After a lot of leaks and teasing, Fortnite’s original map has returned, albeit only for a month, as Season 5 of the game’s current Chapter 4. Called "Fortnite OG," it’s a mix of old player favorites and some of the game’s new additions, with a smaller battle pass to match a truncated season of the game. It’s nice to see old places and play with familiar features, but it also highlights the metaverse-sized gap between what Fortnite started as and what it’s become.
Fortnite OG will rapidly cycle through locations from the earliest days of the battle royale, a time now known as Chapter 1 though the game didn’t have “chapters” at the time. Player-favorite locations like Tilted Towers are already back, alongside missing vehicles like the All-Terrain Kart and vaulted items like the Grappler. New areas, features, and weapons will be added in the coming weeks. There’s a battle pass with a horrible new Peely to give me nightmares. And while OG might be a throwback, it keeps some of the modern touches that players have enjoyed, like the ability to mantle over objects and play in a mode without building. Screenshots on Epic’s blog show past gameworld-changing events like the comet and the cube, so expect them to feature in some way.
My OG matches have felt a little confusing so far, like revisiting a neighborhood I lived in for a while but never quite settled in. I think I’m most nostalgic for my own relationship with Fortnite’s earlier days, when I fell in love with the space it built and how players lived in that space. I loved the stories they told, the customs they developed, the way its culture sloshed over into reality at the World Cup, the Apple trial, and beyond. Fortnite became so much more than whatever Epic did with it, and what most kept me with the game (besides it being my job) was seeing how players took Epic’s creation and reshaped it into something that often felt like it didn’t belong to the company at all.
I lost some of my love for Fortnite as more and more crossovers started filtering in, as both Epic- and player-created lore felt like it took a backseat to whatever cultural franchise Epic was making deals with. This was part of Epic’s pursuit of the metaverse, that short-lived tech pipedream that saw companies like Facebook change its name to Meta and struggle with the concept of legs. Like so many tech fads, the metaverse has left layoffs in its wake, including at Epic, which axed over 800 employees in late September. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney’s statement on the layoffs mentioned the metaverse several times: as part of Epic’s legal battle against Apple, calling Fortnite a “metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators,” and ending with the goal to “get to the other side of profitability and become a leading metaverse company.” While I’ve long thought Fortnite has a good chance of realizing the metaverse’s least repugnant dreams, seeing Sweeney double down on it at the cost of so many people’s jobs was a reminder that the game’s ultimate goal isn’t to give players something fun to do, but to serve Epic’s various ends, which primarily lead back to making an enormous profit.
It’s obvious Fortnite isn’t the world-changing, money-printing machine it once was. Some of that is simply inevitable, especially when the game has such a young playerbase, who are at an age and in a social space where tastes and trends change rapidly. Fortnite hasn’t had an in-game event with quite the same pull as its Chapter 1-ending black hole, where millions of people tuned in to basically watch a screensaver for days on end. Its in-game musical events, however big, have become an expectation rather than a marvel, and its efforts to engage with politics and history have always been weird, much by virtue of the game’s inherent chaos. Some of this decline could be seen as a good thing: the game can’t, and probably shouldn’t, seek to endlessly outdo itself, even if that’s what capitalism’s ceaseless hunger for growth demands.
So far, Fortnite OG seems to be paying off: Fortnite saw 3.9 million concurrent players on OG’s launch day, besting recent records, and huge subsequent numbers. It was the number one category on Twitch, bolstered by a 24-hour stream by Ninja, who made his name on the game. What that enthusiasm will translate into through the rest of the season and into the next remains to be seen, but these early numbers seem to prove that there’s player hunger for the old days.
But it's hard for me to not read Fortnite OG as a naked effort to turn back the clock, not so much a treat for long-time players but as an effort to re-cast the game–and Epic–as the uncomplicated joy engine it never truly was. Forget the layoffs, forget the dumb narratives of the early days of the Apple fight– hell, forget the stolen dances and poor work conditions that were there from the beginning. Remember how much you liked landing at Tilted Towers? Remember doing stupid shit in the Baller? Remember how fun it was to track Kevin the Cube? Let’s get back to that for a little bit, so you’ll stay on board as Epic runs full-tilt at a metaverse that’s already mostly abandoned.
It’s a sign both of how far the game has come and how far it’s fallen. The game needs to re-win the allegiance of its long-time fans, keeping them in its ecosystem and spending money on its now-more-expensive V-bucks. But Fortnite returning to the past doesn’t mean Epic is. If anything, Fortnite OG is the game doing a crossover with itself, trading on its own nostalgia and cultural cache the same way it does with Marvel heroes and John Wick. And just like those crossovers sell movie tickets and Disney+ subscriptions, Fortnite OG ultimately sells the metaverse, whether people want it to or not.
