Fortnite Part 2: How is a “Free” game making so much money? Should I buy stuff (asking for my kid....)? Is it Addictive?

Link To original source for pic. 

So in part one we went over the game of Fortnite. Here we are going to look at the business of Fortnite, how some of the game mechanics play into it, and of course the concern of addiction.  

First and foremost as I mentioned in the previous article, the game is absolutely free. However... here is the rest of the story.  Battle Royale (the 100 player fight to one player left) is absolutely totally free to play in its entirety. Save the world (single player/co-op) is currently a paid game mode, and you can buy your way to content that impacts game play. Save the world is a whole other game in my experience thus far and by all accounts I can find is not adding considerably to Epic’s bottom line. The cash cow is Battle Royale so that is what we will be talking about. 

So again... with feeling... buying stuff in Battle Royale does not get you any game play advantage. There are 3 things you can buy (well technically only 1 thing, but we will get to V-bucks in a bit). Skins, Emotes, and a Battle pass. Of the three in terms of game content only the Battle Pass provides you content. A Skin is a look for your avatar. Without a skin you are assigned a default male/female at random for each match. The default or “no skin” look is kind of a generic military casual that cycles between various skin tone and gender combinations. An Emote is actions you can make your avatar do... such as a dance, or spray painting a mark on walls, or making images appear in the air. Skin’s and Emotes are classed by rarity and can be purchased via the game store, or earned via game play. Some skins\emotes can only be earned via game play. Most have to be purchased. We will return to them in a bit. Let us talk about the Battle Pass.  This little gem is a study in gameplay behavior psychology. You see... the game is free and thus far has employed a ‘season’ format. IE changes are themed and cover a story arc across a 10 week season leading to a major shift to the next ‘season’. During a season you can earn player ‘levels’ and battle pass ‘tiers’. Levels and tiers are impacted by the Battle pass you possess. There is a free  pass and a paid pass ($10). The free pass assigns you 3 optional challenges per week and allows you to earn skins and emotes etc... The Paid pass allows you to earn more skins and other rewards. However, most importantly (from a business stand point) it enables more optional challenges which allows you to earn more battle stars which are what are needed to advance your battle pass. You need the same amount of battle stars to advance the battle pass for free or paid. So it is much easier and faster to advance your battle pass tier and earn rewards with the paid pass. This equates to more bang for your buck in terms of time spent playing the game. Also, you earn a bonus modifier to your end game score or experience which is what advances your season level. Again, its the same to advance for free or paid passes. So a paid pass can advance with less time played. Significantly less... at a guess from my time in it looks like 1-2 hours average a day with a battle pass means you will likely be able to get through level 100, and battle pass tier 100. On the free side... I need to confirm but I think it is roughly double and you earn less than half the amount of stuff. Lastly... the items you earn, if you bought equivalent content from the store would cost WAY more than the $10 you pay for an upgraded battle pass.  

This creates a powerful feedback loop. I like the game and by investing real money in it I can “advance” faster. The game ‘dings’ at a faster rate and you play even more for the ding. I got something. I advanced. I accomplished something hard in the game and I get things that let me show off that I did it (E-motes, skins, harvesting tools, banners). So in review... you are on the ride for free. You get to play the full game for free. But if you want to easily be able to show your level of advancement, or even get some of the content that shows that. You have to buy the battle pass. It makes sense to lots of game play/Reward seeking styles. Game play specific skins and unlocks are visible indicators of your level of accomplishment. If you play more than a little you quickly start recognizing the skin of your opponent is often an important consideration in how to approach them. It is a social marker much the same as the clothes you wear in real life. But the season skin can get old... seeing the same old look or just small modifications as you advance etc... Hey... that skin in the store looks really cool... its only ($5,$10,$15,$20)....  

Epic has done something interesting with the store and skins/emotes etc... They have made them falsely scarce. You cannot just scroll through all skins ever created. Epic has made these digital items “Rare”. At any given time you can by a couple of emotes, and maybe 4 skins and their various accessories (harvesting tool, glider). For folks that need complete sets this is catnip... gotta buy them all. It also allows others to pick up bits they like for less without the whole setup. A rare skin that is considered cool triggers the “its only available now and don’t know when/if it will be back...” thought processes. In short... they have established a viable fashion store for their free game. And they have so many people playing it that real world peer pressure to be “cool” and unique gets people to pull out their wallets. This completes the inversion from previous game business designs. Character modification in most games is “free” and is often one of the first things you do. IE create your character, male, female? Fat? Skinny? Tall? Short? Etc.. etc... etc... And then you go play the game. EPIC lets you in to play the game, but makes you earn or buy your character look. All in all... the human desire to appear unique, desirable, successful, or what have you is a far stronger desire than the one that drives us to play games. But... don’t dismiss that one either. Without a good game you wouldn’t have a lot of players, which means you don’t have an audience. These are symbiotic drivers in the success of Fortnite. The seemingly universal nature of ‘everyone’ playing it drives a lot of the desire to buy items to be unique, or to earn\display status with unlocked content. Positive feedback cycle, definition of. Herein lies the closest thing battle royals Fortnite has to “pay to play”. 

Lets back up a second and revisit what I was talking above about advancement of level and battle pass. These are effectively the same thing... advancement mechanisms. Just one is advanced through earning or finding “battle stars” the other is for completing a round of play. Exit early and you earn nothing. The biggest difference is that your ‘level’ can only be advanced through play. Your battle pass tier on the other hand can be purchased. For just 150 v-bucks per level all the way to level 100. So for 16000 V-bucks you can purchase a maxed out battle pass and all the goodies that come with it. Again... for no game play advantage. I am sure there are people that have done this though for the life of me I can’t understand why. I imagine this is mostly for folks that get close to a level with a desired reward where a few bucks will allow them some instant gratification. That said... if you map it out by the time it takes to earn the battle stars, vs the cost of the tiers... in that sense they are CHEAP. But games valuing your time very little is nothing new despite the fact your time is the absolute life blood of their existence. By this I mean.... earning a weeks battle stars by completing the daily challenges and weeks challenges will likely take you ~5 hours of game play. That is for one week. 10 weeks. 50 hours of play (work?) to earn all your battle stars. Or 16000 V-bucks. If you have more money than time and want the battle pass rewards I suppose you could make the case for it. 

Now... for those of you non Fortnite initiated. What exactly does that mean in terms of real money? Is 16000 V-bucks a lot? For easy math 100 V-bucks roughly equals $1. So that fully maxed battle pass costs $160. I say roughly... because you can buy bundles of V-bucks, or V-bucks and skins where the ratio changes to where 100 V-bucks may be more like $.75 or $.50. Then there is the fact you can earn some V-bucks through the season... just enough to buy another battle pass for the most part. V-bucks are the ONLY thing you buy with real world currency. Why go through this charade of establishing a false game currency and not just use actual values? Well... separating the real value of a purchase via an in game currency is a long standing tactic to keep people from really thinking about how much they are spending. You exchange your money for V-bucks and then you see things always priced in V-bucks... so you see a cool outfit for only 1500 v-bucks rather than the 2000 or 2500 one and you think, hey, that’s a bargain rather than really considering you are about to drop 15 bucks so your character looks like it is wearing a dinosaur costume. Also, since you have to buy in bulk and not specific amounts (IE 1000, 15000 at a time) it means you typically have left over V-bucks from any transactions you make meaning maybe you have 1000 left over... and you just need 500 to get that cool thing... but you have to buy at least 1000... wash rinse repeat. 

So I am talking about cycles, and feedback loops. Is it addictive? Yes and no. I wouldn’t worry about Fortnite like I would narcotics. And socially speaking... just going to put out there that if all (or a significant portion) of a peer group is using this medium to socially interact, withdrawing from it, not conforming, can have its penalties just as playing it to much can. I would class this game in with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc...  at this point It is a social touchstone for a huge swath of youth, and not so youth, due to its ubiquitous availability across lots of devices and free to play entry fee. They can do it with low risk (on a couch pushing buttons vs running up and down a creek bed) and regardless of the weather provided they have access to the internet. And it is a damn good and challenging game. If your kid (or anyone) is getting a healthy amount of sleep and exercise then odds are good Fortnite ‘addiction’ isn’t a concern. Drastic changes in social involvement (withdrawal from real activities), loss of sleep, no exercise etc... due to play would be a concern for ANY activity inducing such problems. As with most things, moderation is the key.   Beware younger kids and the option to buy large pots of V-bucks. 

So to that last question I haven’t addressed. Should I buy stuff in Fortnite? If you like the game yes, if nobody buys anything the game dies. This is akin to street performers. If they are good enough to make you stop and listen, drop something in the cup. If you are playing a season, buy the battle pass. Should you buy stuff for your kid even though buying stuff in Fortnite provides no game play advantage? Yes, I think in general you should. Why? If you would buy your kid a (shirt|toy|etc...) they think is cool... buy them a skin they want. And treat it the same. IE maybe they have to do something to earn it. Maybe they have to spend their allowance. Treat it like any other life lesson in buying things you want vs need. The things you buy in the game don’t have intrinsic value to the game, but they do have value to those who play. However... I would highly recommend not spending money on save the world at this time, most especially the Llamas. Google loot boxes if you want to know why. The fact they stopped them from being Random is not a huge improvement. Where Battle Royale is setup to be fully enjoyable without buying content... Save the world is a different, uglier beast in my opinion. But I am not ready to dissect it yet. However, if you are familiar with freemium games on iOS and Android suffice it to say save the world aligns much more to that type of game play experience than Battle Royale. 

In Part 3 I plan to look at the the growing competitive scene for Fortnite, and video games in general. For starters, did you know there is a 30 million dollar prize pool Fortnite World Cup later this month?