
If Fortnite Were a Website, It Would Rival Reddit and Amazon - mspoonyg
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-big-is-fortnite,news-27144.html
======
d23
Oh jeez:

> What this means is that, unlike so many other gaming trends, Fortnite truly
> seems like it's here to stay. According to Google searches, Fortnite has a
> ways to go to reach the staggering highs of Pokémon Go, the popular mobile
> game that became a huge phenomenon throughout the summer of 2016.

The argument is that Fortnite is not a fad, and then it's immediately compared
to one of the biggest gaming fads in recent memory? And it isn't quite as
popular as that fad? Okay.

> “More people in the U.S. are searching for ‘Fortnite’ on Google than they
> are for ‘Reddit’ and these searches have risen sharply over the last two
> months," said John DeFeo, VP of Internet Marketing at Purch, Tom's Guide's
> parent company.

What a genius comparison! Perhaps a site that's been around for over a decade
and already has mass brand recognition _might_ not get as many people googling
it bare, since most people can just... go there directly.

~~~
Yhippa
Would people really search for "reddit"? You'd think they'd just go straight
to the site.

~~~
roganartu
Anecdotally, the process to get to Facebook for many members of my family is
to Google "f" or "facebook". They know how to go directly there but for
whatever reason prefer Googling it. I have heard the same from friends about
their (typically older) family too.

~~~
rootusrootus
At this point I would assume most people who use Facebook routinely type 'f'
in the address/search bar and it autocompletes immediately to the full
Facebook URL and they just hit enter. Trying to get Chrome to search for
facebook instead of going to facebook.com takes extra effort.

------
Deimorz
This article is idiotic. The assertion seems to be based entirely off Google
Trends and "supported" by a quote from someone with a professional
relationship to the author that just says they "believe" it might be true.

Google Trends is almost completely meaningless for _both_ judging the
popularity of a game, and the popularity of sites like reddit or Amazon.

------
IIAOPSW
Games follow a trendline like te^-rt where t is time and r dependent on the
game. The reason is simple. When a person learns of some piece of content
(game, meme, whatever) there is some probability they share it with one or
more people. If on average each person exposed shares with more than one
person then you get an exponential explosion (aka virality). But sharing
content with people who have already seen it is redundant. Eventually the
average new people shared with per person exposed becomes less than one and
the exponential growth becomes exponential decay. Content where r is large
explode quickly and die quickly (blue/black dress). Content where r is just
barely greater than 0 have a slow rise and slow decline.

The only game to ever become a lasting cultural phenomena via internet
virality is Minecraft. The reason is that the r value is small enough that
population growth during the games lifetime is non-negligible.

~~~
sillysaurus3
This ignores franchises. Fortnite 2 is surely on the horizon.

EDIT: To phrase it more bluntly:

 _" The only game to ever become a lasting cultural phenomena via internet
virality is Minecraft."_

... is mistaken. Mario is the most obvious counterexample, but there are
dozens of others.

~~~
ReverseCold
Hmm, I don't think Mario grew to fame through the internet.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Super Mario Maker did. It would be a shadow of its current self without Twitch
+ Reddit.

Dota became a cultural phenomenon, and has stayed a cultural phenomenon,
solely through the internet. No internet, no dota.

It's simply mistaken.

Or do I need to prove Dota is a cultural phenomenon?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzWIFX8M-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzWIFX8M-Y)

~~~
IIAOPSW
These are fair points. Mario maker IMO wouldn't be a phenomena without the
original Mario so I don't consider it a counter example. But DOTA is fair
enough. I forgot that one.

I would say that franchising/sequels reflect the fact that if you have content
which is just barely sub-viral you can pump money into marketing to get
virality to get more money. Basically a controlled fission reaction instead of
an explosion.

------
rwnspace
I think it's fairly safe to say that we've entered a new era: as MOBAs
superseded MMOs, so BR games have superseded MOBAs.

~~~
eindiran
League of Legends is beating Fortnite in:

* monthly active users -- 130 million as of late 2017[1] to Fortnite's 45 million total players as of March.

* maxed concurrent users[2] -- 7.5 million to 3.4 million.

* monthly revenue[3].

While I think LoL is losing ground to Fortnite and PUBG, they have a way left
to go to supersede it.

[1] Notably, Riot hasn't released new numbers since, so its possible that
monthly actives for LoL has shrunk in Q1 2018.

[2] [https://www.pcgamesn.com/fortnite/fortnite-battle-royale-
pla...](https://www.pcgamesn.com/fortnite/fortnite-battle-royale-player-
numbers)

[3]
[https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-03-superdata-...](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-04-03-superdata-
fortnite-has-more-monthly-active-users-than-gta-online)

~~~
rwnspace
There's a ways to go, sure - but there's no prizes for coming second in the
doomsayers category.

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purple-again
You know what else was a fad...I mean cultural phenomenon? The Wii.

This is great for gaming. Fortnite has driven twitch viewers to crazy new
heights and while most of them will never come back (check wii sales against
the most popular game franchises on the Wii’s sales) some percentage will have
found their new thing and the ecosystem will be stronger for having weathered
the crashing wave.

~~~
bsder
> You know what else was a fad...I mean cultural phenomenon? The Wii.

You do know that the Wii actually "won" it's generation in terms of unit
sales?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_million-
selling_game_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_million-
selling_game_consoles)

And the Switch is now closing in on the Xbone...

Not exactly what I would call a "fad".

~~~
purple-again
GameCube 22 million units sold. Wii 101 million units sold. WiiU 13 million
units sold.

So...what exactly would you call a fad?

~~~
penagwin
I'd also say it's not a fad if it was superseded like this. It's not that the
wii lost favor, it's generation became out of date, and nintendo was betting
on people buying it's new product. Fads usually have an illogical, social
reason for their popularity, not a direct spec to spec comparison (Playstation
pro beats the wii in popularity at this time (2018)- well duh!)

The wii was popular for many reasons, and I'm sure it became "popular" to buy
one, but it didn't lose to a social hype dying down, it lost to a new
generation of consoles (and it's successor didn't do well in comparison to
those)

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kaishiro
This seems like such a bizarre, fluff article to find itself topping on HN.

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bobajeff
I'm immediately skeptical of claims of any software let alone a game rivaling
Amazon. It'd be cool if it's true but very unlikely.

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chrischen
Not really that impressive considering they are

1) Barely ahead of PUBG in unique players despite being free to play and PUBG
costing $30

2) Shameless clone of PUBG

The cultural phenomenon is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and Fornite is
riding on the hype by being free to play.

~~~
cdurth
PUBG is a terrible implementation with textures and assets purchased off the
unreal store. PUBG piggybacked off the popularity of H1Z1 and took off because
it was slightly better. Fortnite, although cartoony, is by large and far the
most stable and most competitive battle Royale out there. Epic's update
pipeline and developer blogs are phenomenal, especially compared to Bluehole.
PUBG performs worse in it's current state than when it did pre-release.

~~~
chrischen
H1Z1 Battle Royale mode was licensed from PUBG creator.

I agree PUBG implementation is terrible, but nonetheless the credit is due
where it's due. Brendan Greene started it, and PUBG trails Fornite only
slightly despite costing $30.

~~~
always_good
Fortnite gets 2-4x more concurrent viewers than PUBG on Twitch.

