Why Fortress Heroes is moving into comfort gaming

When it comes to Saxs Persson will know how to figure out the formula for a hit game that keeps players coming back year after year. Persson now oversees the Fortress Heroes ecosystem at Epic Games after spending 12 years at Mojang building Minecraft into the huge success it is today.

Persson, who joined Epic in 2022, will be responsible for shaping the roadmap for Fortress Heroes creators, shaping the LEGO Fortress Heroes press release last year into a polished, ambitious standalone experience designed to draw new audiences into the game. The free game world of Fortress Heroes.

We spoke with Persson about Epic’s big plans for LEGO Stronghold Heroes and its two other new games, Rocket Racer and Stronghold Heroes. Given Fortress Heroes’ penchant for maximalism and its constant infusion of fresh content, these three games are just getting started – but we can get a glimpse of where they’re headed.

Questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: With these three new games, and especially LEGO Fortnite, are we aiming to broaden the appeal of Fortress Heroes to new types of players?

Persson: Battle royale is very popular. From a battle royale perspective, we know our players very well. We’ve done our best over the past six years to always make a game that feels fresh, ever-evolving, never stagnant, constantly updated, and that sets us apart from the competition by not taking ourselves too seriously . This has always been the goal of battle royale.

Since then, we’ve launched Fortnite Creative, followed by UEFN. [Unreal Editor for Fortnite] In March of this year, we realized that Fortress Heroes players wanted to play more games than just battle royale. The more, better, and more diverse content they have, the happier they are.

So if your only goal is to say, if you come to Fortnite, we want you to consider all of these different options and stay as long as you want because we want you to have fun.

TechCrunch/Epic Games

Our creators have done a great job expanding the player base of Fortress Heroes. Battle Royale is really important – it’s like an anchor tenant, whatever you want to call it. But if you ask players, “What do you play in a week,” I think the average island played in a week is about seven or seven different islands. They vary in style, aesthetic, genre… We ask the creators what they want to create. If they want to create it, we bet there will be players who want to play it. This has been our strategy so far.

…In order for us to make really good tools, we have to use them ourselves. We knew that in order to really expand the deep tools and new types, our best bet was that we needed to make some first-party content that really expanded the capabilities of Unreal Engine. And then hand those tools over to the creator and say now you have these capabilities.

So, with that in mind, we’ve announced three games: LEGO Fortnite, Rocket Racer, and [Fortnite] All the festivals have different goals, which is to expand the toolset in a specific direction, but also attract new players to say, “Oh, I guess Stronghold Heroes is more than just a battle royale.” In fact, we just have to help them get over the hump of installing 54 GB…and once you get there, you should have a lot to do.

What do these toolsets look like? What can one build with them?

“[With] LEGO Fortnite… We’ve done a lot of work [procedural generation], we’ve done a lot of work on different styles – like adding Lego style, so you can play Fortnite style, but also minifigures, Lego style. We fully expect creators to use it too.

The world of programming is truly fascinating. Again, it’s like we’ve been operating in a very static gaming environment, but LEGO is pioneering a lot of procedural tools and hopefully we can expand to creators and bigger islands – like we’re 20 times bigger than Battle Royale . So it’s a huge island that we’re still trying to expand. This should benefit creators.

Rocket Racing is adding believable racing mechanics for our creators and track design editors alike. So this game is important because it comes from Rocket League and it’s a great game. We really believe in that game. The secondary effect is that creators get excellent vehicle tools.

at last [Fortnite] festival. We put a lot of effort into music generation tools, music editing tools, music production tools, and music games. Many of the devices we’re talking about have expanded to creators.

That’s the goal. The music attracts new listeners. Racing attracted new audiences. Lego attracted a new audience. While we know it’ll appeal to current Fortress Heroes players, it’s sure to attract an audience that isn’t interested in battle royale.

What about expanding Fortress Heroes to younger players, is that part of our goal?

Separately from, but in partnership with, LEGO, we’re introducing a new rating model in Fortnite where every piece of content is rated. This is perfectly simplified with our parental controls. It feels like you’re a parent and when you let your kids into Fortnite, you don’t have to just close the door… you can still control what your kids play on a granular level.

What can you see. So, yes, just like Lego is an E10 game, mechanically it opens up a new audience. But I think underneath that, there’s a whole new set of features just to be able to rate islands on a personal level. The real focus is, how do we provide a quality experience for all ages that is age-appropriate and safe?

LEGO Fortnite seems to neatly incorporate some of the genres and gameplay loops that people already enjoy in other games. What comes to mind are Animal Crossing, Minecraft, and Valhalla, but there are many more.

I think all games should be inspired by something. What do we all enjoy? We love Zelda, we love Minecraft, we love Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. These four games themselves are absolutely excellent examples of games that have stood the test of time. It’s something that really, really resonates emotionally with people and we’d love to join that genre and be a part of that genre.

I don’t think we’re anything special.Just like we have Animal Crossing and aspects of social sims…it turns out there’s nothing cuter than building a building out of minifigures that all have jobs and they all want to Be part of the village and be able to [help out] Take the harvest and go on an adventure with you. The social sim is designed with a heavy focus on fulfilling the LEGO fantasy, but it does give a comfortable feel to the gamer aspects of homesteading, building and village building, and investing in people.

TechCrunch/Epic Games

In procedurally generated survival games—when you play games like Valheim or Minecraft—you experience an important moment when you first open the map. It’s exciting and you have no idea what’s around you or how dangerous it can be. LEGO Fortnite feels the same way.

I think a key part of Fortress Heroes is “What’s around the next corner?” When we started procedurally generating these landscapes, we were just messing around, making these amazing things, and then adding more and more The content, it’s kind of like a true cross between Lego and Fortnite, trying to find what will please Lego players and Fortnite players – it really feels like we understand both IPs. The landscape is littered with this stuff.

I think the internal model is that Fortress Heroes is the canvas and Lego is the paint. Basically, as you play, everything you touch turns into LEGO, and the more you play, the more LEGO-ified the world you create becomes. I really like the idea of ​​landing on a Fortress Heroes planet, mysteriously transforming into a LEGO character, and then, like, turning it into a survival sandbox – a real sandbox where anything can happen.

I love this genre and I really think it has something for all of us, like in a very simple way you can set your own bets and the real job is not to die. But everything else, like prosperity, is entirely up to you.

TechCrunch/Fortress Night

Those who don’t follow Fortnite and don’t understand its user-generated content may still think it’s just a zany battle royale game where 100 people fight to the death. How do you let people know that Fortress Heroes is an ecosystem full of many different things, now including these three main games that we develop?

Nothing shows off the LEGO Fortnite shenanigans or your favorite streamers spending time in it better than YouTube videos. Because we think it has huge storytelling potential for YouTubers and Twitch streamers. It’s a sandbox, essentially designed for you to tell stories.

This is largely what makes Minecraft very, very successful. It’s what you do, which means the more creative you are, the better your video is, and we really feel like the streaming community and YouTube are going to help us tell this story for us.

Updating now. If there’s one thing that Epic knows, and the Fortress Heroes team knows that players want content, and they want updates, then that’s what the team is focused on.

We all agreed that the best chance of retelling the story of Stronghold Heroes was to over-invest in the content. In fact, when Epic made up its mind, we had laid the groundwork and we believed that Fortnite was a place you wanted to stay and spend your time, no matter what age you were, no matter who you were. “You’re interested. There should be content that resonates with you.