Thousands of Fortnite fans fill Raleigh Convention Center for championship tournament
Thousands of gamers and fans of Fornite, the popular video game developed by Cary-based Epic Games, filled the Raleigh Convention Center Saturday for the long-anticipated return of the company’s official tournaments that draw professional competitors from across the world.
Fans of the game, some of whom traveled across the country to attend the first in-person tournament since the pandemic, cheered as players walked out onto the stage and took their places in gaming pods outfitted with high-performance gaming computers and headsets designed to block out background noise, including the fired-up spectators, as well as live, running commentary of the games.
Over the course of the weekend, a group of the 100 best players from around the world divided into 50 teams of two were slated to compete in 12 “battle royale” matches to try and earn the most points. Each game involves being dropped into an interactive island environment where players use different tools and weapons to eliminate each other in pursuit of being the last one standing.
Finalists then compete for rewards totaling a $1 million prize pool, including a top prize of $200,000, and a trophy decorated with Swarovski crystals.
The two-day tournament was a boon not just for Fornite and Epic Games, which has in the course of five years cultivated an enormous, worldwide fan base of passionate gamers, but also Raleigh, which saw thousands of people, many of them arriving at the convention center with large groups of friends or their families, pumping money into the local economy, including downtown hotels and restaurants.
‘It’s like if they were brothers’
Many fans showed up to the tournament donning the “skins,” or costumes, of their favorite characters from the game.
Elaina Rivera, an EMT from Philadelphia, and her 12-year-old son Devon, drove down to Raleigh overnight to beat the morning traffic, and planned to stay for both days of the tournament.
Rivera said her son caught onto Fortnite a few years ago after hearing about it from a friend at summer camp, and his fascination with the game “started slow” but picked up “pretty quick.” She wondered what was so special about this game compared to so many others, and realized her son was playing with kids from around the world.
“He plays with kids and they challenge each other, it’s like if they were brothers,” Rivera said.
The mother-son duo dressed up as characters themselves, with Devon resembling Meowscles, an avatar that can be unlocked after reaching a certain level in the game, and his mother wearing the costume for another character, Skye.
They also managed to get photos with some of the famous players competing in the tournament, who have accumulated large fan followings on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms. (One of the most popular Fortnite players in the world who was competing on Saturday, 19-year-old Kyle Giersdorf, known by his screen name Bugha, has nearly 4.3 million subscribers on YouTube.)
Friends travel across the country for tournament
Other fans of the game traveled across the country to attend the tournament.
Ramiro Martinez, a designer who makes his own Fortnite masks, crowns and other “cosplay” items with the help of a 3D printer, flew in from California with a group of friends, all of whom have been playing the game since 2018, shortly after it was released.
Martinez said his friends, who he has known since high school, turned him onto the game, and it soon became the group’s favorite way to spend time together. They became more and more invested into the game, eagerly awaiting updates from developers with new characters and skins, and attending fan gatherings in the Los Angeles area, including a block party in the summer of 2019.
Around that time, they noticed the game skyrocketing in popularity. In July 2019, Epic Games held its biggest in-person tournament, the Fornite World Cup, at Arthur Ashe Stadium, home of the U.S. Open, in Queens, New York. The game continued to grow its legions of fans, but by early 2020, gamers were forced back to playing online from their homes as the coronavirus shut things down.
For fans like Martinez, Fornite wasn’t just a game, but a door to an online community. And in some cases, those encounters transcended virtual gaming sessions and turned into real-life friendships.
Earlier this year, after Martinez started sharing his costume pieces on Instagram, he heard from Steve McCoy, a collector from Tennessee who was particularly interested in a gold crown Martinez had made. The crown was so well-designed, McCoy said, that he asked if Martinez could make the accompanying mask too. Eventually, Martinez designed the entire costume for McCoy.
As soon as the tournament in Raleigh was announced, Martinez, McCoy and their friends started making plans. They saved up for plane tickets, found a local seamstress to make proper costumes for them and booked an Airbnb for their two-day stay here.
Triangle a “perfect storm” for future tournaments
Like many other parents who had bought tickets for the tournament, state Rep. Jason Saine stopped by the tournament on Saturday afternoon for his 14-year-old son Jackson, a big fan who started playing Fornite years ago, and got his father interested in the game as well.
Looking up at the giant screens displaying an ongoing match, Saine, a Republican from Lincoln County, said the tournament felt “like a mini Superbowl.”
Saine has said he and his son have long enjoyed playing video games, but he first developed an appreciation for the economic impact of tournaments like these when his son persuaded him to take the entire family to New York for the 2019 World Cup.
The massive gathering of Fortnite fans would convince Saine that North Carolina shouldn’t be passing up on a potentially significant opportunity to cultivate homegrown esports tournaments and attract the immense fan bases of games like Fortnite, and their tourism dollars.
“It’s a big shot in the arm,” Saine said of the tournament’s economic impact, noting that organizers had managed to fill a convention center on a weekend when so many other things, including football games, were going on.
Saine said he had explored the possibility of other cities in North Carolina hosting their own tournaments in the future, but in the meantime, he said cities like Raleigh and Charlotte were well-positioned to continue taking advantage of these opportunities.
“We’ve really got an ecosystem when you think about our education sector, our workforce, Epic Games being here, the tech companies that are here — it’s kind of a perfect storm,” Saine said.
This story was originally published November 13, 2022 at 2:36 PM with the headline "Thousands of Fortnite fans fill Raleigh Convention Center for championship tournament."
