Lord forgive me for what I’m about to say, because I sure won’t
Almost 5 years after its release, I think it’s fair to say that Fortnite isn’t going anywhere. Whatever criticisms or praise people have about it; the cringe, the crossovers, the concerts. The simple fact is, Fortnite has transcended gaming. This isn’t a piece of media that is simply a video game. It hasn’t been for a long time. Fortnite is a part of online culture, and it’s gonna be in there for a long time. It will be a part of the internet that will be remembered in history, that’s the scale of its impact.
For a piece of media to become a cultural phenomena takes a lot of time and popularity. To me, it is something that you don’t have to personally interact with to know about, something that 2nd hand knowledge fills you in on the general details more comprehensively than your average thing. Other mediums like film and television have their cultural phenomena, the Psychos and Breaking Bads. Everyone knows about The Count of Monte Cristo, even if no one’s read it, outside of those poor souls forced to in English class.
But gaming is a young medium and hasn’t had that many games that made a broader cultural impact. I’ve never seen Psycho but I sure know about it and the iconic shower scene. And it was impossible to not know what Breaking Bad was, even if you tried to avoid it. Plenty of games have impacted the gaming space and their respective genres, Street Fighter 2, Call of Duty, StarCraft, all genre defining titles, but not necessarily cultural icons like Fortnite. but you can’t ask a 50-60 year old about Final Fantasy 7 and expect them to know what’s up. You could maybe have done that for Street Fighter 2 back in the arcade days, maybe. But not anymore. Call of Duty is close thanks to it’s peak right as Youtube and online culture started to form into what we know today, but Fortnite is that game. You know about it, your 2 year old cousin knows about it, your parents know about it, and so do your grandparents.
It made everyone notice Twitch and gaming as a legitimate medium, way more than any attempts before had. Drake playing with Ninja is a bit of a dead horse at this point, but the significance of everyone’s eyes on both live streaming as an occupation and the game itself is proven in the simple fact that Tyler Blevins tried to make Times Square floss. I mean it didn’t work, but in order for him to fail there had to be a reason for him to be there in the first place. He was there as Twitch’s main attraction right there with TimtheTatman and other big name streamers. Mixer sure as hell wasn’t hosting an event in Times Square, and it wasn’t a pro player from Paladins trying to make people dance in the rain. Neither the streaming service nor the players had the influence to warrant an opportunity like what Ninja was given, and Fortnite has outgrown him.
Since 2018 Fortnite has hosted literal concerts, and held crossovers from any number of brands. Nowadays you’re just as likely to see Iron Man duking it out against Sasuke in a building competition as you are to see one of the original skins created by Epic Games. While many roll their eyes at all these crossovers, the undeniable fact is that it always creates noise and it always gets noticed. On top of that the amount of memes that get created every time a brand collaborates with Fortnite is crazy to think about, and thats just online jokes. Imagine the amount of serious and casual players that actually pay for that skin. If Fortnite was irrelevant nobody would care about their Rick and Morty crossover, no one outside of the usual crowd made noise about the crossover that Rainbow Six had with Rick and Morty, and that was 3 months ago! Fortnite is a part of online culture that you have to have a stance on. Love it, hate it, or just can’t care, are all at the least acknowledgements that the game is significant. No one would care to even have an opinion if it was some small game outside their radar. The collaborations have even gotten to the point where big name musicians host concerts in the damn game. When’s the last time you listened to Ariana Grande performing a whole set in Tetris? This is the first time mainstream influences have collaborated with a game on this scale and regularity. It isn’t just the fact that Master Chief is in Fortnite, it’s the fact that Master Chief went to a Travis Scott concert with his friend who is playing as Spiderman. It’d be unheard of to have that level of integration outside of fanfiction and DisneyWorlds. But here it is inside the biggest game in the world. League of Legends might have the playerbase, but Fortnite lives rent free in everyone’s head whether they’re a part of the internet or not.
We might hate to say it because the game is targeted at a younger audience and has led to some ‘cringy’ memes. The gameplay is wack but somehow has a high skill ceiling, and the esport showed up for one year and disappeared again. But try as we might, Fortnite won the same way Minecraft did, its grown to the point of never leaving the cultural sphere of influence. Sure it might ebb and flow but much like how Minecraft came back with no clear reason why, but Fortnite will never truly die. It’s a part of online culture and all us ‘old’ farts who hate everything it embodies have to hold that.