Fortnite is still not ready to enter eSports

Contrary to what many publishers and investors think, not every popular game needs to have an esports segment or will be successful this way. That happened with Fortnite Esports during the last event.

A few months ago, the game Fortnite began to want to break into the esports scene. On May 21, Epic Games announced they would be contributing $100 million in first-year bonuses to Fortnite esports.

This news breathes new life into the esports community. This is a huge amount of money, and it is far superior to other esporrts games in the world.

Moving on to the beginning of last week, when Epic games announced the Summer Skirmish series – an eight-week tournament with a prize pool of $8 million. This tournament includes big names in Fortnite, such as Aly “Myth” Kabbani of TSM, Tanner “Tfue” Tenney of FaZe. Everyone was very excited.

Unfortunately, this tournament did not go as smoothly despite the huge amount of prize money.

The tournament was canceled midway due to lag issues. League lobbies render some players unplayable, making the watching experience worse and worse.

Not only that, the main stream of the tournament on Twitch is simply watching the players – they have no tracking tools. It seems everyone feels too rushed and poorly prepared for a tournament with a prize pool of up to $8 million.

The only positive of the weekend event was that all the big names streamed with a 5-minute delay. This is a good thing because fans can go see their favorite streamer themselves if given the chance. But in the Duo tournament, the players were very upset because the server was laggy.

In the previous two LAN events, Vegas of Ninja and Fortnite Pro-Am at E3, both had trackers – and they worked. It seems that they can only be used on LAN at the moment, or the custom lobby system is not ready for esports yet.

If this is true, and the team needs more time to develop a tracking tool for online lobbies, Fortnite is not ready yet. But it’s also hard to blame Epic Games for trying to capture the popularity of Fortnite and the success of recent events like Friday Fortnite. The vast majority of publishers and developers will certainly do the same when the game is also creating the same passionate attraction.

Thanks to all the participants we had out in the first week of #SummerSkirmish! We’ll be using different formats each week.

We’re looking into improving server performance and ironing out issues as well. You can see the final results for Week 1 here: https://t.co/EGhCop4XGM

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) July 14, 2018

Daniel “Keemstar” Keem’s Friday Fortnite tournaments may have been successful in terms of viewership, but it’s unlikely to last long as traditional esports. The weakness of this tournament is that it only has artists, they are not just good gamers or professional players, but celebrities still attract more viewers.

There’s one thing we can take away from Friday Fortnite, and that’s how active play makes for a more enjoyable experience. Obviously, it’s much more enjoyable to watch good players constantly go from one network to another than to camp in a corner.

In the Summer Skirmish Duo tournament, we didn’t see that. What really happens when the match is down to about 20 people is that they constantly build artillery around themselves to make sure they’re the last one standing. This is an ok tactic, but it is not entertaining for viewers – and this has created a problem.

In general, this is a problem that is not unique to anyone in Battle Royale games. Esports on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds also suffered a similar tragedy, as the teams played very passively from the beginning to the end of the game. Esports Battle Royale needs to find a balance between high rankings and bonus points from kills to ensure the game is fair and worth watching.

Epic Games could learn from another popular game, Overwatch, with its own league. The Overwatch League includes major sponsors, participating teams with over $20 million in donations, and TV deals with ESPN and Disney. But Overwatch also took several years to bring the game to its current status and evolve through tournaments and mini events.

The Overwatch League was first announced at BlizzCon 2016, but the new tournament officially kicked off in January 2018. Blizzard has spent a lot of time creating a unique tracking experience that captures the great moments. , voyeuristic for the game. Proof that the Overwatch League has surpassed all expectations in the first season.

It looks like Fortnite esports needs a little more time to prepare, but Epic Games has yet to announce a schedule change after a dramatic opening day. It seems that the Summer Skirmish series will be a lesson at too high a price for Epic Games.

Let’s hope that the organizers can improve future events and hit the esports threshold that Fortnite deserves with this huge prize pool.