About 10 years ago, the worldwide renowned game, Minecraft, was released by Mojang, on May 17, 2009. The game was such a hit because of all the creativity that Microsoft bought Mojang for 2.5 billion dollars in 2014. However, Minecraft started losing players and Youtubers in 2017. That year, a game called Fortnite, a battle royale game was released. The battle royale was a very creative game, unlike anything else seen before. The game attracted so many players because of how unique it was. In Fortnite, you could build walls, ramps, floors, pyramids, etc. This was the first battle royale game with a building feature. The game was more kid-friendly, excluding blood from the game. Fortnite was also free, which cut out the price factor and decision making for the parents spending money on the game. The game continued to be an extremely successful game.
Starting in 2019, Fortnite also started losing popularity. For most Fortnite players, Fortnite was getting to become repetitive. The game started to die when Epic Games (the creator of Fortnite) started making very bad changes to the game. For example, Epic Games added in a robot with missiles that followed you. It was impossible to survive for the entirety of one match.
All of a sudden, that year, Minecraft started gaining popularity again. Famous Fortnite YouTubers’ recommended videos on YouTube had changed from Fortnite videos to Minecraft videos. The biggest YouTuber, PewDiePie, was the spark of the revival of Minecraft. Since he is a great role model to other Minecraft YouTubers, some other Minecraft YouTubers started coming back such as DanTDM, Captainsparklez, etc. There started to be Minecraft tournaments such as Minecraft Monday which was a $10,000 reward if won. People started coming back to Minecraft after five years. On Twitch (a streaming platform) in 2019, Minecraft had more viewers than any game. Although Minecraft is making a resurgence, Fortnite just released Fortnite, Chapter 2, which could gain popularity again. By the end of 2019, which game will take the throne?
By Marcus DeSipio ‘24 and Tue Huynh ‘26