Elissa

So there is a new bad boy in town! The video game Fortnite has taken over households everywhere, and unless you and your children have been travelling in outer space, or are still chasing Pokemon in shopping malls then it’s probably taken over your household too.

Parents without children or very young children enjoy the peace. Fortnite Battle Royale has become an obsessions for millions of fans, gaming hasn’t seen anything this big since Minecraft.

Only originally released in July 2017 and then updated last September, now over 45 million people have downloaded the game, across a variety of platforms, four million people are playing this game simultaneously, and when they are not playing it themselves they watch other people play, or watch YouTube for tips and strategy. Fortnite combines the building mechanics of Minecraft with the shooter styles of Overwatch. It is the top rated mobile app in 47 countries.

But how did Fortnite become so popular, so fast?

It helps that it’s free, you can play as a single or as a team and you don’t need real skill. Many children are now forming Fortnite teams and spending time practising playing the game together.

The graphics have a very cartoonish feel to them, Avatars resemble cartoon characters, players can dress in pink bunny suits or space suits and bash buildings with a rainbow coloured axe.

But being a last man standing game, after leaping out of a plane on to a small island you do then have to kill the other 99 players unless they die in a storm or fall off a mountain but there is no blood and gore so it doesn’t feel like killing, which appeals to younger children.

Matches are short, about 20 minutes, and if they’re playing solo they can exit the game at any time, but if they are playing as a team and a player leaves they will lose any points they’ve earned during the match.

Video games come with dangers.

They can become extremely addictive and players can find that Fortnite makes them angry when they lose. Unknown online players can expose children to offensive language via the voice or on-screen text chat.

In our household the used gaming console is in a common space, audio settings are set to hear game chat (not on headphones) and they are allowed to join a party of friends before they play, not strangers, which allows them to mute strangers and just talk to people they know.

 We have enforced time limits, when it cannot be used and when it can. We use a stopwatch but you could use an egg timer or ask Alexa for a countdown!

If they’re playing on an Xbox or PlayStation you can use the parental controls to limit the length of the gaming or ban it altogether! 

On March 14, the famous hip-hop star Drake recorded himself playing the game with Ninja, a professional gamer and streamer icon, receiving a record-breaking 628,000 concurrent views on Twitch.

I didn’t have a clue who Ninja was AKA Tyler Blevins was or what Twitch was but with such a record-breaking number and famous athletes and celebrities joining him, one thing is for certain, Fortnite Battle Royal isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.