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‘Fortnite’ Creative Mode Is Changing How We Think of Game Design
’This is all about putting the tools in the hands of people that might not otherwise get the opportunity.’
A few days ago, my 11-year-old son sent me a What’sApp message: “Look what I made—it took ages.” There was a video attached, and when I (with some trepidation) hit play, I saw a character from the video game Fortnite running over a series of flashing tiles, each of which played a different musical note. As the avatar progressed along the pathway, it became clear the tiles were playing the EDM track “Alone” by Marshmello. My son constructed this masterpiece using the Fortnite Creative mode, and frankly, if you can find a better all-purpose metaphor for where childhood, pop music, gaming, social media, and imagination intersect in 2019, I want to see it.
Fortnite Creative mode is a digital construction kit—available for free when you download Fortnite Battle Royale—that gives users a little island of their own on which to build teeny Fortnite cities. When you enter the mode (through a shiny in-game portal that makes you feel like you’re walking into Narnia), your avatar appears on an empty landscape, one that is yours to do with as you will. Open your inventory and you discover hundreds of items to populate your kingdom. There are recognizable Fortnite buildings—arctic labs, castle fortresses, cafes—that you can just drag and drop straight onto the map. Or you can choose one of the themed bundles of walls, floors, and ceiling parts, which then arrive on your map in neat rows and piles like the parts of an unassembled Ikea wardrobe. Your architectural marvel is ready for construction.
“Letting them mess with a game they’re already fluent with is a great way to show that the game doesn’t just ‘exist.’ It’s made up of all these little things they’re able to touch and change.”
It feels intuitive, mostly because making levels in Creative mode is just like playing Fornite, a game that has more than 200 million users. You view and navigate the world via your gaming avatar and all the items are accessed through the regular in-game menu system. If…
