Vidjama Gmaes Work

I’m talking about Fortnite again.

One thing you need to know about me is that I’m kind of a cynical asshole when it comes to the business side of video games. This may not be obvious because I try to focus my writing and videos around the things I’m enjoying at the time instead of contributing to the endless choices of other cynical assholes on YouTube.

Fortnite’s OG Season dropped and after finally getting my first victory royale of the season I noticed two things; That I’m already level 18 in the season and that this is probably a test for future seasons. In fact this is definitely a test for future seasons. If you don’t know, Fortnite’s latest season runs for one month and includes 100 levels (50 plus 50 bonus) in the battle pass.

It’s been a big damn success with Fortnite seeing queues just to log in for the first time since I don’t even know when. Maybe during the Travis Scott concert or the launch of Chapter 2. And it wasn’t just for day one either, the game is getting queues on weekend in the afternoon.

Now about the battle pass itself. Since the main pass has only 50 levels I noticed it’s a lot more concentrated and a lot less filled with stupid crap. Fortnite gets accused constantly of having tons of useless filler in its battle passes, namely the emoticons and sprays. Epic has access to tons of metrics within the game, I’m sure they are well aware of how much players do not care about sprays or emoticons being in the battle pass.

Epic has been experimenting with battle passes quite a bit over the life of the game not to mention the rollout and constant changes to perks with Fortnite Crew like its latest test of multi-month costumes. The last few seasons have had battle passes within battle passes and I assume was a lead up to this season. They’ve basically tested people paying $20 over three months for battle passes, so what’s $30 over three months? What if all passes were one month long, cost exactly the same, and had less useless crap? Would people feel like they were still getting their money worth? Or would it drive more people to subscribe to Fortnite Crew?

There’s no goddamn way Epic doesn’t ride this wave of success out and keep the OG map in some form, otherwise Tim Sweeney is an even bigger idiot than I thought. Keep it up as a separate mode, like no-build and build. Bring it back every once in a while as a one-month event. I don’t know. Do something.