Fortnite has been one of the top played games on consoles, PC and mobile devices for several years now. This is all thanks to their ongoing “pivot” strategy, which has been in effect since the very beginning. I’ve mentioned many times how the original Fortnite was nothing like the game we know today. In fact, it didn’t even start out as a Battle Royale game. That was the first of many “pivots” in the Fortnite strategy.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

In the very beginning, Fortnite: Save the World was an unpopular action-building co-op game. It wasn’t until the early success of battle royale games (like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) that the Fortnite team decided to pivot and add an extremely successful battle royale mode to the game. This became the main staple and the game immediately took off and continues to dominate today.

While the new Fortnite battle royale mode wasn’t a complete ripoff of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it may have taken off due to the game’s ease of accessibility for new players. The Fortnite gameplay is way more welcoming than that of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. There was also the added building mechanics borrowed from the original Fortnite: Save the World. 

Due to the success of Fortnite, many games attempted to enter the battle royale arena — and many failed. A few stuck around for a bit, mainly those with some sort of twist. Call of Duty: Warzone has continued to give Call of Duty fans a free-to-play battle royale mode. Apex Legends stuck to a three-player team system. Both of these games come from established teams in the FPS (First Person Shooter) space — the makers of Call of Duty and the team behind Titanfall.

At one point I tried out SUPER ANIMAL ROYALE, which was a sillier, cuter approach to the battle
royale formula.

EPIC RISE

As Fortnite: Battle Royale continued to dominate, we started to see more licensed events, cosmetics, and more within their battle pass system. Who doesn’t want to see their favorite characters from movies, shows, other games, and even real life celebrities in their most played game?

It’s now kind of crazy to think that in one battle you may see the Mandolorian, Thor, Goku, Rick, Morty, LeBron and the Weeknd all battling it out for that “Victory Royale.” We’ve now seen the rise of battle passes in games, with games like Overwatch 2 (or Overwatch 1.5) going free-to-play and offering cosmetics in the form of a paid battle pass.

Epic Games (the makers of Fortnite) have even created a competing digital PC games marketplace for Steam — the Epic Games Store. They even give out one-to-two free games per week, and many more during the holidays (daily game giveaways). My Epic Games Store collection has almost caught up to my Steam collection, even though I’ve only bought about three games total from Epic.

THE FUTURE

After almost seven years on top (since 2017), Fortnite is still evolving. Last year, they transformed from a major game to a full online gaming platform. Epic Games continues to acquire established studios. That’s how they were able to release three new games within Fortnite.

NEW ADDITIONS

Let’s go over these brand new game modes. We’ll begin with the first pivot to Battle Royale.

The “Original” Fortnite: Battle Royale

Fortnite: Rocket Racing

Last month, three new games were added to the Fortnite catalog. My favorite of the three is Rocket Racing from the makers of Rocket League (Psyonix, now owned by Epic Games). I’m happy with the decision to have the Psyonix team create something new for Fortnite, instead of just migrating Rocket League into the Fortnite platform. We’ve seen many new additions to the fast-paced arcade racing genre over the years, and Rocket Racing‘s gameplay lives up to the competition.

LEGO Fortnite

I did not play LEGO Fortnite for very long, but the game did give me some major Minecraft vibes. To me, a LEGO-lover, this is a better version of Minecraft and one I’m more likely to get into. However, I don’t see myself playing much more of this, but it feels very polished.

Fortnite Festival

The video below is from the one and only time I have played Fortnite Festival thus far. This is another game created by a trusted Epic Games-owned developer, Harmonix (makers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero). As far as rhythm games go, this is also a very well-done game. The question is, will this game work without the instrumental controllers from the past games.

---

As other games begin to adopt the Fortnite battle pass model, Epic games is moving onto bigger, better things. They have now pivoted to the Roblox plan of giving players an endless marketplace of user-generated games and content, as well as dropping the new game modes seen above.

When Fortnite first began dominating the gaming landscape years ago, I thought they were just copying what’s popular at the moment. I think there’s something else going on now. The Epic Games team just has the foresight to predict what will blow up next and capitalize on that by adding something new to it.

The latest Fortnite model to me is something like, 

“Game here. Play here. Stay here.”

It feels like they want Fortnite to be your only game. The problem for me is that while I’ve had fun dropping in and playing the different Fortnite modes for the past month, I also crave new experiences and big story games. I don’t want to get stuck on one game for the rest of my life, I want to play as many games as I can. They are doing a good job with what they are currently going for, so I did want to cover their success to start off the new year.