Is Fortnite really worth spending thousands of dollars By: Conrad Paintin

Within Fortnite’s first two years it brought in somewhere around nine billion dollars. In any other circumstances this is astounding, but in the case of Fortnite this is strange. Fortnite is a free-to-play game meaning you do not have to pay to play the game. So how did the game make so much money? Inside the game there are skins and dances you can purchase to make your gaming experience more personal and akin to your taste. These microtransactions are a monopoly for Fortnite and have earned the game twenty-six billion dollars to date. Caden Purdue, a student at Hillgrove Highschool, said he has spent, “Easily over 1000 dollars.” He followed up with, “Gotta get them skins you know.”

But what is Fortnite? It is a multiplayer first-person shooting game. In the game you must collect loot and avoid “The storm” which can kill the player if caught in it for to long. With the loot you have collected you can build ramps, towers, shelters, or anything geometric. This building mechanic is used to avoid other players and get the player to place they cannot reach otherwise. The end goal of the game is to be the last man or team standing. With this perspective insight is given as to what the game is about and why someone might spend money on things in this game.

The economy we live in today is not exactly thriving. With the cost of living going up our focus on spending should not be towards intangible skins for a videogame character. A tenth-grade student at Hillgrove High, Allan Nix, says, “I would probably spend my money on clothes or room décor.” So, if he were not spending his money on Fortnite he would be spending it on things he can use every day in the real world. Spending money on a virtual game is very much a problem because of the real-world effects it can cause. “It  can make you stop giving value to things you need and make you obsessed with materialistic things and you can get obsessed with things that don’t even have a physical value,” Allan states. The implication that spending money in this way can cause an obsession and make you lose value for things in the physical world is scary. Is society really losing touch?