Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite

> Fortnite, in my opinion, has been a gold standard for F2P monetization. No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc. Hard disagree. The tour-de-force on Fortnite's insane process [VIDEO]

My favorite corner of YouTube— lengthy, thoughtful, and often artistic video essays and skits addressing culture and politics— is flourishing right now. Some examples: Unfolding Ideas – [VIDEO] ContraPoints – [LINK] Philosophy Tube – [LINK] Lindsay Ellis – [LINK] Innuendo Studios – [LINK] HBomberguy – [LINK] and so on. And it seems like it's only in the past couple of years that many of these channels have reached their current levels of artistry and production value. Most stuff on YouTube is trash, but there's plenty else to watch.

Make no mistake, this is an entirely intentional consequence of Fortnite's design. There's a great video[1] that goes into detail on the psychological manipulation used in Fortnite's monetization model. It saddens me that a hobby that brought me so much joy as a kid/teenager now preys on the same insecurities it once sheltered me from. [1] [VIDEO]

I think Errant Signal has a great video [1] dissecting the appeal and breadth of content in Fortnite. It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly don't think you can call it "shallow". On the other side, Folding Ideas has a great video [2] (that the Errant Signal video references) dissecting the monetization systems in Fortnite and their negative aspects. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

If you have 20 minutes, this video[1] presents a good critique without mentioning aesthetics. It's especially notable how central the shop is to the whole experience. I personally found Fortnite to be a huge slog to play - with tons of downtime compared even to games like CS: GO, let alone old-school arena shooters like Q3. The only thing that kept me coming back is the season pass reward tracks and daily missions. [1] [VIDEO]

Fortnite's a good example about how your two rules aren't enough, actually. Because of the way the game's designed, it pressures its audience (of primarily children) into purchasing microtransactions, to the point where there's been widespread bulling of kids who don't pay for premium Fortnite skins [1]. For a more detailed exploration of the dark side of Fortnite's monetization model, check out "Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite" [2]. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]

First, that was an amazing breakdown of what's happening. If you enjoyed reading that you might like Folding Ideas breakdown of Fortnite - [VIDEO] Second, I've personally become very wary of any mobile app that introduces multiple currency types. There's gold, and rubies, and power balls, and stardust! At some point pretty early on I decide it's not worth it to figure out how much things /actually/ cost and delete the thing. My understanding is that the math shows companies that microtransactions are the winning move over and over again. I hope that eventually there's enough grumpy consumers both parties become worth serving better.

I haven't played fortnite, but Folding Idea's analysis of Fortnite [0] suggests that it does. As a specific example, it presents only a small subset of the items available to purchase any given day. This allows them to obscure the relative prices in a way that would not be possible with many more viewable for comparison. A microphone hammer is 800v today. How does that price compare to a gold hammer, or what was its price two seasons ago ? [0] [VIDEO]