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It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I decided to hate Fortnite so much that it made my flesh decay like Emperor Palpatine, but I reckon it started around 2018.
2018 was a helluva year for Fortnite.
2018. The year Drake played Fortnite with Twitch streamer Ninja and broke records across the board.
2018. The year I downloaded Fortnite out of curiosity, played one match, got brutally obliterated by what I assumed were obnoxious children before promptly deleting the game from my PS4, never to be summoned again.
2018 gave me plenty of reasons to hate Fortnite. There was Antoine Griezmann, the French striker who scored a penalty in the World Cup final before sullying the grandest occasion in sport with a celebration that featured Fortnite’s Do the L emote dance. Four years later, I still haven’t forgiven him.
I haven’t forgiven my son either, who — also in 2018 — made the decision, in front of all our friends and family, to get completely naked during a barbecue and streak across the garden while doing The Floss.
Fortnite has a lot to answer for.
Since 2018, my son had been begging to play Fortnite, using language familiar to most parents: “But all my friends are all playing it.” “I promise I won’t ask for V Bucks.” “I definitely won’t talk to weird men on voice chat.”
But I held back. For years. Fortnite was a forbidden word in my household. Mainly because I didn’t think shooters were suitable for children. And I was worried about the online communication element.
Also because I thought Fortnite sucked.
I thought Fortnite sucked, especially back in 2018, because it felt like the passing of the guard. The harbinger of a new type of video game. A monogame black hole that absorbs all intellectual property and light. Free-to-play nonsense, with microtransactions and endless skins, felt exploitative — particularly for kids.
