Some of you might have witnessed of late the resurgence of the game Minecraft. Ok, so it was always popular, and is now the top-selling game of all time, but in terms of what you might call the buzz around games, Minecraft has suddenly got a second wind. Many people have talked about it with the word on the street being after the 10th anniversary and a bunch of updates a lot of older players who’d given up on the game have gone back to it. This includes a handful of gaming YouTuber stars who have again started uploading Minecraft content. In terms of google searches not long ago Fortnite was way ahead of Minecraft, but that’s now changed.
The question now is can Minecraft Hunger Games gain steam on Fortnite? Minecraft Hunger Games isn’t new. It’s been around since 2012. In case you don’t know what the game is, I’ll give you a quick rundown.
In the Hunger game series, the setting is like most other survival games in that it’s a Battle Royale type scenario. To play such a game you’ll need to have a Minecraft account and then you’ll connect to the survival game servers. You’ll find a server for your region and then connect to a game. Now you’re on. There are tons of different maps and some of those maps have kits you can buy with your Minecraft currency. Some kits are better than others, but some maps don’t have kits. Whatever the case, you’re in, and you’ll need to know where you are. Like any other survival game map, you’ll study that map like you study for an exam… or like you perhaps should study for an exam. Ok, so it doesn’t sound much different from Fornite so far.
Well, first of all, it’s Minecraft, so the graphics aren’t as good as they are on Fornite. You’re still in the world of crude images and blocks. It’s exciting of course, because you’re trying to collect equipment as the others are, and they can get rid of you and take what you have. It’s probably better to scavenge for goods before you head into an all-out fight. You’ll need food to stay alive and keep up your energy, and while it’s a battle to the last and there can be only one, you can team up with someone else and pick on other players. So, maybe this sounds so special to you and won’t tear you away from Fornite any time soon. So, Minecraft was there before Fortnite, and you’ll find people saying that Fortnite just copied Minecraft’s survival games. Then again, there’s no denying that Fortnite is a cultural phenomenon.
As of March 2015, Fortnite boosted over 250 million registered players. I don’t know what that number is now because no official figure has been released, but we can say that while Minecraft is having its little renaissance, Fortnite is still garnering more players and making people a lot of money. It’s not going anywhere. But as gaming experts point out, while 250 million players are registered, the highest number of players for a month was back in August 2018 when 78.3 million players were active. The question is, have players now gone over to Minecraft? Well, you can look at server statistics regarding Minecraft survival games and indeed a lot of people are playing, but we can’t find any statistics on how many active players they were over a month on all the different games. We just can’t compare, but the numbers for Minecraft Hunger games are undoubtedly much lower than they are for Fortnite.
An interesting story in 2019 appeared in the New York Times, and the writer asked who will be the man – or last game – standing in the battle royals business. It mentions the success of Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds but said no doubt the jewel in the crown is Fortnite. It made a cool $2.4 billion in revenue last year, which is simply amazing. The question is will it lose steam, can it retain its players? The writer said that the “battle royale market is both promising and perilous” meaning you must be constantly on your game to stay in the game. He didn’t even mention Minecraft Hunger Games, which as I said came long before Fortnite. The last man standing concept named after the 2000 Japanese movie called Battle Royale was indeed not first invented by Minecraft but ARMA 2.
We should also say that the rules of the game of Survival and Garena Free Fire are also tremendously popular. The market, though, according to the experts, is saturated, and that means there will be losers. You’ll find lots of debates online with people screaming into comment boxes that Fortnite ripped off Minecraft Hunger Games, with hardcore fans of latter telling the world that Minecraft Hunger Games will always be better than Fortnite. But is that really true? Well, it’s a matter of opinion ofcourse. Debate.org had a poll that asked which is better, “Minecraft Hunger Game or Fortnite Battle Royale.” The result was 73 percent of people said Minecraft Hungers was better. That’s quite a margin, but the website didn’t say how many people voted. If you want to know why so many people liked the Minecraft survival games they said things such as this, Excuse the poor grammar, these comments are copied verbatim:
Fortnite was only good when people felt like seeing something new and Minecraft youtubers were on like episode 71 or something so people wanted to see some battle royal action and Fortnite was good for less than 2 years.
And this:
Its better because it was the first battle Royale. No one is a try hard. There’s no guns, And in Fortnite people just spray and pray. Minecraft is also so nostalgic. It’s also a timeless classic.
Minecraft actually takes skill to play. I don’t even know how it takes skill to play Fortnite. You loot with no danger, and when you’re shot at, You just jump around like idiots.
On the other hand, a Fortnite fan said this:
“Itz just more high quality, BECAUSE Fortnite has the more skills and the battle pass that give you rewards for completing certain challenges. I say this because epic games also keeps their game balanced with no overpowered gun.”
Truth be told, not many people came out and wrote in defense of Fortnite, which is strange given its popularity. Even in 2018 when Fortnite had pretty much taken over the gaming world you could find gaming experts saying that Minecraft’s survival games were better. One such gaming critic wrote, “Can we just point out how optimized Minecraft is? Minecraft nailed the multi-platform experience years before Fortnite did and its performance across all platforms is better than both Fortnite and PUBG.”
The guy went on, saying because it’s run by a community and players get new maps all the time and these are in the hands of that community. Hen then said Minecraft had the best YouTubers, and the game mechanics required a higher level of skill, and that the weapon mechanics were better. He said looting in Fortnite and PUBG was just too easy, and in general Minecraft’s Hunger Games took a higher level of skill to play. The internet is full of people who are critical of Fortnite and in support of Minecraft Hunger Games. But the truth is in the numbers, and as far as survival games go Fortnite is still more popular. On the forum, you can see people stating that Fortnite is more of a flash in the pan, and Minecraft Hunger Games has more about it and so will stick around forever. They say that Minecraft’s recent spike in popularity is proof of this.
All we can say is that in 2018 everyone was talking about how Fortnite conquered the world, but now doubts have crept in. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say, and Minecraft knows how to play the long game it seems. As for which game is better, that’s a question I’ll leave to you.