VIRTUAL ECLIPSE

At 11 pm on June 30, thousands gathered to watch a rocket carve a rift across the sky, not above our Earth, but above the online battleground of what may be history’s most successful video game: Epic Games’ Fortnite Battle Royale. Flagging off its fifth ‘season’ on July 12, Fortnite now attracts 40 million players a month from all over the globe. The game’s Indian page is full of members coordinating tournaments. Memes riffing on its high virtual mortality rate have flooded Reddit.

And it has started bleeding into real life, with footballers from Germany’s Bundesliga mimicking Fortnite emotes after a goal.

The game’s format is simple. It pits 100 real players against each other in a fight to death on the same virtual battlefield. Playing simultaneously online, the competitors collect weapons from the landscape or other players they kill, harvest resources from the environment, and construct structures that give them strategic advantages. Every few minutes, the play area shrinks, forcing players closer and closer. But it’s the innovative tweaks to the standard online shooter format that have made the cross-platform game (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Xbox One) a sensation.

If you survive the initial bloodbath, the map becomes a world to explore, full of oddly named landmarks like Snobby Shores, Tilted Towers or Lonely Lodge. The rocket launched from Snobby Shores last month was one of many developments in the game landscape that players are continually discovering. Last season, a small spot in the sky gradually assumed the form of a massive comet and crashed into the landscape, leading to an Infinity Gauntlet that allowed players to take on the form and powers of the “mad Titan” Thanos from the Marvel Comics universe—a crosspromotional event.

Fortnite’s ‘world events’ take place in real time. If you weren’t logged in at 11 pm on June 30, gathered around Snobby Shores like IRL people gather to watch a solar eclipse, you were relegated to watching a recap on Youtube.

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40 around from month the globe