Epic Games, the Creator of Fortnite, Banked a $3 Billion Profit in 2018: Report (techcrunch.com)

This year Fortnite became the world's most popular game, growing its parent company, Epic Games' valuation to $15 billion. It also helped the company pile up cash. Epic grossed a $3 billion profit for this year fueled by the continued success of Fortnite, TechCrunch reported Thursday, citing a person with knowledge of the business. From the report: Fortnite, which is free to play but makes money selling digital items, has popularized the battle royale category -- think Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games -- almost single-handedly, and it has been the standout title for the U.S.-based game publisher. Founded way back in 1991, Epic hasn't given revenue figures for its smash hit -- which has 125 million players -- but this new profit milestone, combined with other pieces of data, gives an idea of the success the company is seeing as a result of a prescient change in strategy made six years ago.

Comments

Re:Terrible Game

[Tom]

I was playing those games in the 80s and 90s, and enjoyed them a lot.

Today, I probably wouldn't. Because gaming has evolved and I have grown up. I don't think being hard for the sake of being hard is a virtue.

But what I do enjoy are games that are not holding your hand. I like open world games for exactly this reason. I like games that don't spoon-feed you the story, but at the same time are forgiving to mistakes. At the moment I'm playing Subnautica and it doesn't even have an in-game map - but if you die, you respawn back at your base with minimal losses. Many other games have evolved to be like that - instead of forcing you to save the game every 30 seconds, they let you die without punishing you too harshly.

I'm also a big fan of Nethack, with its one-life-that's-it system.

It all depends on the game and what it tries to accomplish. The problem with Nintendo-era jump-n-run games, for example, was that they forced you to replay the same part of the game a hundred times just because at the end of the sequence you failed that one jump again and again. A better game would start you closer and closer to the point where you fail the more often you need to replay, so it becomes less tedious and you can focus on the part that actually challenges you.

I'm also not a fan of adaptive difficulty. Who the fuck came up with that? I used to play Doom and its successors on the hardest difficulty initially, then after dying a lot start a game with medium difficulty, and the skills I learnt at hard made it really enjoyable. In the first Eldar Scrolls games or LOTRO etc. I very much enjoyed working my way up and then being able to beat enemies that used to be difficult to a pulp with a grin, and that was satisfying. Then with Skyrim they added adaptive difficulty and all enemies were tough but not too tough. No more satisfaction of taking down an overwhelming enemy through cunning and luck, and no more satisfaction of beating a low-level one to a pulp.

A lot of things are better in games today than they used to be, and a lot of things went downhill. And sometimes a game comes along that cherry-picks the right choices from both sets and that is when everything just works and creates a masterpiece.