National Institute Of Fashion Technology,

Kolkata

Bachelor Of Fashion Technology – Semester VI

Enterpreneurship Management

Assignment - I

Topic : Case Study of a successful multimedia (Fortnite-Battle Royale)

Submitted By:
Ankita Ranjan (07)

Ankita Saha(08)

Ayushi Singh(11)
Fortnite – Battle Royale

Fortnite Battle Royale is a wildly popular online video game produced by Epic
Games. In the time since it was released in September of 2017, it’s acquired new
users in droves. Within two weeks of its release, it had 10 million users. By March
of 2018, 45 million. In June of 2018, 125 million. And by November of 2018, the
number of registered users exceeded 200 million.

But Epic Games has done more than just acquire a massive number of users for its
game. It’s also retained those players over time and generated impressive revenues.
In August of 2018, the company reported having 78.3 million monthly players.
Three months later, Epic announced reaching yet another milestone: 8.3 million
concurrent players.
In terms of revenue, Nielsen’s SuperData estimates that Fortnite made $2.4 billion
USD in 2018. That’s remarkable for a lot of reasons, not least of which that the
game is entirely free to download and play.
Acquisition: Fortnite Acquires Users by Knowing Its Audience

According to the results of a consumer research study conducted by Newzoo, 68%

of Fortnite players are aged between 10 and 30 years old. It’s a young audience,
and Fortnite does an excellent job of catering to that demographic.
First, 10-year olds aren’t exactly known for their disposable incomes. Rather, they
have no money of their own and are completely dependent on their parents to buy
entertainment for them. But kids don’t need money to download Fortnite: the game
is completely free.
All you need to play Fortnite is a platform to play the game on—an Xbox One,
PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, or even just a computer or mobile phone. So when
your friend at school introduces you to the game, you don’t have to go home and
beg your parents to buy it. You just have to download it to join in on the fun
instantly.
Word-of-mouth advertising—combined with the relatively low barrier to entry—
has been a big part of the game’s massive user acquisition.
Another statistic worth mentioning is that 81% of Fortnite’s players watch live-
streamed video game content. Fortnite’s makers have been highly supportive of the
live-streaming gaming communities, hosting events and tournaments with
celebrities and big-name streamers alike.
Another report from SuperData shows that of the 700 million hours that people
spent viewing live-streamed esports in May of 2018, 574 million of those
hours were spent watching Fortnite Battle Royale streams.
Fortnite’s audience discovers the game watching their favourite streamers on sites
like Twitch and YouTube, as well as through Facebook advertising of popular
streamers.
They then download the game to play it and encourage their friends at school to
play it with them—an easy proposition for their friends to accept given that the
game is free.
The result: more than 200 million registered users.
Activation: Fortnite Activates Users, Again, by Knowing Its
Audience
Fortnite also proves that it knows its audience with the basic elements of the game.
At its core, Fortnite is a shooter, but it’s remarkably cartoon-like in comparison to
other popular shooting games like Halo and Call of Duty. There’s no blood. You
don’t kill opponents, you “eliminate” them. You find weapons in treasure chests
and hide out in locations with titles like “Junk Junction” and “Flush Factory.”
All of this makes the game appropriate for a younger audience; it just doesn’t have
the gory, hyper-realistic, or violent aspects of shooting games that parents are
typically concerned with.
And Fortnite isn’t just a shooter. A big part of the game consists of building your
fort out of materials you find in-game. This harkens back to many of the popular
games that Fortnite’s audience played when they were younger—titles like
Minecraft and Terraria.
So new users are first compelled to download the game by their favourite streamers
and friends. Then, once they start playing the game, they enjoy its similarity to
games they remember fondly.
But players goals don’t end when they’ve gotten good enough to beat their friends
and a few dozen strangers: there’s always a leaderboard to rank up on for bragging
rights or a tournament to participate in for the opportunity to turn their hobby into
an income. And it’s in that way that Fortnite succeeds in retaining its activated
users.
Retention: Fortnite Retains Players with Fresh Content and
Incentives
It’s one thing to get 200 million people to download your free game. It’s another
thing entirely to get nearly half of those users to log in and play every month. But
this is another place where Fortnite shines.
Fortnite’s premise is unchanging: 100 players are dropped into an arena to battle
until only one player or team remains. As time passes, the map shrinks, forcing
players into battles. It’s a simple premise, and it’s not even a unique premise in the
gaming world.
But because you’re dropped in with 99 other random players, the game feels
different every time you play. Plus, Fortnite’s makers make frequent changes to the
game, adding new “skins” that alter what players look like, releasing new “emotes”
that let players communicate with each other silently, making changes to the
game’s map and its gameplay mechanics, and more.
Fortnite also runs in seasons, with each new season bringing changes to the
game and new opportunities for players to climb to the tops of the leaderboards.
And frequent tournaments with nine-figure prize pools encourage players to
continue playing and perfecting their craft for a chance to turn their skills into cash
in their pockets.
All in all, Fortnite’s model is a perfect case study in gamification—using
competition and prizes to encourage long-term engagement.
Monetisation: Fortnite Monetises Through In-Game Purchases
Finally, to answer the biggest question of all: how does a game that’s completely
free to download and play earn more than two billion U.S. dollars in revenue in
one year?
The answer: in-game purchases.
Players use real money to purchase “V-Bucks,” Fortnite’s in-game currency. They
can then use those V-Bucks to purchase cosmetic items like skins and emotes, as
well as Premium Battle Passes that provide players with extra challenges and
opportunities to earn exclusive rewards.
Premium Battle Passes are similar to the DLC-model many games today are using
where players pay an additional fee to access more content in a game they’ve
already purchased. Beyond that, all of Fortnite’s in-game purchases are cosmetic-
only. They don’t impact gameplay.
And yet again here, we can see how well Fortnite understands its audience. How?
Gamers very much dislike pay-to-win games. They want to earn their bragging
rights through hard work and skill, not by simply buying an overpowered weapon
and blowing their opponents away easily.
And while gamers very much dislike the idea of winning—or losing—a game just
by making a purchase, Fortnite’s revenue numbers prove that they really don’t
mind spending a few bucks to entertain themselves or their friends with skins and
emotes that add some whimsy to gameplay.
In fact, a MarketWatch article from late 2018 listed V-Bucks as one of the most
popular items on teenagers’ holiday wishlists, alongside iPhones, Gucci and
Lululemon clothes, and Vans and Adidas shoes.
Even when it comes to monetisation, Fortnite provides an excellent example of
exceptional growth marketing.

Replicating Fortnite’s Successes for Your Own Business

Looking at all of this, it’s obvious that Epic Games has done a tremendous job of
marketing Fortnite and building a game that people want to not only play but also
continue playing and investing time and money into.
But not every business enjoys Fortnite’s mass appeal. Say you’re in charge of
marketing a B2B SaaS product targeted at a very small, niche industry. You’ll
probably never enjoy the mass popularity of Fornite because your target audience
is significantly narrower.
Even so, there are things you can learn from Fortnite’s marketing strategies to
apply what they’ve done well to your business, regardless of your industry,
product, or target audience size.
Know Your Audience
The biggest and most obvious take away from the case study of Fortnite’s
marketing: know your audience. Know them exceptionally well. Know what they
want. Know where they spend their time. Know what they like now and what
they’ve liked in the past. Know what makes them laugh and what frustrates them.
And most of all, know how your business fits into all of that.
Employees from Fortnite actively engage with the game’s players
on Reddit, Twitter, Discord, Facebook, the game’s forum, and more. They release
new information on the Fortnite blog.
Fortnite, had significant success with growth marketing because they focused on
their target audience while building their products to spur growth in the acquisition
and activation phases, then they continued to focus on delivering what customers
wanted to inspire retention and drive monetisation.