All of this means the game is really fun to watch as well as play, so many of the streamers and YouTubers who play the game – such as Ninja, Tfue and Loeya – have become huge stars. The Floss, inspired by the viral video of the boy dancing with Katy Perry during her Saturday Night Live appearance last spring, is basically the new dab. You can also pull a variety of dance moves during the game, and some of these have taken on a cult appeal in schoolyards around the globe. While PUGB has a serious, realistic visual style, Fortnite: Battle Royale has very bright, almost cartoon-like graphics as well as loads of ridiculous items and costumes, such as space suits and dinosaur outfits. Well, it’s free, it’s fun and it has a very silly, offbeat sense of humour. (An Xbox One version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is now available, but Fornite beat it to the punch.) Why is it so popular with kids? First it was launched as a standalone title separate from the original Fortnite (now known as Fortnite: Save the World), allowing it to gain a dedicated fanbase secondly, it was released as a completely free digital download, which made it easily accessible and thirdly it came out not just on PC, but on Xbox and PlayStation, and later on smartphone and Switch – which meant everyone who had heard about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds but didn’t have a PC could now play something very similar, for free. The developer made three brilliant decisions with this game mode. Duly inspired, Epic decided to release a new version of Fortnite featuring very similar gameplay.

PUBG was highly influenced by the Hunger Games novels and by the Japanese movie Battle Royale, and it’s sold over 30m copies worldwide. Later in the year, however, the game’s developer, Epic, noticed the huge success of PC title PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), which pits 100 players against each other in a last-man-standing battle. Players had to build shelters and defend themselves against marauding zombies. Watch a trailer for Fortnite: Battle Royale Where did it come from?įortnite was originally released in July 2017, but it actually started out as a four-player cooperative survival game set on a postapocalyptic Earth.

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