If you’re like a good number of people you’ve at least heard of Fortnite and have seen it advertised in many a store and even elsewhere, but until you’ve played it then you might not have any idea what it’s really all about. Despite that little factoid however Fortnite is at this time trying to remain relevant and is doing so quite well regardless of the fact that the developer is content with allowing the game to be carried on without that much assistance when it could tap into the massive potential of an e-sports setting. If you’ve taken any notice of e-sports you’ll see that this has become a platform for a generation of keyboard warriors that play to the delight of millions that marvel at their gaming skills and actually pay good money to, yep, see a person play a video game.
So the developer of Fortnite, Epic Games, is just as happy sticking with their current model as they have for a while now, and Fortnite is still vastly popular throughout the world, but it has started ceding some of its viewers to Apex Legends, one among the few titles that can attract various musical acts to perform their works within the game. Many have already addressed Fortnite’s addictive nature and have spoken candidly about how much time they actually spend on the game, as well as how much money it takes to actually get into it. In pop culture this is, at this time, one of the most popular games that’s ever been devised.
The only problem, and potential downfall, if there is one, is that Fortnite doesn’t really seem to work in e-sports, where it really needs to excel. Epic Games has managed to announce the Fortnite World Cup 2019, a tournament series that will award upward of $100 million in prizes over the course of a calendar year. If your eyes are bugging out of your skull right now you aren’t alone, people are winning these prizes for how well they can manipulate a joystick or keyboard and it’s a very big thing as of now. But again, the lack of being able to really compete in e-sports, which is something that many gamers are fully invested in, is bound to hurt the game if it continues on in this vein. Things have to change obviously, and resisting that change has been something that has done away with a good amount of technology over the years as new and improved methods and techniques have come along.
So far some of the posts that have been levied towards Epic Games and their refusal to change that quickly have been kind of harsh as some have even called it ‘amateur hour’ since the players can’t practice for tournaments since there are no custom games that can be utilized for such a purpose. If players are going to take the game seriously, and many of them do to an extreme, then Fortnite is going to have to change a bit and become a little more available and a lot different from a competitive standpoint. As of right now the only custom servers that players can access belong to a specific group and suffers from a horrible amount of lag.
Unfortunately that’s not the only problem since the 200 players that are able to access this custom server have a distinct advantage over the rest of the players. This might not seem like a big deal but with so many people vying for the top spot and ready to challenge any and all comers the best trained are going to have the easiest time taking on any competitors and will likely dominate the field, or at least have the best chance of doing so. There is without a doubt a big difference between public matchmaking in Fortnite and professional games, as the latter tend to create players that are much more prepared when an actual match comes along.
To those of us that grew up when video games were still cartridges and playing with a group meant playing with an actual physical group that were in the same room, Fortnite is miles away from anything we might have known. Yet people of all ages do manage to get into this game and find a level of interest that they wouldn’t have thought possible until they finally became addicted to it. The only downfall right now seems like a bit of elitism that is keeping the game from being able to be accessed by anyone and everyone that wants a shot at the prize and handing it off to the 200 or so individuals that have a chance to train in professional games. It might not be the case, but until Fortnite opens itself up to e-sports a bit more then it’s possible that it might miss out on the vast potential that has yet to be tapped.
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