Epic Games has announced a
hundred-million-dollar
eSports pool for 2018 2019 for fortnight
it’s fortnight the game that has become
a phenomenon it’s amazing first I’m
going to take you through a little bit
of history of Epic Games and people can
fly the Polish game studio that
partnered on it as we look at the seven
years that led up from the announcement
to finally the release that’s happened
four fortnight second we’re going to
take you through some of the competitive
elements that are happening out there in
phenomenal statistics and third where
are they going let’s dive in Epic Games
fantastic game studio known for Gears of
War and some other things based in Cary
North Carolina which is right around
Research Triangle Park there where
you’ve got Duke University in North
Carolina so there’s a lot of great
talent there and apparently there’s a
lot of gamers there so Epic Games is a
developer fortnight along with people
can fly with epic games being the
publisher the one actually publishes it
puts it out works with the platforms and
what have you so epic is building years
of war and they get some ideas and some
thoughts and they see a combination of
left4dead and minecraft if they had a
baby what would it look like and so they
conceived fort knife you know for those
of you not familiar with that let me
step back and tell you a little bit
about the two modes that are in
fortnight and those of you who are game
players are going to say oh you’re
leaving this out leaving that out this
is a basic thing for people who may not
be familiar with fortnight but are
interested in the case study about the
phenomena of fortnight fortnight
basically has two modes save the world
in Battle Royale
save the world as a co-op me it’s a
cooperative you can have up to four
players on your team could be you and
four friends locally to you and three
people you select then or that are
connected in the game right now and you
agree to be a team or it could be you
and three AI compatriots that you put
with you it follows a storyline and
there are different waves of enemies
that come up these cartoonists like
zombies that you have to wipe out as
you’re going around the world trying to
search and save survivors because the
premise is like 90% of the world’s
population has been wiped out you have
survived and you have to say
the world and go find the survivors and
you’re gonna face waves of these enemies
called husks they again are these
cartoonist zombie creatures along the
way you have build modes where you
scavenge for armor and you build a
little defenses a little base for
yourself and then you flip over into
combat mode where you go out and now
start defeating things that has saved
the world it’s progressive and it
follows a storyline
battle royale is a deathmatch you drop
into an island you have to scavenge for
armor and things on the fly and it’s
persistent and it just keeps going and
the island over time starts shrinking
which forces people think of that as the
arena and it forces all the players into
the middle this is a fight to the death
and you have to scavenge for things and
last-man-standing this is perfect for
eSports tournaments so those are the two
modes in summary and you can google and
find deep deep information on those two
game modes cuz I’m leaving a lot out
because it’s phenomenal the the the
nuance that’s in the gameplay dynamics
of those two modes but nonetheless for
those who they don’t know about
fortnight that’s the way it works and in
2011 there is this little kind of ad
kind of promo that went out at the Spike
Video Game Awards and everybody was like
wow that’s really cool that’s 2011 today
it’s 2018 so we’re now gonna walk
through the 7 years when everybody first
heard about fortnight and understood a
little bit about what it would be and
they’re chatting up about how they had
influence from left 4 dead or minecraft
and where it went so they start
development on fortnight and as it
proceeds they make a next announcement
in 2012 at Comic Con though they were
going to make a little bit more
announcement to kind of back up that
leak that they intentionally put out at
the video game awards at e3 in Los
Angeles but then they thought no let’s
move that off let’s not talk about it at
our booth and everything at e3 let’s go
ahead and release it down at Comic Con
because video games are extending far
beyond e3 eSports competitions and
tournaments and stuff that we know now
it says there are things have been
happening and video games is is HUGE
HUGE Entertainment many of you that play
video games already know that but for
those of you there that are watching
there aren’t as familiar with the video
industry you’d be shocked at the dollars
creativity and technology that’s in
videogames it’s leading us in so many
segments and things that happen in video
games such as bullet view then show up
in movies that we see and in FX’s and
put into the movies that we watch so the
announcements made at comic-con
that it will be PC only and it will be
on the Unreal 4 engine now engines are
very important to gamers they listen
then they survey the landscape and they
know what these engines do and gamers
get very excited when they know a new
version of an engine that’s very popular
that puts out very dynamic strong
gameplay and great physics great
renderings all the things that come with
a wonderful great engine multiplayer
dynamics they are watched and so they
said hey you know fortnight’s going to
be on the Unreal 4 engine now there were
two things about that what that
basically meant that from epics
standpoint and people can fly well
they’re going to be building for tonight
on the Unreal 4 engine that’s coming
after the Unreal 3 engine so Fortnite is
not only being developed as a new title
it’s actually the testbed to keep
building and adding things to Unreal 4
engine why is that important because the
Unreal engines are available to other
game studios to use and then pay a
royalty on whatever games are ultimately
published by those studios in other
words I build this engine to make my
great game – real property is the engine
and all the dynamics and gameplay and
things that go with that title that I
published but then I take the engine I
make it available to other people some
other way that those of you that follow
the kind of PC industry historically
understand how Java and all the Jas RS
it kept added to Java people would do
those and kind of add it to almost an
open-source catalog of utilities and
advancement features to help programmers
go even further tomorrow than they are
today
likewise here except unlike Java these
engines have royalties that go back to
epic games if someone uses the Unreal
Engine to do it there with the table set
now you understand we’re building
fortnight as a new title but at the same
time fortnight effectively is the test
bed for unreal 4 so that
some of the stretch in the development
calendar that affected fortnight along
that same time Tencent
invested in Epic Games and took about a
40% share now why is that right here
games as a service they saw games as a
service becoming large epic saw games as
a servant emerging and knew that
fortnight was going to be game as a
service and that’s $0.10 wheelhouse is
games as a service so it was a good
marriage of 10 cent bringing capital to
Epic Games owning 40% and having a lot
of experience with games as a service so
10 cents there well now that you got
somebody inside and also led to a little
bit of restructuring and certain key
executives you know left and decided to
do other things because the presence of
$0.10 leads to other governance and
things that are happening at the board
level strategic input in things so there
is a little bit that was unsettling
there but they got the crowd together
and herded their cats and went on
forward into the future
but nonetheless that also had an impact
on what would become like a 7 year
development cycle for fortnight we then
proceeded forward to 2014 by 2014 there
is 90 developers working on fortnight
this is a significant effort
additionally unreal was then named
through the calculations and the
assessments of the industry but people
that know these things the most
successful engine ever and fortnight
would now show up on the cover of Game
Informer that’s huge because that is the
Bible of the industry and now we’re
three years into it but as we look back
it would be four years until here we are
2018 before things really take off so
nonetheless there is a lot of hype that
was following fortnight than these
development cycles as we move past that
now we finally get to alphas alpha is
where we were able to get a group of
people together so that we can see
gameplay coming to life in a real world
and track not only bugs but look at
dynamics that are happening among the
players at max worldwide development
conference for 2015 there was an
announcement about its readiness they
didn’t
alpha December 14 to 15 as well as a
test in April and over 50,000 people are
ready that got pulled into those alphas
so there was a big big stack of
information and learnings that are
coming from the the player realities how
things were truly unfolding and a couple
things that were in the game at that
time get pulled back other things get
amplified as it comes forward also you
know Epic Games wasn’t just about
building fortnight they launched Paragon
so Paragon launches at this time so
they’re building fortnight they’re
establishing the Unreal 4 engine and
they’re launching Paragon so it was busy
times at Epic Games and within a year
they say hey we’re a hundred percent
dedicated to Paragon we’re continuing to
develop fortnight and so statements like
that led people to believe wow you know
this is a really busy project and boy
it’s we’re coming up on six years since
that leak at the Spike Video Game Awards
about what fortnight would become well
we get to middle of 2017 and meanwhile
player unknowns battleground is tearing
up twitch and steam so we’re seeing
games as a service and a lot of things
that are happening out there and we’re
seeing gaming and eSports now at this
point are absolutely taking off which
was good good omens for what was gonna
happen with fortnight paid early access
was declared at a time where they were
trying to figure out release dates and
how they were gonna do it and they said
we’re just gonna do it paid early access
so let me talk about paid early access
paid early access in the video game
industry is very interesting it’s a way
where you actually fund some development
because to get early access people pay
usually around $40 in this case I
believe it was 39.95 and you can get
paid early access to fortnight which
meant that you can get the game and
you’re in early access similar to the
Alpha they’re grabbing a lot of data off
of the gameplay dynamic and adjusting
the game looking for flaws in the
gameplay looking for flaws in the
technology stack and looking for
enhancements that need to be made
because now they’re seeing how real
players are integrating their
experiences in multiple sessions as the
player keeps learning as they play and
play and play and play they adapt
themselves into the game
and the dynamics often are changed such
as engines that were put in place that
if a player was having a tough time
against certain defeating certain of
these kind of cartoonist zombie-like
creatures that Rin the save the world
version that they said they would the a
I would give them slightly less
difficult creatures on the next round so
it gave them a little bit more enjoyment
out of the game and likewise the AI
would make it more difficult so there’s
a lot of things that happen in paid
early access and everything you start
adjusting and optimizing what be the
experience in the ultimate release so a
paid early access is very interesting
this is the views on YouTube and this is
a very important indicator because
things like YouTube and machinima for
people post the videos of their gameplay
experiences and there when you go back
to call of duty and all these games
people would say they’re gonna show
their best fragging episode and and best
kill shot and best you know victory
sequence or just hot sequences and those
end up on YouTube machinima as everybody
is out there you know these are
basically brag reels for the game
players and as you can see the blue line
is for tonight the green line is
minecraft minecraft is out there 4.5
billion going up to 6 billion in
September of 2017 and just right about
the time that paid early access comes
out so you see there’s a little bit
going on a fortnight with some of the
views from some of these alphas and then
paid early access that happened in July
right there well then all of a sudden
things take off with fortnight paid
early access and it’s very interesting
mm-hmm this tracks you know zero to a
billion views this little chart then
track it presents sorry
and it took Minecraft two years before
there was 1 billion views per month of
Minecraft brag reels or clips that were
put together by users on YouTube players
unknown a player on owns battleground it
took eight months to get to a billion a
month it took fortnight only three
months to get to a billion a month and
here as we are we’re in May of 2018 as I
do this case study but in March of 2018
fortnight past minecraft and something
very interesting happen this tweet from
YouTube’s director of vr gaming Ryan
Wyatt
how big is fortnight on YouTube
fortnight holds the record for the most
videos related to a video game uploaded
in a single month ever
yesterday battle royale tournament had
over 42 million live views and set a
record for the biggest single live
gaming street at 1.1 million concurrent
viewers amazing stuff when you take a
look at how quickly fortnight took off
and that sort of recognition from
YouTube what’s going on and you see how
fast fortnight is moving there’s only
one word for that and that is damn this
thing is on a rocket sled it driving
forward people like Drake were showing
up actually playing it and a week ago
David Price David Price is a pitcher for
the Boston Red Sox Major League Baseball
he gets paid a lot of money millions and
millions of dollars to make 30 or so
starts a year in baseball and he comes
in and he says you know I got carpal
tunnel I got like this and the team is
like oh my gosh I’m one of the highest
played people in baseball and you’re
hurt what’s going on yeah man I was
playing fortnight to 4:00 I am and
they’re like wait what you’re playing
fortnight to 4:00 a.m. timeout you’re
playing those video games well guess
what today’s players 25 to 28 years old
they grew up in the and what we’re
experiencing now is this emerging Golden
Age of video games
many of them are core gamers so they
play a lot and now you’re seeing the
impact of gameplay actually coming over
to Major League Baseball who is like ok
no fortnight in the cub house let’s take
game consoles out of the clubhouse you
guys need to be in good shape to play I
don’t need a pitcher that depends on his
hand coming in you’re going oh I got
carpal tunnel because I was playing
fortnight but it just shows you how big
of a phenomena culturally this is
becoming crossing over the mobile
version of fortnight additionally they
included a message which says please
don’t play fortnight in class which is
funny because I was
talking to the biz doc babe which is my
wife and she teaches school for special
children here in Dallas Texas and she
said when she mentioned that I was doing
the case study on fortnight they even
lit up in there Wow Wow Wow we play for
at night and they actually had phones
and stuff and she had to tell them what
wait a minute wait a minute you can’t be
sneaking playing this we’re here for
school and so it is it is everywhere
it’s a cultural phenomena and in certain
ways we’re needing to put the brakes on
just how addicted we become to this so
as all of this is happening right here
in the background paragon that they had
said they were completely dedicated to
guess what it became para gone in
January of this year baboom they
cancelled the game they said we’re
shutting it down and we’re gonna give
full refunds how can a game studio
afford to do that simple this is a
screaming hit with an opportunity to be
the biggest game of all time it’s double
down time bet on your hits all
developers on deck and we’re just not
going to focus on this it’s not that
this wasn’t doing well it was it’s just
we’re focusing and pushing on this and
on top of all that a day ago Epic Games
announces a hundred million dollars in
eSports prize pools that will be spread
over 2018 to 2019 for competitions and
tournaments in fortnight it’s bigger
than the eSports top ten tournaments
combined
and it’s four times bigger than valves
defense of the agents and by the way
what do we know is happening in 2024 you
see those eSports tournaments from
Madison Square Garden and other places
thousands of people coming in playing
for big money the Olympics 2024 eSports
could be coming to the Olympics and I
think it’s gonna get there so that’s the
story of fortnight and Epic Games who
when it all started you know we’re
looking at two to three year game
development cycles and they’re realizing
that that really is is is too short that
these cycles need to be extended to
really do it right but who knew that it
would be seven years with some of the
drama following the investment by
Tencent and the things that went on with
that and I think it’s going to be the
biggest game of all time
that’s this week’s case study and
remember value teaming is on a mission
to get to a million subscribers and when
we do it’s the first annual value
tainment
entrepreneur conference featuring
Patrick bet David yours truly the biz
doc and others as we bring you
information education and case studies
to make you better your company better
and the people around you better until
next time I’m Tom Merritt the biz doc
and I hope I left you better than I
found you don’t get sore playing for tonight
hundred-million-dollar
eSports pool for 2018 2019 for fortnight
it’s fortnight the game that has become
a phenomenon it’s amazing first I’m
going to take you through a little bit
of history of Epic Games and people can
fly the Polish game studio that
partnered on it as we look at the seven
years that led up from the announcement
to finally the release that’s happened
four fortnight second we’re going to
take you through some of the competitive
elements that are happening out there in
phenomenal statistics and third where
are they going let’s dive in Epic Games
fantastic game studio known for Gears of
War and some other things based in Cary
North Carolina which is right around
Research Triangle Park there where
you’ve got Duke University in North
Carolina so there’s a lot of great
talent there and apparently there’s a
lot of gamers there so Epic Games is a
developer fortnight along with people
can fly with epic games being the
publisher the one actually publishes it
puts it out works with the platforms and
what have you so epic is building years
of war and they get some ideas and some
thoughts and they see a combination of
left4dead and minecraft if they had a
baby what would it look like and so they
conceived fort knife you know for those
of you not familiar with that let me
step back and tell you a little bit
about the two modes that are in
fortnight and those of you who are game
players are going to say oh you’re
leaving this out leaving that out this
is a basic thing for people who may not
be familiar with fortnight but are
interested in the case study about the
phenomena of fortnight fortnight
basically has two modes save the world
in Battle Royale
save the world as a co-op me it’s a
cooperative you can have up to four
players on your team could be you and
four friends locally to you and three
people you select then or that are
connected in the game right now and you
agree to be a team or it could be you
and three AI compatriots that you put
with you it follows a storyline and
there are different waves of enemies
that come up these cartoonists like
zombies that you have to wipe out as
you’re going around the world trying to
search and save survivors because the
premise is like 90% of the world’s
population has been wiped out you have
survived and you have to say
the world and go find the survivors and
you’re gonna face waves of these enemies
called husks they again are these
cartoonist zombie creatures along the
way you have build modes where you
scavenge for armor and you build a
little defenses a little base for
yourself and then you flip over into
combat mode where you go out and now
start defeating things that has saved
the world it’s progressive and it
follows a storyline
battle royale is a deathmatch you drop
into an island you have to scavenge for
armor and things on the fly and it’s
persistent and it just keeps going and
the island over time starts shrinking
which forces people think of that as the
arena and it forces all the players into
the middle this is a fight to the death
and you have to scavenge for things and
last-man-standing this is perfect for
eSports tournaments so those are the two
modes in summary and you can google and
find deep deep information on those two
game modes cuz I’m leaving a lot out
because it’s phenomenal the the the
nuance that’s in the gameplay dynamics
of those two modes but nonetheless for
those who they don’t know about
fortnight that’s the way it works and in
2011 there is this little kind of ad
kind of promo that went out at the Spike
Video Game Awards and everybody was like
wow that’s really cool that’s 2011 today
it’s 2018 so we’re now gonna walk
through the 7 years when everybody first
heard about fortnight and understood a
little bit about what it would be and
they’re chatting up about how they had
influence from left 4 dead or minecraft
and where it went so they start
development on fortnight and as it
proceeds they make a next announcement
in 2012 at Comic Con though they were
going to make a little bit more
announcement to kind of back up that
leak that they intentionally put out at
the video game awards at e3 in Los
Angeles but then they thought no let’s
move that off let’s not talk about it at
our booth and everything at e3 let’s go
ahead and release it down at Comic Con
because video games are extending far
beyond e3 eSports competitions and
tournaments and stuff that we know now
it says there are things have been
happening and video games is is HUGE
HUGE Entertainment many of you that play
video games already know that but for
those of you there that are watching
there aren’t as familiar with the video
industry you’d be shocked at the dollars
creativity and technology that’s in
videogames it’s leading us in so many
segments and things that happen in video
games such as bullet view then show up
in movies that we see and in FX’s and
put into the movies that we watch so the
announcements made at comic-con
that it will be PC only and it will be
on the Unreal 4 engine now engines are
very important to gamers they listen
then they survey the landscape and they
know what these engines do and gamers
get very excited when they know a new
version of an engine that’s very popular
that puts out very dynamic strong
gameplay and great physics great
renderings all the things that come with
a wonderful great engine multiplayer
dynamics they are watched and so they
said hey you know fortnight’s going to
be on the Unreal 4 engine now there were
two things about that what that
basically meant that from epics
standpoint and people can fly well
they’re going to be building for tonight
on the Unreal 4 engine that’s coming
after the Unreal 3 engine so Fortnite is
not only being developed as a new title
it’s actually the testbed to keep
building and adding things to Unreal 4
engine why is that important because the
Unreal engines are available to other
game studios to use and then pay a
royalty on whatever games are ultimately
published by those studios in other
words I build this engine to make my
great game – real property is the engine
and all the dynamics and gameplay and
things that go with that title that I
published but then I take the engine I
make it available to other people some
other way that those of you that follow
the kind of PC industry historically
understand how Java and all the Jas RS
it kept added to Java people would do
those and kind of add it to almost an
open-source catalog of utilities and
advancement features to help programmers
go even further tomorrow than they are
today
likewise here except unlike Java these
engines have royalties that go back to
epic games if someone uses the Unreal
Engine to do it there with the table set
now you understand we’re building
fortnight as a new title but at the same
time fortnight effectively is the test
bed for unreal 4 so that
some of the stretch in the development
calendar that affected fortnight along
that same time Tencent
invested in Epic Games and took about a
40% share now why is that right here
games as a service they saw games as a
service becoming large epic saw games as
a servant emerging and knew that
fortnight was going to be game as a
service and that’s $0.10 wheelhouse is
games as a service so it was a good
marriage of 10 cent bringing capital to
Epic Games owning 40% and having a lot
of experience with games as a service so
10 cents there well now that you got
somebody inside and also led to a little
bit of restructuring and certain key
executives you know left and decided to
do other things because the presence of
$0.10 leads to other governance and
things that are happening at the board
level strategic input in things so there
is a little bit that was unsettling
there but they got the crowd together
and herded their cats and went on
forward into the future
but nonetheless that also had an impact
on what would become like a 7 year
development cycle for fortnight we then
proceeded forward to 2014 by 2014 there
is 90 developers working on fortnight
this is a significant effort
additionally unreal was then named
through the calculations and the
assessments of the industry but people
that know these things the most
successful engine ever and fortnight
would now show up on the cover of Game
Informer that’s huge because that is the
Bible of the industry and now we’re
three years into it but as we look back
it would be four years until here we are
2018 before things really take off so
nonetheless there is a lot of hype that
was following fortnight than these
development cycles as we move past that
now we finally get to alphas alpha is
where we were able to get a group of
people together so that we can see
gameplay coming to life in a real world
and track not only bugs but look at
dynamics that are happening among the
players at max worldwide development
conference for 2015 there was an
announcement about its readiness they
didn’t
alpha December 14 to 15 as well as a
test in April and over 50,000 people are
ready that got pulled into those alphas
so there was a big big stack of
information and learnings that are
coming from the the player realities how
things were truly unfolding and a couple
things that were in the game at that
time get pulled back other things get
amplified as it comes forward also you
know Epic Games wasn’t just about
building fortnight they launched Paragon
so Paragon launches at this time so
they’re building fortnight they’re
establishing the Unreal 4 engine and
they’re launching Paragon so it was busy
times at Epic Games and within a year
they say hey we’re a hundred percent
dedicated to Paragon we’re continuing to
develop fortnight and so statements like
that led people to believe wow you know
this is a really busy project and boy
it’s we’re coming up on six years since
that leak at the Spike Video Game Awards
about what fortnight would become well
we get to middle of 2017 and meanwhile
player unknowns battleground is tearing
up twitch and steam so we’re seeing
games as a service and a lot of things
that are happening out there and we’re
seeing gaming and eSports now at this
point are absolutely taking off which
was good good omens for what was gonna
happen with fortnight paid early access
was declared at a time where they were
trying to figure out release dates and
how they were gonna do it and they said
we’re just gonna do it paid early access
so let me talk about paid early access
paid early access in the video game
industry is very interesting it’s a way
where you actually fund some development
because to get early access people pay
usually around $40 in this case I
believe it was 39.95 and you can get
paid early access to fortnight which
meant that you can get the game and
you’re in early access similar to the
Alpha they’re grabbing a lot of data off
of the gameplay dynamic and adjusting
the game looking for flaws in the
gameplay looking for flaws in the
technology stack and looking for
enhancements that need to be made
because now they’re seeing how real
players are integrating their
experiences in multiple sessions as the
player keeps learning as they play and
play and play and play they adapt
themselves into the game
and the dynamics often are changed such
as engines that were put in place that
if a player was having a tough time
against certain defeating certain of
these kind of cartoonist zombie-like
creatures that Rin the save the world
version that they said they would the a
I would give them slightly less
difficult creatures on the next round so
it gave them a little bit more enjoyment
out of the game and likewise the AI
would make it more difficult so there’s
a lot of things that happen in paid
early access and everything you start
adjusting and optimizing what be the
experience in the ultimate release so a
paid early access is very interesting
this is the views on YouTube and this is
a very important indicator because
things like YouTube and machinima for
people post the videos of their gameplay
experiences and there when you go back
to call of duty and all these games
people would say they’re gonna show
their best fragging episode and and best
kill shot and best you know victory
sequence or just hot sequences and those
end up on YouTube machinima as everybody
is out there you know these are
basically brag reels for the game
players and as you can see the blue line
is for tonight the green line is
minecraft minecraft is out there 4.5
billion going up to 6 billion in
September of 2017 and just right about
the time that paid early access comes
out so you see there’s a little bit
going on a fortnight with some of the
views from some of these alphas and then
paid early access that happened in July
right there well then all of a sudden
things take off with fortnight paid
early access and it’s very interesting
mm-hmm this tracks you know zero to a
billion views this little chart then
track it presents sorry
and it took Minecraft two years before
there was 1 billion views per month of
Minecraft brag reels or clips that were
put together by users on YouTube players
unknown a player on owns battleground it
took eight months to get to a billion a
month it took fortnight only three
months to get to a billion a month and
here as we are we’re in May of 2018 as I
do this case study but in March of 2018
fortnight past minecraft and something
very interesting happen this tweet from
YouTube’s director of vr gaming Ryan
Wyatt
how big is fortnight on YouTube
fortnight holds the record for the most
videos related to a video game uploaded
in a single month ever
yesterday battle royale tournament had
over 42 million live views and set a
record for the biggest single live
gaming street at 1.1 million concurrent
viewers amazing stuff when you take a
look at how quickly fortnight took off
and that sort of recognition from
YouTube what’s going on and you see how
fast fortnight is moving there’s only
one word for that and that is damn this
thing is on a rocket sled it driving
forward people like Drake were showing
up actually playing it and a week ago
David Price David Price is a pitcher for
the Boston Red Sox Major League Baseball
he gets paid a lot of money millions and
millions of dollars to make 30 or so
starts a year in baseball and he comes
in and he says you know I got carpal
tunnel I got like this and the team is
like oh my gosh I’m one of the highest
played people in baseball and you’re
hurt what’s going on yeah man I was
playing fortnight to 4:00 I am and
they’re like wait what you’re playing
fortnight to 4:00 a.m. timeout you’re
playing those video games well guess
what today’s players 25 to 28 years old
they grew up in the and what we’re
experiencing now is this emerging Golden
Age of video games
many of them are core gamers so they
play a lot and now you’re seeing the
impact of gameplay actually coming over
to Major League Baseball who is like ok
no fortnight in the cub house let’s take
game consoles out of the clubhouse you
guys need to be in good shape to play I
don’t need a pitcher that depends on his
hand coming in you’re going oh I got
carpal tunnel because I was playing
fortnight but it just shows you how big
of a phenomena culturally this is
becoming crossing over the mobile
version of fortnight additionally they
included a message which says please
don’t play fortnight in class which is
funny because I was
talking to the biz doc babe which is my
wife and she teaches school for special
children here in Dallas Texas and she
said when she mentioned that I was doing
the case study on fortnight they even
lit up in there Wow Wow Wow we play for
at night and they actually had phones
and stuff and she had to tell them what
wait a minute wait a minute you can’t be
sneaking playing this we’re here for
school and so it is it is everywhere
it’s a cultural phenomena and in certain
ways we’re needing to put the brakes on
just how addicted we become to this so
as all of this is happening right here
in the background paragon that they had
said they were completely dedicated to
guess what it became para gone in
January of this year baboom they
cancelled the game they said we’re
shutting it down and we’re gonna give
full refunds how can a game studio
afford to do that simple this is a
screaming hit with an opportunity to be
the biggest game of all time it’s double
down time bet on your hits all
developers on deck and we’re just not
going to focus on this it’s not that
this wasn’t doing well it was it’s just
we’re focusing and pushing on this and
on top of all that a day ago Epic Games
announces a hundred million dollars in
eSports prize pools that will be spread
over 2018 to 2019 for competitions and
tournaments in fortnight it’s bigger
than the eSports top ten tournaments
combined
and it’s four times bigger than valves
defense of the agents and by the way
what do we know is happening in 2024 you
see those eSports tournaments from
Madison Square Garden and other places
thousands of people coming in playing
for big money the Olympics 2024 eSports
could be coming to the Olympics and I
think it’s gonna get there so that’s the
story of fortnight and Epic Games who
when it all started you know we’re
looking at two to three year game
development cycles and they’re realizing
that that really is is is too short that
these cycles need to be extended to
really do it right but who knew that it
would be seven years with some of the
drama following the investment by
Tencent and the things that went on with
that and I think it’s going to be the
biggest game of all time
that’s this week’s case study and
remember value teaming is on a mission
to get to a million subscribers and when
we do it’s the first annual value
tainment
entrepreneur conference featuring
Patrick bet David yours truly the biz
doc and others as we bring you
information education and case studies
to make you better your company better
and the people around you better until
next time I’m Tom Merritt the biz doc
and I hope I left you better than I
found you don’t get sore playing for tonight
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