It is Not an Island It’s A World: Fortnite and “Worldness”

Abstract

Fortnite is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter that grew rapidly in 2018 to become one of the world’s most popular games, with current estimates of 350 million active players. In this paper we argue that Fortnite’s success can – in part – be attributed to the affective sensation of worldness that it creates via its 10 week ‘seasons’. Via a study of children’s digital play cultures, we discuss the implications of this way of thinking about the spatial, social, and material structures of the gameworld for understanding Fortnite’s success, countering discourses of ‘videogame addiction’, and guiding future research.