Gadgetory

for tonight is the biggest game on the planet right now even if you don't play games that much you've probably seen a fortnight clip or two on social media and heard about the game's meteoric rise but beyond being super popular the game was also incredibly important to the future of the industry for tonight is impacting how modern video games are developed and how they get popular stay relevant and make money so what's the secret to its success let's take a look at the ingredients or for tonight that have turned it into such a big hit and how that formula is changing pretty much everything about online games in 2018 well you might not know about for tonight is that it's been cooking for a while years in fact the game was announced way back in 2011 and when it finally launched last summer it didn't even include the battle royale mode that has made it so popular the developer Epic Games saw a big opportunity to capitalize on a trend set by the game club G and so it iterated quickly in released a version of four-night that painted 100 people against one another in a big sprawling environment the result is that now for Knight is played by tens of millions of people and it makes a fortune for epic every month in April the game made 300 million dollars that's more than the New Avengers movie made in its opening weekend this game has gotten so big that some people in the industry I think for Knight may become a generation defining title think something like Minecraft so what makes fortnight's special why is it so successful and popular and why are people spending so much money on it the answer there is a bit complex involving into how video games typically get made and how they make money also how that process has been changing over the years for fortnight it's important to understand that it's not doing anything super new it's not the first free-to-play game certainly mobile games predominantly from Asia figured out years ago that if you gave away a game for free you could charge players small amounts of money to make their characters like unique 4 egg is also not the first game to be treated as an evolving service instead of like a one-off product names like destiny overwatch World of Warcraft they've been doing this for years but most importantly for Knight isn't even the first Battle Royale game they copied most of the gameplay from pub G which itself is based on earlier game mods like dayz before tonight is the first free-to-play Battle Royale game and is updated almost daily it's super polished ones well basically every platform including phones and it has a very cartoony art style that appeals to all ages which is great for parents who are worried about video game violence the ingredients were all there and epic was just the first one to do it well they didn't set out to make the biggest game in the world but they did anyway because they were willing to take risks and evolve if you play a lot of games like me you're probably hooked on fortnight and like me maybe you've spent a little bit of real money on the game or maybe a lot of real money so here is my whole vault of emotes that I bought there's of course the disco dancing one to go with my disco dancing character it's those little floss dance you can even do the Snoop Dogg drop it like it's hot dance so why are we you and me spending so much money on a free video game well in fortnight most of the money that you spend is spent on accessories like costumes and hang gliders and pickaxes that don't help you do any better at the game but they do help you stand out on the battlefield you can make yourself look like a swamp monster or a disco dancer or even Keanu Reeves from John wick you can also spend money on water called emotes which is just industry speak for really silly dance moves I think is particularly good at designing new emotes they're always pulling from popular memes and encouraging the community to even submit their own but where epic was really smart was in creating a system for players to unlock some of these items without spending any real money they do this by borrowing a lot from role-playing games where you use XP to level up and you complete challenges to progress essentially a system that rewards players for investing more time for instance epic sells a three-month subscription service for $10 called the battle pass with its own set of unique rewards and only by playing the game pretty much every single day can you unlock every costume and dance I subscribed to the battle paths for three seasons in a row now because I play at least a little bit every day and it made sense also I needed the John wick skin because reasons I think it's always adding new and wild stuff to the game for free like jet packs and shopping carts and new experimental game modes that keep it fresh every week lately they've been going even further by crafting elaborate storylines for fort like the meteor crash that happened last month they give players lots of narratives to invest in and talk about online so sure the game is done really well people love it but does that mean that every game in the future is just gonna be a reskin a fortnight no there will always be a place for those big franchise games they come out once every few years and really make waves like Grand Theft Auto or Zelda or the new God of War but because for tonight is so popular it's hard to imagine the best bits that it won't be copied like gaming's biggest players this is something totally new this is doing battle royale the blackops way I'm in this day and age the most popular games the ones that people talk about and play every single day you absolutely need to be fun to watch and for tonight is an amazing spectator sport it's everywhere on social media with clips flooding Reddit and Instagram and Twitter for night viral moments they're legendary in the community and it's really really huge on YouTube and twitch take Tyler ninja Blevins the most popular twitch streamer in the world ninja who's a former Halo Pro ditched his eSports career just when fournaye was getting big and by the spring he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month playing for night for upwards of 12 hours a day on Twitch then in March ninja played with Drake yes that Drake it was a huge milestone for fortnight and gaming culture and it happened in the middle of the night with no promotion nobody really saw it coming and yet more than 500,000 people tuned in to watch it live it really marked the moment for a night felt like it was going mainstream with so many people playing this game these streams have gigantic built-in audiences before and is creating a whole new class of internet celebrity on YouTube and twitch that's because for the really good players porn and is a great tool for creating viral clips of high school plays and other really shareable moments for you or me watching somebody else play for a night is just as entertaining as watching a TV show or sport and if you watch you might just learn a few things too so the game industry is watched all of these shifts happen over the years the push to make games more streamable to turn them into free-to-play platforms and everything else that fortnight has really now all these companies are trying to make sense of it and adapt but just as for tonight came out of nowhere last fall and surprised everybody some new game or concept might do the same to fortnight the better yl John R won't be the hot new thing forever and game design nowadays it's all about copying iterating and finding a new way to do something better for epic if it wants to continue making the most popular game in the world it cannot get complacent they have to remember that taking risks experimenting and listening to players is why foreign aid got so big in the first place for the rest of the industry it would be smart actually just copy for tonight but to really learn from epics willingness to adapt that might be the most important lesson to learn from for tonight's success for more gaming news and stuff about fortnight and better flossing check out polygon comm where they're better at dancing alright good I'm really hot in this jacket