Fortnite was a pure PvE game at launch with the “Save the World” mode and then brought its free Battle Royale – the rest is video game history. The hype was insane. The important BR mode was put together in just a few weeks.
Ed Zobrist was the Head of Publishing for Fortnite in 2017. He was fully involved in the decisions of the time and had to think of ways to get the colorful new game to the people.
At the “Game Developer Conference 2018”, Zobrist gave a presentation about Fortnite titled “An Unconventional Release”. It spoke about the marketing methods of the competing studios at that time and how Fortnite wanted to find other ways.
It was also about Fortnite’s big Battle Royale. Because that’s exactly what most players of the colorful shooter know and love. Zobrist explains that something quite different was originally planned for Fortnite’s PvP mode and how they scrapped all plans within 2 weeks.
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10 Weeks for One of the Biggest Hypes in Gaming
Zobrist talks in his presentation mainly about the release of “Save the World”. That was the original PvE mode of Fortnite, from which the Battle Royale emerged.
This mode was to be expanded with a PvP mode – a game within a game. The responsibility for this was taken over by Epic Games’ Unreal team.
This team developed the Battle Royale (BR) in just 10 weeks from the release of “Save the World” on July 21, 2017. On September 26, the BR went online and hit like a bomb.
It wasn’t even intended as a Free2Play version. It was only 2 weeks before the BR release that they decided to bring the Battle Royale as a “Standalone”, which ran through the Fortnite launcher but was completely free – unlike “Save the World”.
- To this day, Fortnite is counted among the best Free2Play shooters you can play.
Zobrist believes that Epic Games’ marketing team worked completely through those two weeks – no weekends, little break.
What came out of it is one of the biggest hypes in gaming history. As early as November 2017, Fortnite’s Battle Royale reached 20 million players. Reports today speak of over 400 million registered players (via businessofapps.com).
If you want to watch the complete English presentation yourself, you can find the corresponding video here:
According to Zobrist, the Battle Royale also led to making the game much more fun and not taking itself too seriously anymore. The mode turned Fortnite completely inside out – but today we know that the right decisions were made.
Since then, a lot has happened in the game. However, Fortnite continues to manage to surprise its players, reinvent itself, and deliver a crazy adventure: Fortnite is really no longer a shooter – Latest update lets the chaos break out finally
