Why Fortnite is getting into cozy gaming

03.01.2024 - 02:01 / techcrunch.com / Lego Fortnite

When it comes to figuring out a formula for a hit game that keeps players coming back year after year, Saxs Persson would know. Now at Epic Games overseeing the Fortnite ecosystem, Persson previously spent 12 years at Mojang building Minecraft into the stratospheric success it is today.

Persson hopped over to Epic in 2022 to work on the Fortnite maker’s roadmap, shepherding Lego Fortnite from a press release last year into a polished, ambitious standalone experience designed to draw new audiences to Fortnite’s free-to-play world.

We spoke with Persson about Epic’s grand plans for Lego Fortnite and its two other new games, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival. Knowing Fortnite’s penchant for maximalism and a steady drip feed of fresh content, the trio of games is only just getting started — but here’s a glimpse of where they’re going.

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: With the three new games, and particularly Lego Fortnite, is the goal to broaden Fortnite’s appeal to new kinds of players?

Persson: Battle Royale has been extraordinarily popular. And from a Battle Royale perspective we understand our players quite well. We’ve done our very best for the last six years to always make a game that feels fresh, evolves, never stands still, constantly updates and sets us apart from the competition by not taking itself too seriously. That’s always been the goal of Battle Royale.

The next ring that developed from that was when we put out Fortnite Creative and subsequently when we launched UEFN [Unreal Editor for Fortnite] in March this year – that is very much realizing that Fortnite players want to play more games, not just Battle Royale. And the more content they have, and the better content they have and the more varied content they have, the happier they are.

So if your only goal is to say, if you came to Fortnite, we would like you to consider all these different options, and to stay as long as you want to because we hope you’re going to have fun.

TechCrunch/Epic Games

Our creators have done a phenomenal job of broadening, already, who plays Fortnite. Battle Royale is really important – it’s like an anchor tenant, whatever you want to call it. But if you asked players like ‘what do you play in a week,’ I think the average island played in the week is about seven, seven different islands. And they’re varied in style, aesthetics, genre… We ask our creators what they would like to create. If they want to create it, we bet there’s going to be players that want to play it. That’s been the strategy up until this far.

…In order for us to make really good tools, we have to use them ourselves. And we know that in order for us to really extend deep tools and new genres, our best bet