Fortnite’s battle royale mode is so big and standard in 2024 that most individuals neglect the sport really launched with out it. And Fortnite’s former boss, Donald Mustard, revealed in a latest interview that the favored mode was principally designed behind a automotive on the best way to a gathering.
In September 2023, after 15 years at Epic, Mustard introduced he was leaving to work on new initiatives. He had helped develop Epic’s Fortnite into one of many greatest video games on the planet, bringing in quite a few crossover characters and celebrities to the net shooter’s metaverse. Throughout a latest chat with Sport File’s Stephen Totilo, Mustard revealed plenty of data on how they bought Batman, John Wick, and Superman into one recreation, the wrestle to develop Fortnite whereas nonetheless doing large occasions, and the way they even determined so as to add a battle royale mode to the survival shooter within the first place.
In 2016, Mustard was promoted to Epic’s chief artistic officer. This was throughout a time when the corporate was in a bizarre place—having offered Gears of Battle and introduced Fortnite earlier than going radio silent—and wanted to “shake one thing up.”
Minecraft, PUBG, and a random bus influenced Fortnite
Mustard says that battle royales first caught his eye once they began popping up in Minecraft. Round 2017, Participant Unknown’s Battlegrounds and its 100-player matches had been changing into the most important factor on Steam. Mustard says he remembered pondering that it “felt like a extremely distinctive tackle: How do you deliver plenty of folks right into a factor?” And proper earlier than the official launch of Fortnite, throughout a automotive journey in mid-2017, Mustard and Epic determined the corporate wanted its personal battle royale.
“It was Tim Sweeney and Paul Meegan, who was the president of Epic on the time, [and] Kim Libreri, Epic’s CTO,” stated Mustard. “The 4 of us had been behind an Uber in California, headed to a gathering at Disney…We had been already toying with this [idea that] we have to do a battle royale. We must always do that. And what if we did it in Fortnite?
“And so, in that automotive, we determined. We’re like: ‘We’re doing it, we’re going to re-task the group, we’re going to place it in Fortnite, we’re going to make a battle royale.’”
At this level, Mustard realized they wanted a design doc in “like, three hours,” and so behind that Uber he started writing up a one-page doc for what would find yourself being Fortnite’s Battle Royale.
“A college bus goes by us in visitors, and I’m like: Gamers are going to be on a bus within the sky and we’re going to leap out of it,” defined Mustard. In September 2017 Battle Royale launched in Fortnite and the remaining is historical past.
When requested concerning the frequent criticism from many who Fortnite was simply copying PUBG and utilizing battle royale as a gimmick to assist make its new recreation extra standard, Mustard pushed again, telling Sport File:
“My philosophy is: All video video games are all of us simply riffing off one another.” He added: “This, to me, is simply an evolution of Quake.”
I like to recommend studying the remainder of Sport File’s interview with Mustard to find out about why Nintendo stated no to a Metroid crossover, how Epic bought Batman and Superman in the identical shooter, the story behind the black gap, and even what the previous Fortnite boss is engaged on now.
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