Fortnite is two years old this weekend and has been the most popular game in the world for at least the last year of its existence. My friends and I began playing it last summer as it exploded in popularity; we saw the game go from its roots as a goofy add on to Epic’s player-versus-environment shooter to its current status as a cross-cultural social space that just so happens to have a battle royale mode. And while I’ve certainly gotten better at playing the game, I’m still bad at it.
Which is fine! Really. For me, the fun of Fortnite is when I’m playing well with my teammates and suddenly I’m fluent — suddenly my builds are solid and my aim is true. It’s a joyful thing for me because it’s in those moments I realize I’ll never be a professional (or anything close). It’s freeing to know that even if I spent all of my time grinding to be better at the game I’d never be good enough to make any cash playing it. I’m just there to hang out with my friends. I get smoked by teens constantly.
The other week, a friend and Verge colleague invited me to play Fortnite with some of his teenage friends. They were playing a free-for-all mode in the custom map section of the game; you spawn with a random assortment of weapons and items and the point was to be the last person standing. I got owned. Just utterly destroyed. These kids were building like they’d grown up doing it, which they had; I have never felt older in my life than I did seeing myself near the bottom of the rankings. (I did not lose every time. Sometimes I got lucky.) It was humbling. But it was also fun as hell, because, as a rando, I had nothing to lose.
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