The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) on Thursday wrapped up in Los Angeles with the video game Fortnite knocking out other contenders to emerge as the star of a show that highlighted the surging interest in competitive e-sports.
Fortnite maker Epic Games has found a groove with its “battle royale” title in which scores of players fight against each other to be the last one standing in a post-apocalyptic world.
Fortnite was the focus of a pro-am tournament that packed a Los Angeles stadium during the video game extravaganza and Epic Games has put up US$100 million in prize money for competitions.
Photo: AFP
Fortnite is the most popular game now on Amazon-owned Twitch, with more than 6 billion minutes of play in April alone, Twitch e-sports program head Justin Dellario said.
Hip-hop superstar Drake in March set a streaming record at Twitch, drawing 628,000 viewers for a live stream of him battling for survival, with players including Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, one of the emerging stars of the sector.
The game became an e-sports phenomena after the release late last year of a free “battle royale” mode that lets up to 100 players vie to be the last character standing on ever-shrinking terrain.
Fortnite was crafted to be easy to jump into and fun, including goofy stunts such as riding rockets or shopping carts, former Epic Games employee Celia Hodent said.
“What you are talking about is more a social phenomenon; when something is very popular then more people want to play it,” said Hodent, author of the book The Gamer’s Brain.
The three-day E3 event, once restricted to members of the video game industry, was open to gamers for the second year in a row with 15,000 tickets sold.
Throughout a gathering rich with eye-popping game software, players themselves were in the spotlight. Live game action and pithy commentary were streamed online by platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Mixer.
French video game giant Ubisoft announced that it is teaming up with a firm founded by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt to crowd source material for a forthcoming title.
Ubisoft has long tapped into feedback from players while designing games, but the latest step would allow some to make content woven into scenes.
An invitation to collaborate went live on the Web site of Gordon-Levitt’s Hit Record, with the first project being to make music that could be heard on a space pirate radio station in Ubisoft’s Beyond Good and Evil 2, a science fiction shooter crafted to be a space opera.
A coming sequel to the blockbuster Fallout franchise is to be an open world hosted online and populated by other players instead of computer-generated characters, Bethesda Game Studios director Todd Howard said.
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