards for these processes you have played can be unlocked instantly and you can get them all, "and it even offers some promotions that will allow you to fill in the content of previous seasons. 

You know, for free users, there is always a moment when they can't help thinking, "I've worked so hard to save so many rewards, I might as well buy a Battle Pass, and unlock them all." 

Fortnite scheme is the kind of mentality that players can't help.

 

This design model is actually much in line with the traditional idea of free online game design — I will give you the possibility of a free game, but I will also give you a strong temptation: "you only need to spend a little money. you can get a lot of rewards. "

The more time you spend without spending money, the deeper the play process, the more rewards you can get if you accumulate a little bit of money, so giving "the temptation to spend a little bit of money" is getting bigger and bigger. This is a common idea that we often use in designing traditional free online games, but it is used incisively and vividly by Epic in "Fortnite". 

All the companies that try to do free online games, even those that pay for online games, have copied this model and have now become standard for all online games. 

It should be said that this is a particularly significant contribution to "Fortnite"!

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