By Paul Evers and Dom Palombo
If you thought the Fortnite craze was slowing down, you thought wrong.
Bradley students, Phil Schlitter and Brock Sutton, both used their spring break to continue to play and indulge themselves in the battle royale game.
“They just recently came out with new variations to the regular game play,” Schlitter said. “Different locations to drop and play as well as more outfits and cool modifications you can use for weaponry.”
The continuous innovation is a key to the increase of playing for Schlitter and Sutton, and the statistics show it. According to the most current numbers from Statista, the numbers of worldwide Fortnite users grew from 125 million in June 2018 to 200 million in November 2018. (See Flossing All Spring Break Long to get an idea of how popular the game is for some Bradley students.)
“They keep updating the map for the battle royale so it never gets boring and stale,” Sutton said. “Each time I open the game up I feel like something new is there, whether it’s a place to play or something cool to wear.”
Both played sporadically at school, but were able to spend a lot more time gaming and playing with friends online during the break.
“I’m a fan of sports games so I got on MLB The Show a little bit with baseball season coming up, but I wanted to spend more time on a game like Fortnite where I could interact with friends the whole time,” Sutton said.
Differently from Sutton, Schlitter stuck with Fortnite the whole time while gaming and got in a lot of time when bored at home over the break.
“I stayed home and most of my friends were out of town so I spent a decent amount of time playing,” Schlitter said. “[Played] something like four or five hours a day besides watching March Madness at the end of the week.”
Over breaks, gaming is a big go-to activity for kids, even in college with a break as short as spring break. Sutton said it is difficult to find a job to work with only being back home for a few days.
“I normally work on breaks but my job in the winter was an internship and I had no place to work such a small amount,” Sutton said. “So with no job I spent a lot of the time in front of the TV playing video games and spending time with the family.”
Despite not having much to do over the break, the two had plenty of reason to stay connected to the TV playing Fortnite because of the continued innovation to keep the game exciting and gamers wanting more.
“They don’t want this to be a game you play a few times, instead a game that you can play over time and become dedicated, as a harcore gamer or casual gamer,” Schlitter said.