Top banana? Fortnite and the rise of the virtual playground

It was one of those rare moments when the internet, so often a divisive force these days, brought people together.

Millions around the world were glued to a livestream of the online video game Fortnite, desperate to see what would happen next. But they were not following the latest "battle royale" between celebrity players Ninja and Tfue. Instead, they were watching nothing more than a black hole, slowly spinning into the void.

Insert your own cynical metaphor here for what this says about teenagers (or politicians for that matter) in 2019. But for gamers — of whom there are an estimated two billion spending more on their hobby than they do on the music and movie industries combined — the launch of Fortnite: Chapter 2 earlier this month was the biggest cultural event of the year.

The black-hole event followed a "season finale" that saw Fortnite's island — the virtual location for the game's action since its initial release in 2017 — destroyed in a blaze of meteorites and rockets. For two days, gamers lit up chat sites with speculation about the next instalment.

Epic Games, Fortnite's developer, has billed the new iteration of the game that finally emerged from the black hole as "more fun, less grind". By far the biggest change is to the terrain on which each battle is fought.

The updated island features rivers and lakes that must be crossed, as well as new locations including Slurpy Swamp, the Sweaty Sands beach resort and Steamy Stacks, a glowing nuclear power plant. Just as significantly, however, is that many familiar spots were taken away completely.

Fortnite may have started out as a plain old game but it has become a stealth social network. Regular players treat the island as a hang-out spot as much as a battleground. So Epic's destruction of the original island was like discovering their playground had been bulldozed or a favourite coffee shop had suddenly shut down. No wonder some are already feeling nostalgic for the lost island of Chapter 1. "Lowkey gonna miss the old map and everything," tweeted Riversan, a professional Fortnite player with esports organisation Team Liquid. "So many memories made on it."

Maps have been a defining fixture of video games ever since an 8-bit Mario shuffled his way around the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Bros 3. Grand Theft Auto would be nothing without its recreations of New York and Los Angeles. Players can explore the Legend of Zelda's mythic realm of Hyrule for days without retracing their steps. The locales in Assassin's Creed, Journey and Monument Valley all evoke a distinctive sense of place and mood.

Rarely, though, has one place been as vital a character as Fortnite's island. Until last month, the map evolved incrementally with the game: icebergs crashed into corners of the island, meteors blew up less popular areas, sand turned to snow as summer gave way to winter. Constant change has been a big part of Fortnite's enduring appeal — new "seasons" introduce new themes and, crucially, new things for players to buy.

With the latest changes in Chapter 2, however, the game has made a more radical metamorphosis. Having created a unique destination, it took it all away again. For the people who had come to call the island "home", that is both unsettling and invigorating. It is also a bold gamble from Epic. The game creator's job is like that of a city planner, striking a balance between property barons and Nimbys. Update too quickly, and players won't have time to master the new tools at their disposal or learn their way around the neighbourhood. Update too slowly, and new games will tempt people to pastures new.

Fortnite is now setting the pace, not just for games but for other forms of entertainment. Its rapid rate of development chimes with the shortening attention span of its (predominantly) young players. It also attaches a scarcity value to the world it creates. Amid the abundance of the internet, this is a rare and lucrative ability. Where today we clamour to binge-watch marathons of "must-see TV", so games such as Fortnite and its island setting point to a future of virtual destinations that become "must visit" — before they are whisked away into the ether.

Tim Bradshaw is the FT's global technology correspondent

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