
Fortnite is free, but kids are getting bullied into spending money - anarbadalov
https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-default-skins-bullying-harassment
======
p1necone
This screams moral panic to me. We're seeing proportionally more kids getting
bullied about Fortnite because Fortnite is proportionally (very) more popular
than other stuff that's visible to adults.

Fortnite lets you pay some real money for a cosmetic upgrade to your
character. _That 's it_. There's not even random loot boxes or anything that
actually affects your chance to win. Video games have done this for _ages_.

The only difference is that Fortnite is currently very very popular with quite
a young demographic, and that demographic also consists of emotionally
immature kids who bully each other over everything. This bullying is going on
regardless, Fortnite being so popular just makes bullying about it more
visible/obvious.

~~~
ravenstine
When I was a kid, everyone's parents brought us to the "video arcade" which
was free to enter but the games would "bully" us to INSERT 4 TOKENS after
dying a few times. Nobody got seriously upset about this.

~~~
dvhh
The analogy is quite wrong, and even then the parent did provide some modicum
of supervision (or control the spending in some way), inserting quarter do
require slightly more effort than pressing a button to accept the charge on
the credit card.

Yeah I remember blowing a lot of money at the video game arcade, but at least
felt guilty when looking at my empty wallet.

~~~
taneq
If the kid can press a button on their phone to accept a charge on a credit
card, the problem is with someone giving the kid a phone and hooking it up to
a credit card, not with the game in question.

Game arcades were the original pay2win. Come to think of it, that's probably
why I never played them...

~~~
dvhh
Arcade games do fit some definition of pay2win, but also rarely gives
advantages to the one putting the more coins in the machine.

Not that I would defend arcade games, as they are a dying breed, but
competitive arcade games were somehow fair.

~~~
taneq
> but also rarely gives advantages to the one putting the more coins in the
> machine.

INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE

You could literally buy extra lives.

~~~
dvhh
Again, re-framing it to competitive arcade game, giving extra lives might not
be the help that is needed by the player (I have yet to encounter a
competitive arcade game that is not fair), but where I find some popular
competitive game egregious is that they do not only give advantage to people
that spend time in the game (via xp style leveling or some kind of in game
currency) but also give more competitive advantage to those who pay ( see
world of tanks with premium ammunition ).

Your argument is however valid for single/cooperative arcade games, where the
design is to gobble as many coin as possible.

------
wyldfire
> And so “default” quickly became a put-down within the Fortnite community, a
> signal that you are a lesser player in some way.

I can confirm that my son did not like being a "default" and wanted me to give
him vbucks so that he could avoid this shame. I think it's ludicrous, of
course, so I didn't. But I think one of his friends might have gifted him
some, or he played enough time so that the system granted him some non-default
skins. Also as a side effect of buying the "save the world" edition I think he
got some skins.

I knew it was a mistake to consider games with lootboxes (the Star Wars one)
and play-to-win games, but I'd hoped/assumed Fortnite was not like those. I
guess I'll have to keep an eye out for things getting out of hand w/Fortnite.

EDIT: lots of speculation regarding the genesis of this phenomenon among these
threads. I should note that my son (and probably his friends) all watch
youtubers who play fortnite and some of them seem to refer to 'defaults' with
derision. "Did it start there or have they just gotten caught up with the same
culture?" I don't know.

~~~
RantyDave
I grew up in England in the 80's and the label on one's shirt was a big deal.
It seems to me that this behaviour may be a part of the creation of 'self'
that adolescents go through, and that this is the same thing across a
different medium. It's tribal, it shows implicit approval of one's decisions
(namely to spend money on a costume), and I'm prepared to bet it's cross
cultural too...

~~~
dv_dt
I wonder if anyone suggested regulation of Nike for creating a fashion fetish
of Air Jordans, with the same kinds of money being thrown at Fortnite.

~~~
xmprt
The difference is that I still have my 20 year old Nike shirt in my closet but
skins and other digital items aren't likely to exist for anywhere near as
long.

~~~
NoodleIncident
The digital cosmetics will probably exist longer, and definitely can be "worn"
for a much longer time before "wearing out"

~~~
tareqak
You are assuming that there will be people playing Fortnite in its current
incarnation in 20 years. I don't think Fortnite is quite at the level of
NetHack or even Minecraft yet.

~~~
mgkimsal
Or second life! Oh... wait....

~~~
beenBoutIT
Fortnight is a watered-down online-only GTA V Online clone that's bankrupting
a generation of kids who aren't smart enough to play better games. There's no
way that keeps going for 20 years.

------
frankc
I guess i'm kind of old now but it's odd because I seem to remember that when
I played mmorpgs, especially pvp, it was the reverse. Players who were decked
out in fancy armor that they did not directly earn in game were called
'twinkies' and generally derided. When I played guild wars, most of the good
pvp people just had default outfits. The pve players with fancy clothes who
came into pvp generally were viewed as worse at pvp (and it was often true
because their builds did not translate well into pvp).

~~~
mcv
That's also my view. The metagame of free to play games is to resist all the
temptations to spend money on it. People who spend money on it have lost.

~~~
Konnstann
At some point in my life I realized that some games were worth spending money
on, especially given the amount of time spent in them. I can understand your
point of view, and I totally agree in the context of children/teens but I try
not to play games that heavily incentivize spending, so when I put 100+ hours
into a game, I don't consider buying some microtransactions "losing".

~~~
mcv
I totally agree. You wouldn't want to know how much money I spent on Europa
Universalis and Crusader Kings. But I know what I'm buying and why, and it's a
conscious decision, not succumbing to pressure or temptation.

I think it's healthy to recognise when a system, game or otherwise, tries to
manipulate you into spending money, and I try to teach my son to recognise
that. It's fine to spend money, but spend it on something that's worth it,
something you want, not something you're pressured into.

~~~
Konnstann
F2P games unfortunately fall into the dichotomy where the target market is
usually the people with the least amount of money to spend, but also with the
least amount of willpower/experience to resist spending it. I'm glad that when
I was growing up the closest thing I had to the microtransaction hell that is
F2P were MMOs that I couldn't run, and all my games came on CDs.

------
mcv
> _" You can't hop into a Fortnite match as a default without being singled
> out"_

If that's true, then a lot changed in a months since I played it with my son.
Admittedly Fortnite culture isn't as strong here, and my son has already lost
interest (he's back to Minecraft and Roblox again).

That people would bully someone over not spending money is this, seems really
weird to me. Then again, some kids will use anything to bully others, but my
impression is those kids are fairly rare.

Could it be that this is different across different cultures? My impression as
an outsider is that bullying is far more common and accepted in the US than in
Europe (they even elected a bully as president), and I've heard about studies
that Americans are more likely to kick down to people below them on the social
ladder, whereas in many other places people are more likely to punch up and
help people below them.

Also: the importance of hollow status symbols. I don't see kids at my son's
school care about about such things. Sure, a cool skin is cool, but not as
much as achievements are.

My personal opinion on the purchase of skins is that if you end up paying for
a game that's free, you've lost.

~~~
wolco
Where are you from?

~~~
mcv
Netherland. Maybe we're the one that's different though; Netherland has a
culture of social equality, where rich people are expected not to show it.

------
Stubbs
I'm surprised FIFA never gets scrutinised in this was, it's an £80 game each
year and to make any kind of impression you need to buy packs.

I watched my son once where he literally spent what I'd given him on packs,
looked at what he'd "won" and sold them all instantly for in game currency.
When I asked why he didn't use any of them he said they were no good. He then
repeated the same process on the rest of the packs, keeping maybe 1 player.

It reminds me of the behaviour of people addicted to slot machines, literally
pumping in coins, recycling their winnings until they have nothing left.

After the Battlefront 2 debacle, EA said they were abandoning loot boxes and
wouldn't do pay to win any more. They appear to have avoided it with
Battlefield V, but FIFA still stands as the Daddy when it comes to pay to win
and it needs to be destroyed.

~~~
rchaud
I downloaded FIFA15 on PS3 years ago, and I've only played it a couple of
times for this reason. They have completely gimped the out-of-the-box features
in terms of what you can do as a single player. Majority of gameplay revolves
around Ultimate Team, which requires packs.

Makes me long for the days of FIFA 96-09, where you didn't have to buy a damn
thing other than the game itself to play in tournaments with you favourite
team.

The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing
video games.

~~~
ahje
> The "recurring revenue" model has really soured the experience of playing
> video games.

Yeah, and the worst part is that many video game companies would rather kill
decent single-player franchises with low-quality games that nobody likes, in
order to get multiplayer capability and loot-boxes baked into everything.

Ten years ago I spent quite a lot of money on video games. Now, I just can't
be bothered anymore. Most of the games I bought ten years ago have more replay
value than the ones on the market today. At the same time the market for
gaming seems to have exploded, so I guess it's working out for them.

------
rchaud
Stories like this make me relieved that I went to a school that mandated
uniforms. For the most part, this circumvented an arms race around student
fashion where what you wore signified your status.

It wasn't a perfect solution, as kids still jousted for attention via watches,
iPods, jewellery, but it was better than nothing.

~~~
libria
Even with uniforms at my school, those with the yellow Ralph Lauren shirts
looked down on those with the yellow Izod shirts or worse off-brand. It was
easy to ignore though, but still amusing. "Insecurity uh finds a way."

------
b_tterc_p
My parents told me stories of being bullied because their home made clothes
had no tags on them (meaning not bought, although from pictures they looked
impressively good on par with regular fashion IMO). I never experienced any
sort of wealth based bullying or witnessed it occurring to anyone in my school
days.

I can’t relate to what’s being discussed. I would be very confused if someone
tried to attack me on the premise of not spending money for pointless visuals.

~~~
asdf21
Do you wear nice clothes to work present day?

~~~
b_tterc_p
I do, but I work at a nice place with clear standards. Fortnite is garbo and
free.

For this analogy to work, I would need to feel like I was being attacked for
wearing gym clothes to Arby’s or Taco Bell. Honestly I would be more prone to
bullying people who do buy skins probably... you’re not cool if you put on an
expensive tie to get your fake cheese Fritos milkshake anathema* for 0.69¢

(*I don’t have any particular reason to believe these exist)

~~~
asdf21
For the analogy to work, you just need to realize that Fortnite is the closest
thing kids have to a self-selected, competitive "workplace".

~~~
b_tterc_p
But there are other games. Games that actually cost money.

It seems strange to me that wealth shaming behaviors are appearing in the free
game but not the expensive one. I think I would always have thought spending
money in a free game would be lame...

~~~
asdf21
Garish displays of wealth are generally more important to those with less
means, to distinguish themselves.

Probably the same here.

------
maliker
I tried the game, and it wasn't my cup of tea--I'm more of a civilization kind
of guy. However, reading about how the game is evolving as a social
destination is fascinating. Reminds me of MUDs back in the day, except it's
way more popular and way more mainstream.

~~~
TheGRS
Seems weird that its all happened with a shooter. They've been pretty much
there the whole time. Battle Royale as a game mode/genre isn't the most unique
idea to ever come along either. The visuals sort of set it apart, though I've
seen plenty of cartoony shooters that have come before.

I can't really put my finger on what makes Fortnite work so well with
teenagers, other than how the game happened to seize on a fad at just the
right time, and then went all-in with teenager-pleasing updates.

The only other game that had this sort of success was Minecraft. Just perfect
timing with a game that was highly moddable and became a digital hangout spot
for kids.

~~~
smaddock
Fortnite is one of the few games that is available on all major platforms,
including mobile, which allows online cross-play. I believe its accessibility,
cost, and scarcity of alternatives is what makes it appealing to younger
audiences.

The portability of Unreal Engine 4 places Epic Games in a unique position
where they can deliver this kind of experience.

~~~
TheGRS
I think what's kind of odd though is that it didn't happen sooner. Nothing
technologically-speaking today is much different than, say, 15 years ago.
Other than bandwidth and console-maker's willingness to work with each other
for the greater good.

~~~
asdff
I don't know why they did it, to be honest. IIRC microsoft tried halo 2 or 3
briefly play testing xbox vs pc, and pc won everytime due to how much more
accurate a mouse is vs a thumbstick. In this gen, microsoft finally allowed
cross platform play with fortnight and PC players still win every engagement.

------
neilv
One of the popular free-to-play tablet strategy games I tried a few years ago
had a different variation on "bullying", and presumably known to the
developers. There, you could use small free amounts of the numerous different
currencies/resources/boosts (also purchasable with real money), spend hours
designing bases in a multiplayer world, and... then pay-to-win griefers would
come along and destroy everything you built, and violate whatever you were
actively controlling. I imagine there were a lot of angry/frustrated deletions
of the game, and also a lot of impulsive spending of money to be able to
rebuild and defend what you'd just created.

~~~
babaganoosh89
That’s what Game of War was like. Every tech level was around a 2x improvement
than the one before it. So much of the game was high level pay to win players
beating up on the low level free players 1v20.

------
AlexandrB
Make no mistake, this is an entirely intentional consequence of Fortnite's
design. There's a great video[1] that goes into detail on the psychological
manipulation used in Fortnite's monetization model. It saddens me that a hobby
that brought me so much joy as a kid/teenager now preys on the same
insecurities it once sheltered me from.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0)

~~~
oblio
Heh... Hearthstone has a literal slot machine display as the matchmaking
progress bar. Opening packs is animated to look like opening a bag of loot.
More expensive cards have nicer effects or animations.

F2P games are Skinner boxes.

------
epaga
Fascinating article.

This opens my eyes to why my son gifted his classmate a $10 skin from his own
pocket money for no special occasion - there was clearly far more going on
than I had realized.

Bullying is one way of handling "defaults" \- generosity is another... and
Epic Games makes boatloads of money either way.

~~~
mcv
Kinda sickening that bullying between kids is apparently a vital part of their
monetisation strategy.

Maybe everybody should get assigned a random unique skin, but if you pay you
get the skin you want.

~~~
cwkoss
Nice idea, but people would repeatedly make free accounts until they got the
skin they wanted.

~~~
asdff
Is that a bad thing?

------
hesdeadjim
The only lesson I can draw from this story is that teenagers have an
unparalleled inventiveness to be assholes to each other.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Pretty much. You get made fun of for your looks, your name, your character, or
your hobbies, but the one certainty is you will be made fun of. It's not cool,
but it's going to happen, and I don't think there's a way to avoid it.

~~~
ansible
Indeed.

I was recently reading "The Nurture Assumption" by Judith Rich Harris. Many
parents believe they have a large influence on their children's personality
(traits like confidence).

However, it seems like the influence of their peers vastly outweighs what
parents do (outside of actual abuse, which is of course bad).

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Was their discussion in the book about home schooled kids? I'd be interested
in how that changes the dynamic.

~~~
ansible
I don't recall much discussion of home-schooled kids. Unless the parents are
deliberately limiting the children's socialization with peers their own age,
I'd expect that it doesn't matter.

The common misconception is that kids emulate their parents to become
successful adults. Where in actuality, kids emulate other (sometimes slightly
older) kids, in order to become _successful kids_.

------
NKosmatos
Interesting to note that in the article, Epic is only mentioned once and for a
different reason from what we would expect, for designing nice skins!!!
Nothing is stated about how they’re promoting/pushing their digital offerings
to young kids, who are not of age to be able to clearly judge what is good for
them and when they’re being tricked by shabby marketing in order to do
purchases. I’ve read that Epic is throttling users who don’t have paid for a
battle pass, is not as fast and supportive as it should be with refunds and is
dumping a lot of money in sponsorships/prizes so as to attract more young
players. They know what is happenings and I don’t thing this will change :-(
It’s true that society, schools, kids and parents have changed in recent years
and that’s why we’re seeing an increase of bullying, which is not helping the
situation with how gaming is affecting lives. IMHO some kind of
regulation/stricter rules are needed.

------
stestagg
Polygon is free but I just got bullied into getting tracked by their
advertising partners :(

------
settsu
There’s also some very rough bullying behavior by teens of younger players
(who tend to talk a lot of game and such), which is unfortunate amd
inexcusable. Racist, sexist, and bigoted speech is also not uncommon.

However, let’s be frank and acknowledge that this is not at all a new
phenomenon—kids have been made fun of for their clothes, shoes, lunches,
haircuts, age, ad nauseam. There’s little (white) punks of single digit age
dropping the n-word in public parks.

Kids can be straight up cruel. Pointing at video games or music or whatever
the scapegoat du jour is mostly unproductive.

------
magashna
Isn't this the same with clothes, phones, etc.?

~~~
TheChaplain
Indeed it is, and not only for kids. iPhone, BMW, Armani are status symbols
that opens doors in many countries.

------
jerf
In my brush with Fortnite and its culture, this was the thing that surprised
me the most.

What I wonder is, did Epic deliberately do this? It wouldn't take much to seed
the initial culture with this idea.

If they didn't, it is certain that whatever the next "Fortnite" is will
deliberately have its corporate creators try to seed the community with the
idea that not spending money is socially bad, and you should feel bad about
not buying things, and make other people feel bad about not buying things. I
can come up with three or four subtle ways of slanting things against the
"defaults" even in a nominally free-to-play game that on paper is indeed
totally fair just by casually thinking about it for five minutes [1], and
goodness only knows what I could come up with if I were in a position to think
about this as my day job and run experiments.

I've posted on HN a few times about how I'm keeping my kids away from a lot of
the modern ad-based or free-to-play stuff like this, because since I was a kid
the market has become wildly more potent at extracting money from children. I
often have phrased it in terms of ads being more sophisticated, but this is
honestly more what I have in mind. This is so far beyond anything I was
subjected to as a child as to be a quantitative difference.

(Let me emphasize that yes, I'm aware that such things existed as a kid. I
remember the console wars, Furby, and the general stream of advertising aimed
at me. It was not unheard of to have even a bit of spontaneous social pressure
show up. But I'd still say this is some next-level stuff. None of that stuff
really followed me home unless I let it; this actively shuts people out of
full social participation even from their home if they don't give in to the
social pressure.)

What prepubescent brain can be expected to stand up to this?

I'm trying to explain this stuff to my kids, but the simple truth is they are
cognitively capable of getting hooked by this stuff _years_ before they are
cognitively capable of understanding the analysis, and then it's another few
years of brain development after that when mere intellectual comprehension of
what is being fired at them can be transformed into concrete actions to defend
themselves.

[1] For example, suppose you have the player's name above the character, as it
often is. Suppose you make one of the things you can get with a skin is the
ability to change the fonts on that name. Suppose the default font is much
higher visibility, and that when you buy something, the UI automatically
changes them away from the "default" font, making their visibility de facto
lower, even though it's officially just an "optional" font. You only have to
provide a slightly gradient like that, and then let the community iterate it
on it for a few months. You can even trivially be sure that your gradient is
noticed by seeding the player forum with a couple of accounts pointing this
out in week 2 or 3, and a couple dozen other accounts agreeing with it, and
then a couple more later swearing up and down that they tried it out and it
totally improved their game.

But you could claim with a straight face that the game is still totally fair
to people who don't pay... "look, they get all the same weapons, the damage is
the same, the win conditions are the same".... it's not even necessarily a bad
argument!

I miss when you could be on the Internet and read a message from someone and
safely assume it was from an actual person.

~~~
EGreg
How is this much different from the culture I grew up where people made fun of
you when you didn't have some nice fashion, but wore, say, the same sneakers
as your parents?

~~~
jerf
It's possible you missed it in my edits as I was editing things in, but the
answer is, _it didn 't follow you home_. When I got home, I could be
broadcasted at by the TV, but I had no peer-interactive media other than voice
phone calls, which are structurally unsuitable for this style of peer
pressure. The TV could set the parameters of the peer pressure, and then I
could be pressured at school, but there was no dynamic, real-time blending of
the corporate agenda-setting and my actual peers reinforcing it in a live
loop.

And if memory serves, honestly, even that loop was non-linearly weaker than
you'd think (or, if you prefer, the aforementioned dynamic loop is non-
linearly stronger than you'd think from the parts, since it's iterative).
Yeah, some kids were _really_ into that peer game, but it was pretty easy to
check out, and the peer pressure was easily lost in the ambient level of
general bullying and child unpleasantness. Yeah, I wore the wrong shoes, but
it was something I heard about infrequently, and even if I had been wearing
the right shoes it was pretty clear it would just have been something else. It
wasn't the dominant playground topic, every day.

------
craftinator
Sounds like we need to produce kids that are more bully-resistant. This
comment is likely to make some people upset, so let me elaborate: Being able
to resist bullying in any format is an extremely useful life skill. I was
lucky enough to be taught by the Marine Corps in how to resist it, and it's
been instrumental in life, almost every day. People who are easily diverted
through bully tactics are easily distracted from their life goals by anyone
who is loud enough and mildly persuasive enough. Their opinions end up
mirroring the loudest person in the room, quashing their self image and their
creativity. This article is about video games, but as video games are, for
many kids, a daily form of social interaction, it makes them a prime candidate
for learning early on how to resist negative and cynical attitudes being
thrown at them.

------
ben7799
We had already decided no Fortnite in the house but this really is awful.

My impression is some of this is kids younger than "teenager" too, which is
even worse.

Hilarious this game is so toxic when one of the UI designers was featured here
on HN last week pontificating about ethics in games.

~~~
falsedan
ex-designer I thought

------
hashkb
Capitalizing on social insecurity has always been good business. Take a look
at fashion. Why should video games be exempt? This is a problem we need to fix
in our societies, not by demonizing companies who take advantage of bugs in
our brains.

------
mprev
If my kids and their friends are anything to go by then Fortnite is no longer
cool. They complain that, despite the seasons, the game is too samey and has
got boring.

My kids did experience peer pressure to buy season passes a year or so ago.

~~~
asdff
Somehow fortnight got away with having one map for this long

~~~
ShinTakuya
I mean Dota and LoL got away with the same thing. Hell, you can even point at
chess as an example of how it's possible for a game to remain engaging despite
staying the same.

------
nangtrongvuon
I’ve played the game at a relatively decent level, and the general idea is
“defaults” tend to be easier opponents. Of course, most people and
specifically kids don’t want to be looked down upon, which leads to the
phenomenon mentioned in the article.

Fortnite is special in that skins are very prominent from the so called
“defaults”, thus someone with skins show that they have clearly invested in
the game and therefore (on average) are better players. In other games like
Apex Legends (another Battle Royals), the skins aren’t as obvious or are much
subtler recolors and slight changes from the base model.

------
fraun
Wow, I guess I still hadn't grasped how big fortnight was, not having much to
do with children and all... I guess minecraft either attracted a younger
audience or the lack of competition removed aspects of bullying?

~~~
jacobush
All of Fortnite is crafted and tuned around in-game purchases. It's also a
very centralized game. Minecraft online gaming is a very different experience
and there are thousands of independent servers.

~~~
hardwaresofton
The in-game purchase (and indirect gambling) problem is _very_ well known, but
no one's done anything about it. It's just too tantalizing a prospect for
publishers/game companies I guess.

I think TF2[0] might have been the first on the scene with hats in 2009, and
other games followed suit once they saw the success... But many of the games I
can think of (Counter Strike for one) were aimed at a somewhat older
demographic.

[0]:
[https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Item_timeline](https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Item_timeline)

~~~
khill
There is no "in-game" gambling in Fortnite. You always know what you are
spending your money on:

[https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/26/fortnite-pve-
eliminates-...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/26/fortnite-pve-eliminates-
blind-loot-boxes/)

~~~
hardwaresofton
Yeah, _as of early 2019_ [0]. I didn't even mean to imply that there _was_ in-
game gambling in Fortnite, but you noting it prompted me to look it up (I
don't play/follow Fortnite at all, I dismissed the genre basically as a whole
when I saw PUBG start to rise).

Gaming's funding model is SUPER broken. I don't know where or when it went so
far off the rails, but at some point people shifted from making massive bets
on passion projects to doing a little more marketing/advertising/manipulation
to make projects more likely to succeed to full on profit-maximization with
little regard for the effects. Ethics hasn't kept up, parenting handbooks
haven't, and regulation never stood a chance of keeping up.

Whether it's some of us or all of us to blame, the problem is the same. I'm
not hopeful enough to count on some sort of moralistic shift in how things are
done across the whole human race or even at the country level but something
should probably be done about this. For the same reason people generally agree
we shouldn't allow children to do some things before a certain age (where they
are likely to have developed enough both physically and mentally to process
the ramifications and make a choice), we should probably be preventing
manipulation of kids at this level. Look at how Juul swept through high
schools (and their marketing campaigns, etc). Things are kind of fucked.

[0]: [https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/loot-
unboxing](https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/loot-unboxing)

~~~
mrguyorama
It's an expected endpoint of purely capitalism and unregulated based mass
market entertainment product.

If Hollywood could have turned movies into pretty skinner-boxes they would
have done that a decade ago

------
erulabs
I wonder how much of this is due to match making, squads, and the social
aspect of the game.

In many other games, if you win a few rounds (or do well at all), you're
quickly pitted against semi-professional players and lose horribly. Semi-
professional and professional players simply do not care about their costumes
or outfits, and often choose the skin that offers the most visual clarity or
blends in the most. You specifically _do not_ want to standout in a
-competitive- shooter game.

But, in Fortnight, because only 1 player wins, and because of the chaotic and
random nature of the game, and because of the social aspect (playing with a
group of friends), I wonder if most kids ever experience a user 10x or 20x or
200x their skill level. It's very likely most players never really improve
their skill levels over time.

Watching professional StarCraft or Counter-Strike, graphics and details are
turned down to the lowest setting, skins and such are not used, etc etc. If
you were never aware of the "ladder of skill" in front of you, or your place
on it, it seems more reasonable to focus on cosmetics.

What really interests me is that a few years ago games started actively
removing "leaderboards" and "ranking positions" UI pieces - specifically to
make new players and poorly skilled players feel more comfortable and happy.
There is absolutely a balance here. Recently my 7 year old nephew said a game
(RayMan) was boring because "we always win", and I had a great conversation
with him about difficultly in life - things that are always easy and always
fun are dangerous. Games with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable -
it's about the accomplishment, not the reward. This applies to video games,
drugs, relationships, food, and just about everything else in life.

I absolutely am glad his mother doesn't allow FortNight, but allows me to play
Chess, Rocket League, and StarCraft with him.

~~~
dunstad
Relationships with intense difficulty are rewarding and memorable?

~~~
DoreenMichele
There is a reason we have expressions like "Good Time Charlie."

Relationships based solely on shallow, easy and fun experiences tend to be
weak relationships that aren't likely to withstand the inevitable storms of
life.

On the one hand, you don't want the person to be the primary source of trouble
in your life. On the other hand, if there isn't some kind of inherent
friction, the odds are good that everything will fall apart at the first
strong wind, so to speak.

Strong relationships tend to be relationships where the personal bond is
sufficient to withstand some stress. This is very often due in part to
inherent friction within the relationship.

People who need to work at it and actually do tend to have stronger
relationships than those with so-called _chemistry_. Relationships that "start
with a bang" often soon end with one.

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LUmBULtERA
I hadn't heard the term "default" like this before, but I love it -- as a
compliment. I'd adopt the term "default" regarding cosmetics in pride. Fuck
buying worthless shit.

------
vasili111
I think in this particular situation the problem is more with child education
than the problem with the game itself.

------
NetOpWibby
Fortnite is the new GTA.

~~~
dvhh
True to some degree, at least for GTA you can clearly place the blame on the
parent for not scrutinizing the recommended rating for the game they let there
kid play.

