Fortnite shutdown
Spencer Hunt staff writer
If you play games, you’ve probably heard of what happened to the biggest game of our time, Fortnite. Not only did they completely destroy the island the game is so well known and infamous for, they shut the game down. Entirely. For 2 whole days. It’s a publicity stunt the likes of which have never been seen, and all so they could have the time to completely the update leading up to the brand new Fortnite: Chapter 2.
Not only did they drop a meteor on the island, which completely destroyed it, during the game’s shutdown all players could see on the topic was the mysterious black hole that greeted them when they launched the game, or went to the twitter account ran by its developers, EPIC Games. With most games, players would have been disappointed they couldn’t play their favorite multiplayer shooter, but instead, players were entranced in these circumstances. It’s a surprising attitude shift, once caused simply by entwining a maintenance shutdown with the story of the game.
It’s an interesting PR stunt, but it was one that also had unforeseen consequences. For example, did you know the recent Fortnite tournament on campus nearly had to be cancelled because of it? The eSports team were going to switch to a different game because of it. It was a massive problem, one that was just barely avoided by the game coming back up at the last second.
That said, it’s still an interesting topic to study. Millions of players, rather than complaining, were excited simply by turning this into a grand event instead of a simple update that required downtime for Maintenance. It simply goes to show how the simple act of changing the context of a situation completely changed people’s attitude towards it. It was a gigantic inconvenience, and players couldn’t enjoy their favorite game for a solid 48 hours, and yet the entire event was an enjoyable one simply through the shift that’s been slowly built up to since the start of the game. Truly amazing.
