The End
Event Time: October 13th, 2019 to October 15th, 2019
Description: The End was our Season X end event. After foreshadowing the event across the entire Season, players experienced a rocket launch in game. The rocket took off and cracked open a rift high above the Fortnite island. More rifts began opening up, and several more rockets began flying all around the island. Eventually all these rockets focused on the Zero Point, which was then destroyed. Players where launched back and got an entire view of the island, which was then sucked up into a massive black hole. The black hole remained on screen for 2 days, and mysterious numbers were periodically seen on screen. Finally, the black hole “opened up” and revealed to players a whole new Fortnite island for them to explore. The shutdown was not a byproduct of needing extra time to finish Chapter 2, and was a deliberate decision.
Execution: The End was the first event I owned as a solo Analyst. Despite the massive implications of the event execution, the event itself actually wasn’t too demanding. Most of it was an on rails animation, and the biggest challenges were making sure everything happened in sequential order. We also had to ensure players weren’t able to get past the black hole after it was present on screen, since that would negatively impact the experience we were building into Chapter 2.
The event also had post experience, as the cinematic for Chapter 2 Season 1 started with the black hole and led straight into an intro match for the new island. Testing strategies had to cover the lead up, the event, the black hole portions and then the season launch experience. We did not publicly disclose our player figures for this event, but it was very well received. Internet discussion was circulated around The End for most of the weekend, and more people actually watched the black hole on Twitch than eSports tournaments for other games. There were approximately 7 million viewers of the event across Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter.
Press:
Virals of the year: Fortnite destroys its own game with black hole stunt
Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment
The internet is losing it while watching Fortnite’s black hole
Fortnite Unveils New Chapter After Two-Day ‘Black Hole’ Shutdown
Fortnite has reached The End - changing video game storytelling for good
Fortnite down as 4.2 million watch The End and wait for Fortnite 2