The issues concering addiction to Fortnite, the most popular game of the recent years
Fortnite is an online battle royale game developed by Epic Games, a video game, software developer and publisher company based in Cary, North Carolina. Since its release in 2017 has reached around 250 millions of players across all the platforms on which it was made available, being PC, PlayStation, Xbox and even smartphones. The reason why it became the most popular game are the free-to-play and quite simple scope of it, which is eliminating all players encountered and survive as long as possible, becoming the last person or team alive and hence winning the match.
This game became so popular in 2018 that has also caused many kids to become addicted to it and, in some cases, even forced into video-game rehab. Such thing, for instance has occurred to Carson, a 17-year-old who has been logging 12 hours a day on the video game, bringing him lack of sleep and getting worse grade at school. De facto the game is so adicting that even professional hockey players and baseball players have played the game instead of focusing on their job. What is curious is that Epic Games has warned about the cases of scamming occurring in the game, but they have never discussed about the issues concerned with addiction. As game developers, who make considerable amounts of money from it and are a vital part of the gaming community, they should raise the awareness of these issues and act as a guiding figure to become a good behavioral example for the other competitors and consumers in the industry. This is important and should have been done, because even they are parents and perhaps do have children who play this game, so these situations could have happened to them.
Bloomberg has discussed and analysed this case in detail, so I recommend you all watching this video, that does bring more comprehension to what has been written so far.
Hi Sven,
Thank you very much for your constructive and positive comment. I am glad that you enjoyed my blog. I do definitely agree with you saying that gaming addiction can be way worse than Netflix addiction, due to the more drastic consequences that it has on the mental health of the gamer, resulting from the higher level of immersion in the activity.
Regarding my post, I wanted to raise the problem of game developers more, since that their action on raising the awareness of the issues concerning gaming addiction would have a much higher impact overall. I know that parents do have to act in order to maintain mental stability and health of their children, but this has an…
Hey Alessandro,
I am a gamer myself so I have read your blog with pleasure. However, what you wrote about of course was concerning. I’ve never played Fortnite myself but of course I know how popular it is. In the provided video, there was a discussion about the differences between Netflix addiction and gaming addiction. My view on this is that gaming addiction can be way worse. Despite the fact that gaming can stimulate ones creativity more than movies, I really think they are way more addictive. You WATCH a movie/series, but you PLAY a video game.
In your post, you said: “As game developers, who make considerable amounts of money from it and are a vital part of the…