As a gaming dad, Fortnite is my favorite video game ever

A reader explains why he started playing Fortnite with his son and how he became a family favorite even though he doesn’t particularly like it.

As a gamer over 40, there are certain things you take for granted when you talk to other people of a similar age when it comes to reminiscing about the Xbox 360 days, reminiscing about the days before online, and hating. everything our children play with today. Games like Minecraft and Roblox are the bane of many parents, but it’s even worse if you like video games because it’s extremely frustrating to have your kids play them and not what my friends call “proper” games.

They include Fortnite in this description and I’ll admit I did for a long time too, but my son is now 12 and like most kids he’s into games. He has a PlayStation 4 that he plays on, but has shown little interest in most traditional games, preferring to stick to free-to-play games that he can play with his friends that are also on his smartphone.

Fortnite is a bit of a normal game compared to Minecraft, and since it doesn’t really care about my games, I decided to join and play with it, initially in split screen mode. I’m not going to pretend that Fortnite is a great game – in my opinion it’s a fairly average shooter in terms of the action itself – but bonding with my boy was something else entirely.

The success of Fortnite and other similar games is of course due to the fact that they are free, but that is not the whole story. Minecraft isn’t free, but it’s even more popular, and while I see my son play it quite often, he’s never done anything particularly impressive and never seems to take survival mode too seriously.

Instead, he just uses it as a place to hang out and chat with his friends. I’ve never seen him play a game without his headphones on because the point is to talk to his friends at the same time. From what I’ve seen, the game is just an excuse to hang out, so that’s not really the point. All of his friends say they like Minecraft, but it seems like it’s really the social interaction they enjoy, rather than the game itself.

At 12, he’s getting a bit old for Minecraft, which I’m sure will soon be considered “for babies”. Fortnite is becoming an increasingly popular game now, but it still seems to play the same role. He plays it right, though it often seems like he’s looking for secrets or just doing stupid tricks rather than actually trying to win. And like Minecraft, it’s always with the microphone on, so he can chat and laugh with his friends.

We don’t need that when we’re in the same house, so he showed me the ropes (I let him explain the controls like I’d never played a third-person shooter before) and we started playing as a team. We even got along well because he had a lot of practice and I was better than he expected.

I ended up having quite a bit of fun too. At first glance it seems repetitive, but with all the side quests and challenges, all of which are secrets hidden around the map, there’s a bit more to it than I realized.

All the money for the skins is still terrible (I’m secretly afraid he only wanted me involved because he thought he could trick me into buying more) but as a game it’s fine. Although as a social experience it is wonderful. My son jokes that it’s my favorite game now, and in a way it is, because it means a lot of quality time together.

So rather than scoff, I would advise all gaming parents to join Fortnite instead of dismissing it. Now all I have to do is get him to appreciate the joys of Civilization (the game, not the outside world).

From reader Wrex

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