The news coverage is enough to make concerned parents switch to panic mode: a young girl is so addicted to Fortnite that she wets herself rather than get up and leave a match, leading her to be committed to a rehab clinic for gaming addiction. Parents have long looked at video games with at least a sideways glance, worried that they are making kids more violent and lazy—while also leading to a generation of losers who never leave their parents’ basements. Regardless of the truth in any of these suspicions, there are ample anecdotes and urban legends that make the rounds to substantiate any of our worst fears. This means that when a game like Fortnite comes along raking in $100 million a month and boasting something like 2 million people playing online at any one time, it becomes a magnet for all parent’s worst fears.
So what should Christian parents do? Should we be fearful? Well, I have a simple, biblical answer that can guide all parents who are worried about whatever the new gaming craze is—be it Fortnite or whatever inevitably replaces it in a few months. As a special bonus, the answer comes straight from a book of wisdom (so you know it is good!):
There is nothing new under the sun. (Eccles. 1:9)
I know, I know. It is going to take some convincing to get you to buy into this, and I plan to get to that, but it really is a helpful mantra to repeat to yourself anytime the news media has you preparing to ring the alarm bells and run around doing your best Chicken Little impression.
There’s nothing new under the sun
Before we dive in to looking at Fortnite, we should pause and consider the mantra that I am recommending. In saying “there is nothing new under the sun,” I am not saying “…therefore, there is nothing to be worried about.” What I am saying instead is that even though we have learned how to package things up differently over time, rarely is something entirely novel. Instead of being an encouragement to just shrug things off, “there is nothing new under the sun” is a call to be careful students of history.
Fortnite is popular for reasons that we have seen before—one being that it touches on aspects of who we are. Therefore, where there are reasons for concern, we are not completely unequipped to deal with the challenges presented. If we approach the issue from a posture that breaks down a phenomenon like Fortnite into its constituent parts, and we assume that no single part is unique until proven otherwise, the whole thing becomes a lot less scary and intimidating.
Using this approach, the important thing to attend to is how Fortnite serves in the formation of our children. Anyone familiar with James K.A. Smith knows about his emphasis on the formative power of habit. That is, what we do and the way we do it has a substantial shaping effect on who we are and what we desire out of life. However, our desires aren’t just shaped by what we do but also by what those actions mean to us. In other words, our self-identity affects the way that our habits integrate into who we are, especially in how “sticky” those habits are and what direction their formative effect takes. For this reason, I like to add a dimension of emphasis to Smith’s focus that points to the imaginative aspects of our identity. That is, who do we imagine ourselves to be, and how does something like Fortnite play into that self-image in a way that shapes a player’s disposition and desires?
So, in the rest of part I and part II of this piece, we will assess the Fortnite phenomenon by looking at an aspect of Fortnite, thinking about how it might be forming players, and thinking about how parents might work to guide the formation of their children in this area, drawing throughout on lessons reinforced by our mantra. Specifically, we will focus on the formative aspects of Fortnite as a video game, in its most popular playstyle, and as a profit generator.
How are Kids Shaped by Video Games like Fortnite?
The leading edge of concern over the Fortnite phenomenon is the fear of addiction. Kids are spending hours playing Fortnite (or other video games), and that can’t be good for them, can it? Young people have declining levels of mental health, empathy, and creativity, and they’re playing more video games, so it must be rotting their brains, right? As a result, a strain of popular culture that resonates with parents thinks of video games like dangerous narcotics.
Actually, the culprit researchers suspect is most to blame is a loss of unstructured play time, and video games are often one of the few types of relatively unstructured play that kids enjoy anymore. In other words, video games may be lessening, rather than aggravating, these negative trends. Kids need play time, and video games are play, not drugs, and they have many of the same benefits that come from freeform play in any environment.
So how does Fortnite fit in as an example of unstructured play? The game itself has a colorful and simplified aesthetic that feels somewhat cartoonish, and the gameplay is a mix between crafting and survival games like Minecraft and a more traditional shooter game. That is, players will harvest resources from their environments to craft walls, ramps, and more complex devices like traps and launch pads while engaging in combat using weapons they find in their environment. Players have a certain amount of health and can accumulate shields/armor that augment that, but each blow they receive will chip away at that total as a little cartoon number that pops out of their body on a successful hit.
The gameplay style of Fortnite encourages good awareness of one’s surroundings, conservative, but decisive play, and creativity in the formation of buildings or the laying of traps. Players have to constantly be aware of their immediate surroundings, keep a mental tally of their preparedness for combat (such as their ammunition), plan to accomplish immediate and long-term goals, pay attention to the ever-shrinking map, and be ready to adapt to new challenges at the drop of a hat. As a skillset that’s needed to succeed in the game, this is actually pretty cognitively complex. Alternately, players can lean in to their creativity and just mess around building absurd traps or structures. Either way, Fortnite taps into some of the benefits of more unstructured, creative games like Minecraft while also accessing some of the cognitive benefits of shooter games, which have been shown to have a positive effect on players’ abilities in areas of spatial navigation, reasoning, memory, and perception.
As to addiction concerns, evidence shows that video game addiction is much more of a concern among young people using video games to escape or cope with challenges in their lives. This isn’t unique either, and the root concern shouldn’t be with the inherent evil of video games or the moral failing of those who play them. Instead, parents should be seeking to figure out why their kids are playing video games, and where it seems to be rooted in coping, draw on a wealth of advice from other areas to help foster healthier coping mechanisms than escapism.
In short, Fortnite has more in common with playing in the back yard than it does with snorting cocaine, since it is likely to form players in ways similar to unstructured play while providing other cognitive benefits. We don’t tend to be as critical of a kid who spends all day shooting hoops, and that same attitude can be of use here. People playing Fortnite are cognitively engaged in a valuable way, but, like with diet, healthy variation is valuable, so sedentary free play needs to be complemented by exercise, reading, and the whole variety of activities that make for well-rounded adults. If advice on this part of thinking about Fortnite seems less than earthshattering, it’s because it is: there’s nothing new under the sun.
Will Battle Royale Turn my Child into a Serial Killer?
Okay, that subtitle is a little bit of a strawman, but many Christian parents’ first concern with a game like Fortnite will be the violence of the game’s most popular play mode, “Battle Royale.” This game mode plays like the rules of the recent Hunger Games phenomenon, with players parachuting off of a flying bus as it sails over the game map and scavenging what they can from where they land while the playable area of the map is progressively reduced as players are killed off. Eventually, one player (or team, in team mode) is the last one standing and is proclaimed the winner before a new round starts. Rounds take around 20 minutes from start to finish, but players who are killed off can leave to join a new round as soon as they die.
There it is: players are killing one another off in some sort of deathmatch scenario. This must be malforming children somehow, right? Yes, the action is to kill off other players, albeit in a rather cartoonish style that is more reminiscent of Looney Toons than Call of Duty, but this is where my little tweak on James K.A. Smith from last time is important. It would be simplistic to stop at analyzing the game as a habit of killing off other players; instead, we should look to the skills needed for success and what disposition is actually fostered by the game.
Solid research in the area of video games and violence shows no connection between in-game violence and serious real-world violence; although, some studies do show a weak correlation with more minor forms of aggression. Looking at the behavior promoted by these games, the same skills are rarely used in the sustained violent aggression that plays out in serious real-world violence. Yes, a certain aggressive, decisive impulse is required, but it is often checked by careful assessments of the costs and benefits of action. That is, gamers are trained to be decisive when a good opportunity presents itself but disciplined and measured in their aggression, lest they make themselves vulnerable. This is especially true of Fortnite, where health can be hard to come by, combat can be costly, and overly aggressive players are often the first ones knocked out.
What about the more minor aggression? Well, what this amounts to is kids smack-talking one another or getting frustrated while they play, something that can escalate, but which is hardly unique to the world of video games. Fortnite can be frustrating at times, but the business model of the game, which I will get to shortly, is built around minimizing this and keeping things fun and light. So, again, it’s not the worst example out there.
However, this doesn’t mean there is no reason for concern, and again, the application of our mantra can be helpful. So where else are kids getting frustrated or leaning into tribal or competitive tendencies? How about sports? In this arena, we see the frustration of losing as something that actually teaches emotional self-regulation. Sports are good because they teach kids character, but we think a video game is bad because little Jimmy chucked his controller across the room. However, there’s nothing new under the sun: when we see something that presents a challenge to our children’s ability to control themselves, our default response shouldn’t be to cut them off from it but rather to help our kids develop better skills in this area. That is, self-regulation is only learned by practice, and emotional self-regulation, like the broader issue of self-control, is one of the most important skills our kids learn. There may be cases where the situation has deteriorated so far that it’s better to cut a child off, but video games should be viewed as providing teachable moments rather than dangerous temptations.
Should We be Concerned by How Fortnite is Making so much Money?
The real secret of Fortnite’s astounding financial success is rooted in its particular iteration of the free-to-play revenue model. Free-to-play games are games that can be downloaded and played without paying any up-front fee; however, unlike just about every stupid free-to-play mobile game on my iPad, the paid elements of Fortnite are purely cosmetic. That is, there is no advantage to spending money in this game, and you don’t have to watch a bunch of commercials to keep playing. However, if you want have access to any of the massive array of customizable looks and accessories, you almost have sign up for the “Battle Pass” as a paid subscription that accelerates how quickly you earn new cosmetic items.
This is one area where Christian parents should be more concerned than they probably already are. The things you buy in this game are all cosmetic add-ons, but these cosmetic add-ons are what make your character stand out as unique among a sea of generic characters. Rather than the pure gambling mechanic of loot boxes made popular in other game franchises, Fortnite players buy in to a progression system where they are rewarded for playing more by unlocking more cosmetic items. This encourages players to outdo one another in their commitment of hours to the game, as often the most desirable cosmetics are achieved at the highest levels of progression. This creates both a sense of accomplishment in winning a silly hat and a temptation to excessive play.
This revenue model is accented by the way that this game taps into a social component by letting gamers play with their friends, but even more by the way that Fortnite features strongly in related media, such as Twitch and YouTube. Kids can play with their friends, then, when they can’t play, they can watch their favorite streamers play to pick up on new techniques or ways to mess around. Overall, this creates an immersive environment that plays into both our social impulse and the (especially American) narrative of individualism. If kids want to stand out (kids do) or gain social status among their friends (kids do), they need to play a lot.
Now, I know I said before that Fortnite is more like playing outside than doing drugs, but you might be questioning me at this point. It sounds like Fortnite is more addictive than other games because it tapps into a powerful impulse in the narrative of what it means to be an adolescent (in which social status is hugely important) and an American (you are unique), but, again there’s nothing new under the sun. These are powerful narratives that permeate many areas of our culture, and the real upshot is just discerning that the same narrative is at play here. Fortnite is profitable because it taps into this cultural identity at scale (the free-to-play model making it extremely accessible), not because it’s unusually pernicious in doing so. The key is for parents to teach their children to engage in what Smith calls cultural exegesis, discerning the spirits of our age, naming the counter narratives that might seek to draw attention away from who (and whose) we really are, and resisting them through intentional formation at church, home, and school.
Conclusion
To pull everything together, it may be beneficial to think of kids playing Fortnite as roughly equivalent to kids playing any game. Kids will often have a favorite, but we don’t tend to get as worked up if our children are playing capture the flag all the time outside; instead, we just make sure they have sunscreen on and set boundaries like “don’t go in the road” and “no shoving each other over.” We embrace the benefits (exercise) while correcting for the negative risks (sunburns, injury). Fortnite is the same. We can encourage children to translate the cognitive benefits to the real world while correcting negative behaviors. In addition, parents can use the reality of frustration as an opportunity to learn emotional self-regulation and curb excessive time investment to learn the critical adult skills of delayed gratification and self-control. We can identify positive dispositions that might be fostered by this particular game, and we can name those to our children, encouraging them to integrate these positive traits while steering them away from negative ones. Most of all, we can resist the urge to freak out. Fortnite might be unique, but it is not really new, and it will be old news before long. After all, there’s nothing new under the sun.
This post was originally published in two parts for In All Things on July 10, 2018 and July 11, 2018, and is cross-posted with permission. The original versions of this post can be found here:
Part 1: https://inallthings.org/the-fortnite-phenomenon-should-christians-be-wary-part-i/
Part 2: https://inallthings.org/the-fortnite-phenomenon-should-christians-be-wary-part-ii/