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There\u2019s a massive<\/span> appetite for nostalgia in entertainment right now, and one of gaming\u2019s cultural juggernauts wants to cash in.<\/p>\n Fortnite<\/a> maker Epic Games announced Friday that the game\u2019s next season would return to its original map from the multiplayer shooter\u2019s very earliest days. Epic teased the return \u201cback to Chapter 1\u201d on its X account, but hinted that some more modern in-game mobility perks like sprinting would stick around even as the game turns the clock back come November 3. From the \u201cWs\u201d in the replies, Fortnite\u2019s community sounds very on board with the news.<\/p>\n Epic\u2019s re-launch of Chapter 1 comes with more fanfare than your average Fortnite season. Ninja, aka Tyler Blevins, one of the first streaming superstars and still among the most popular, promoted the new content by showcasing a giant replica of one of the game\u2019s iconic Durr Burgers in his backyard. Other classic Fortnite streaming stars got the same treatment.<\/p>\n For the uninitiated, Fortnite is a battle royale style third-person shooter where 100 players swarm a massive but shrinking virtual island with the goal of being the last man standing. In the process they generally engage in myriad well-animated virtual antics as the game has become wackier and more elaborate over time, all while dressed in custom skins you earn by playing or purchase in Epic\u2019s lucrative virtual swag shop.<\/p>\n In its heyday, Fortnite was about as ubiquitous and popular as a game can be. Streaming gameplay routinely drew hundreds of thousands of viewers on Twitch, where a cottage industry of pro Fortnite players emerged, all laser-focused on Epic\u2019s polished battle royale. Epic keeps its metrics under wraps, but back in 2020 the game had more registered players than the population of the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n Epic\u2019s hit game has both imported and exported popular culture since its launch in 2017. Like other live service online games, Fortnite releases new content every three-ish months, refreshing the destinations scattered across its cartoony island locale, changing the rules of physics and generally adding in additional mayhem, often in the form of weapons.<\/p>\n Those seasons are punctuated by flashy concerts and pop culture tie-ins, like a psychedelic Ariana Grande show, an in-game lightsaber fight with Darth Vader or the appearance of Dragon Ball Z\u2019s Goku as an in-game skin. The massive online shop for skins and other character customizations betrays Epic\u2019s loftier aspirations of building an interconnected virtual online world \u2014 a kind of metaverse, if you will.<\/p>\n In Fortnite, the map is everything. A bad map can ruin a chapter and players often wax nostalgic about in-game locales \u2014 usually alliterative hotspots with names like Tilted Towers or Loot Lake. Without a clear glimpse into what Fortnite\u2019s player base looks like these days, it\u2019s tough to know why Epic would decide to go retro and bring the game back to an older save state.<\/p>\n In 2023, Fortnite is far from dead. The game is still very popular, even if it\u2019s not clear exactly how popular. But if Fortnite was once lightning in a bottle, between other free-to-play rivals like Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone and others, that bottle is a lot more crowded these days.<\/p>\n Epic\u2019s decision to turn back the clock might seem small to anyone who hasn\u2019t dropped in off the Battle Bus, but it\u2019s an interesting reflection of the state of gaming right now. Games \u2014 and gamers\u2019 tastes \u2014 are increasingly following the wider entertainment trend of digging up familiar stories and repackaging them.<\/p>\n Game developers seemed to believe for a time that cutting edge graphics and hyper-realism were what consumers really wanted, but gamers\u2019 appetites have trended toward retro visuals, nostalgia and familiar game worlds more and more. That lower bar for visual fidelity also opens the doors for inventive indie games that don\u2019t rely on big budgets to shine, but the world\u2019s biggest game developers are riding the wave too.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s hit new Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom<\/a> literally built a new game on top of the old one and remains a strong contender for Game of the Year. Competition is stiff though, more so now that Nintendo just casually dropped Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the first two-dimensional side-scrolling Mario game in more than a decade<\/a> \u2014 another portal to the past given its departure from a long string of recent 3D Super Mario titles.<\/p>\n Square Enix was so confident in its remake of the 1997 Japanese roleplaying mega-hit Final Fantasy VII that the reimagined version of the game comprises three standalone full-length games<\/a>, each spaced a few years apart.<\/p>\n Fortnite\u2019s experiment to bring players back into the fold by relaunching an original version of the game will be interesting to watch, but it isn\u2019t a first. World of Warcraft, the fantasy roleplaying game once synonymous with online gaming, did something similar just a few years ago. Blizzard Entertainment, which developed the massively multiplayer online game (MMO), launched World of Warcraft Classic<\/a> back in 2019, even as a modern version of the game remained online and playable.<\/p>\nNostalgia dominates modern gaming<\/h3>\n