Fort­nite is a free-to-play online video game created by Epic Games in 2017. It has multi­ple differ­ent game modes, with the most distinct game mode being ‘Battle Royale.’ Battle Royale is essen­tially a survival game where 100 play­ers fight against each other in a free-for-all combat to be the last one stand­ing. It’s a fast-paced, action-packed game where play­ers need to be strate­gic to survive. Fort­nite is compa­ra­ble to the popu­lar movie, The Hunger Games, which has a simi­lar free-for-all plot. There are an esti­mated 125 million play­ers on Fort­nite as the game is avail­able on console, computer, and on certain mobile devices.

Recently, Fort­nite Battle Royale under­went a major update. On Novem­ber 9, 2023, Fort­nite had an update which took the game back to Chap­ter 1: Season 5 which means the return of Tilted Towers and the iconic items like the assault rifle, pump shot­gun, and vehi­cles like the shop­ping cart.

The OG update was split across the whole season. Mean­ing on Novem­ber 9^th, the game had a Season 6‑themed update. On Novem­ber 16, the game tack­led Seasons 7 & 8, bring­ing back things like planes and mini-guns. And finally on Novem­ber 23, Seasons 9 and X were covered by re-adding jetpacks and the Baller. 

This season was shorter than usual, span­ning about 4 weeks despite it usually being around 3‑months long. The game started to regain social media atten­tion, specif­i­cally on Tiktok, where creators were record­ing their wins in ‘Battle Royale’ with the audio “Another day, another victory for the OG, taking down the sweats, the imposters among us.”

Trends on TikTok, stream­ers play­ing Fort­nite again, and the power of nostal­gia in video games all contributed to the surge in play­ers on Fort­nite again. Excite­ment surrounded Fort­nite OG, espe­cially at Justice High School as gamers enveloped in nostal­gia as they played Fort­nite again. 

Junior Addie Bates says “I love the new season, I used to play Fort­nite all the time and now that it’s back to the orig­i­nal map, I’ve started play­ing a lot more recently.” Because of this update, over 44.7 million play­ers logged on to Fort­nite on Satur­day, Novem­ber 11, lead­ing to a whop­ping 102 million hours of game­play making it the biggest day in Fort­nite history. 

Junior Wehbe El Hadj Sidi was among the 44.7 million play­ers. She exclaimed  “I like play­ing Fort­nite with my friends, it’s so fun. I’ve been play­ing since middle school and having the old map come back really makes me want to play. Honestly, I was play­ing all of Thanks­giv­ing break with my friends.” 

More­over, Junior Ella Palmer demon­strated their excite­ment for the new season. They claimed “I was about to skip Thanks­giv­ing dinner because I was so into it, they did their thing with the new season! Even though it’s laggy on my [Nintendo] switch, it’s still so good.”

The Fort­nite OG season is now unfor­tu­nately over and Fort­nite has advanced to its new season, Chap­ter 5. Fort­nite OG ended with an event which featured Lego, Peter Grif­fin from Family Guy, Fall Guys, and finally, an Eminem concert. Even though Fort­nite OG is offi­cially over, the Fort­nite team confirmed that the update exceeded their expec­ta­tions and “Fort­nite OG and the orig­i­nal map will be return­ing in 2024.”