Epic Now Making Minecraft-Inspired Fortnite Franchise
Epic revealed a new IP during Spike TV's 2011 Video Game Awards Saturday night that seemingly borrows from both Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft.
On Saturday Epic Games revealed a new IP (franchise) called Fortnite -- or FORTnITE -- which is a departure from the studio's typical action hero-themed shooter loaded with weapons, explosions, aliens and cheese ball one-liners. As Epic described in an email statement Monday morning, Fortnite is "an expansive original world that invites players to be creative, resourceful and collaborative by day and defend their prized fortress by night."
Sound familiar? It should, because lead designer Lee Perry revealed that the inspiration behind Fortnite came from Minecraft, Mojang's indie hit sandbox-based PC game. "Minecraft was an inspiration for sure," Perry said on Twitter, but later stresses that it's not a clone with a different skin. "I see lots of questions asking if Fortnite is free-form construction. It is. It's not scripted or just boarding up existing structures. Minecraft lets you build anything, we are focusing on constructing buildings specifically."
Previously Epic's Cliff Bleszinski told Joystiq during the Spike TV's 2011 Video Game Awards event that Fortnite wouldn't include "dudebros" as seen in Gears of War and even Bulletstorm. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? But creatively for the team, Gears has been amazing for us. But it's fun to kind of stretch our wings and do something that's a little different from the usual."
"Traditionally, we make shooters and shooting is in there, but it's really not what the game is all about," he added. "It's really a game that is more about survival than anything else."
On a visual level, Fortnite takes its art style cues from Valve’s own cartoonish shooter, Team Fortress 2. It will also reportedly feature weapon crafting, traps, a leveling system, underground exploration, boss fights, rare loot and even a team survival mode. Bliszinski said the concept was actually pitched just months ago, and that the components have come together at lightning speed.
"[Epic is still] figuring out what to do with the lightning we have in a bottle," he said in this video interview.
- Garriott: Ultima Online 2 "Theoretically" Possible
- LG Dominates Tablet Display Market
- $1 Billion Short: Hard Drive Shortage Impacts Intel's Q4
- Google-funded Study Found Chrome to be Safest Browser
- Ofcom: UK's 4G Network Won't Be Complete Until 2015
- SandForce Intros SSD Processor Optimized for Cloud
- Google Doodle Celebrates a Father of the Microchip
- Hard Disk Drive Shortage May Persist Through 2013
- O2 Announces Phone Rental Scheme
- Samsung Posts Record 45% Share of DRAM Market
- AMD in 2012: Cloudy With a Chance of Tablets
- BBC Releases iPlayer for iPhone Application
- Ballmer Moves Windows Phone Boss to Windows 8 Project
- UK to Get Google Wallet in Time for the Olympics
- AMD Releases Catalyst 12.1 Preview Drivers with Profiles
- Intel Fixes VT-d Bug in Sandy Bridge-E CPUs
- USB-IF Announces New Audio/Video and Power Spec
- VIDEO: Blizzard Releases Diablo 3's Opening Sequence
This does seem impressive on paper - but it lacks the vital component of showing that this IP is that of Epic. By this I don't mean it's wrong copying Minecraft; I mean they need to make sure that this is a game that no other company other than Epic could come up with, in terms of gameplay, graphical systems etc.
so its like a tower defense game, where you build the map and the towers and then man the towers to defend against...