Basil Frater

On November 4th, 2023, the video game Fortnite, an online game with 5 distinct modes, most notably including Battle Royale, where 100 players fight to be the last one standing, had its most-played day ever, with 44.7 million players. In comparison, in 2020 when Travis Scott’s Astronomical performance occurred, only 12.3 million players participated, which at that time was an all-time record. The reason behind this massive shift? The release of the Chapter 4 Season 5 update, “Fortnite OG”, which brought back the original map, from Chapter 1 Season 5, which had massively popularized the game back in 2018.  

Ever since this update, many original players have come back to the game. Many DePaul Prep students cite the “memories” as the reason that they returned to the game. Bringing back the original map reminded players of the game’s “peak”, and how much they used to enjoy playing.

In the current climate of video games, where things are constantly changing and being updated, it was refreshing for a game to get back to simplicity. Players liked that Fortnite went back to its original format, as it wasn’t too complicated.

One such player is Junior Basil Frater who appreciated that they brought the game back to the basics. He originally stopped playing the game because the constant updates diverted too much from the original purpose of the game. Frater states that, “The thing that made Fortnite good was that they changed the map. But then they changed the map too much and I hated it. They made the game more complicated than it had to be. They should’ve kept it simple.”

Junior Caysie Brady, who played the first couple seasons of Fortnite, then stopped and recently started again, echoes this statement. She says that, “When they started putting the new stuff it got too complicated.”

However, the question of if Fortnite should’ve ever even changed the original map to begin with is controversial among students. While Frater says that he wouldn’t have kept playing if they never changed the original, Brady says that she would never have stopped. Brady thinks that keeping the original map would’ve kept her attention in the long run. However, Frater thinks that never changing the map would’ve led to it becoming “recycled, it would be the same thing over and over again.” He believes that the updates after the first release of the OG map led to the game becoming totally different from what it originally was. 

Yet, this success won’t last forever. The novelty of the nostalgia of the original map being back will only have a strong effect for a short amount of time, before it wears off.  

On December 2nd, the OG map was taken away and many players including Frater and his duo partner, Junior Andrew Chan, have already stopped playing. Frater says this is because, “I feel bad if my last memory of playing Fortnite isn’t what I remembered it to be, but some random game that I don’t even love.” 

David Prosser, the moderator of the esports club, believes that social pressures had to do with the original collapse of the game, and might impact its future potential failure. He states that, “There’s kind of a weird mentality for a long time before this happened of people just not liking Fortnite because it was almost ‘cool’ to not like Fortnite or it was lame to not like Fortnite. I think there’s probably a lot of people who will keep playing it, who might just be afraid to say that they play.”

It’s too soon to say if this update will take away a large part of Fortnite’s player base, but their newest announcement might help keep some of their older players interested. On December 3rd, the Fortnite team announced that they were going to bring the OG map back in 2024 because of its overwhelming success.

Although the OG map has been taken away, this experience has led to many lessons for game developers and consumers alike. It proved that sometimes simple is better. Instead of constantly releasing new updates, changing the very essence of the game, all consumers want is to be reminded of why they loved the game in the first place.