Fortnite is a very popular video game that has also become a “cultural phenomenon”; it was produced by Epic Games, a US video game company that today has an estimated value of 15 billion dollars. Behind this success is Tim Sweeney, who 20 years ago, in 1991, founded the company in his parents' home in Potomac, Maryland, investing four thousand dollars in savings and dropping out of college just a few exams from bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. . “I went from being a gardener to being the CEO of Epic Games,” says Sweeney.
When he was 11, one of his brothers gave him an Apple II Plus computer, which he learned to program with. Sweeney eventually made some very successful games, including ZZT and Jill of the Jungle, but the real leap in quality came with the development of the Unreal Engine, which was later used in the Unreal video game series. In 1999 Sweeney moved the company headquarters to North Carolina and changed its name from Potomac Computer Systems to Epic Games. At 30 he had become a millionaire and could afford very expensive cars, even if few people knew his name in the world: «I had a Ferrari and a Lamborghini in the parking lot of my house. Those who didn't know me thought I was a drug dealer, “he told the Wall Street Journal.
Now 48, Sweeney invests his earnings in more noble causes, such as protecting the environment. Those who have worked with him describe him as an informal and modest person: at work he wears a t-shirt and trousers with side pockets, walks around the company parking lot on roller skates and loves to jump on a small trampoline that he keeps in the office .
Chris Gerhardt, Epic Games executive between 2014 and 2015, recalls that a friend of his who worked in the company gave him important advice for his job interview with Sweeney: “Whatever you do, don't wear a suit and tie.” Even as his company has become world famous for developing Fortnite, Sweeney has retained its headquarters in North Carolina, an exception to video game companies that operate largely in Silicon Valley.
The success of Fortnite
The turning point in the history of Epic Games came in 2011, when Fortnite was created during an internal competition in which the developers they could propose and experiment with new ideas. Sweeney is keen to point out that he had no role in the creation and development of the game, and that all the credit goes to his employees. “The thing I'm most proud of is not having created Fortnite,” he told the Wall Street Journal, “because I didn't create Fortnite, but I created and grew the company that created Fortnite”.
The game, which had “Save the World” as its subtitle, was released in 2017 at a cost of $ 40 (about € 35) and did not allow players to compete online. It didn't have high expectations, and in fact it only sold a million copies. So Sweeney and the developers decided to distribute another free version with a game mode called “Battle Royale”, in which players could battle each other online on a ground that gets smaller and smaller, until one remains. alone. The game was made available for most video game consoles, for smartphones and tablets, and in a short time it became a global success.
At the time, the video game market was dominated by games for the PlayStation, Xbox or PC, which could cost 60-70 euros, usually played by a single player or with other people who owned the same console. Fortnite has disrupted the video game market, and has been heavily imitated, giving people the ability to play without spending anything. The only things you can buy are accessories to customize your character (from clothes to dances that you can perform to celebrate a victory), but without the possibility of enhancing it in any way: whether you pay or don't pay anything, all players start from the same level.
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Additionally, Fortnite updates continuously. Developers are known to listen carefully to player feedback, to fix bugs, add new features or eliminate others. This makes it a fluid, constantly evolving game. Just like the TV series, Fortnite is also divided into “seasons”, which contain changes to the map, new characters and new narrative lines (the next, the tenth, will be released on August 2).
There is another thing that made Fortnite what it is: it took the typical format of “third-person shooter” games and transformed it into something less gory and more like a cartoon, full of bright colors and happy music, and where when you kill someone you don't even see a drop of blood. In this way Fortnite has become a game suitable even for younger children, unlike other very popular games such as Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, which instead had made explicit violence one of their main characteristics. According to what Sweeney told the Wall Street Journal, this more than a deliberate choice of the developers would be a consequence of the evolution of Epic Games. “We recently had a Halloween party, and there were more kids than Epic Games employees,” Sweeney said.
In addition, Epic Games has managed to do what no game developer had ever done before: Sweeney convinced Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, the three largest console manufacturers in the world, to allow Fortnite players to play with each other even using platforms of different brands. Implementing what is called cross-play in technical jargon required months of negotiations with the heads of the three historically rival companies, which Sweeney described as “an international diplomacy effort.” The only one to oppose at the beginning was Sony, manufacturer of the PlayStation, which however finally sold out last year. Fortnite, as the Wall Street Journal writes, has transformed from a multiplayer game into a huge social network that connects millions of people using different means to play and communicate with each other.
The future of Epic Games
In December 2018, Fortnite's monthly revenues – deriving precisely from the purchases of virtual items, costumes and other customizations – reached the record of 372.2 million dollars (approximately 332 million euros). Epic Games does not disclose its financial data, but according to a market research by Nielsen reported by the Wall Street Journal, monthly revenues have recently decreased by 56 percent.
Also in this sense we must see the attempts made in recent months by Epic Games to diversify its market strategy and take Fortnite beyond the world of video games. Last February, for example, a live concert by the American DJ Marshmello was organized within the game, attended by more than 10 million players. In addition, Epic Games has acquired the Houseparty app, which allows you to make video calls with your friends. It is not clear if this will be inserted in some way within Fortnite, but everything suggests that it is a way of diversifying one's market strategy. Last December Epic Games also launched its own store to buy digital video games on the PC, to compete with the largest online video game store, Steam.
