Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences | 2021 It is Not an Island It’s A World: Fortnite and “Worldness” Kyle Moore Marcus Carter Monash University Malaysia/The University of Sydney The University of Sydney
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract Fortnite is a massively multiplayer online first- Via interviews with 24 children (17 boys, 7 girls) person shooter that grew rapidly in 2018 to become between 9-14 years of age, conducted at the height of one of the world’s most popular games, with current Fortnite’s popularity in late 2018 and early 2019, we estimates of 350 million active players. In this paper argue that Fortnite’s seasonality constructs an we argue that Fortnite’s success can – in part – be affective sensation of ‘being’ within the world of attributed to the affective sensation of worldness that Fortnite play, closely interwoven with its paratextual it creates via its 10 week ‘seasons’. Via a study of practices on sites like YouTube and Twitch, and children’s digital play cultures, we discuss the conducive for children’s digital play cultures implications of this way of thinking about the spatial, specifically. We consequently discuss the implications social, and material structures of the gameworld for of this way of thinking about the spatial, social and understanding Fortnite’s success, countering material structures of the Fortnite gameworld for discourses of ‘videogame addiction’, and guiding understanding Fortnite’s success, countering future research. discourses of ‘videogame addiction’, and guiding future research. 1. Introduction The idea of ‘worldness’ is not new, but well established via early scholarship in game studies of early massively multiplayer online games such as Fortnite is a freemium massively multiplayer online Everquest, World of Warcraft and EVE Online.