Fortnite: The battle outside the diamond

By César Augusto Márquez

Take a look around a major league clubhouse prior to a game and you’ll see players finding many ways to relax. They listen to music and sing, check in on Instagram, Twitter and other social media.

Then there are those with game controllers in hand, headsets on, intensely playing video games. From All-Stars to journeyman to rookies, they play one of the hottest video games of the moment: Fortnite.

Few people predicted that Fortnite would become a pop culture phenomenon when it was released last year. Played on personal computers and consoles such as Playstation 4 and XBox One, the game quickly registered more than ten million users two weeks after its launch. Its popularity is a byproduct of Battle Royale, a new action genre that consists of surviving battles against up to 100 online players. The new sensation has become a frequent topic of conversation in schools, college campus and even big league clubhouses and ballparks.

Let the Games Begin

In recent weeks, the Milwaukee Brewers played a game that was shown on the Miller Park jumbotron. Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price suffered a carpal tunnel injury that some link to his passion for Fortnite.

The Red Sox clubhouse has caught the Fortnite craze.

“I can’t say that I brought this hobby to the clubhouse,” J.D. Martínez told La Vida Baseball. “I started playing in the winter because some friends recommended it to me. It’s really a lot of fun. When I joined this team, many of them were already playing, and it’s another way we get to spend time together.”

When asked about the best Fortnite player on the Red Sox, Martínez did not hesitate.

“(Xander) Bogaerts plays very well, but I think the best of all of us is Carson Smith, it’s really hard to beat him,” Martinez said.

The video game is quite popular among Latinos. Not only does Martínez admit to playing, so does Houston All-Star shortstop Carlos Correa.

“During the offseason I started playing Fortnite because they told me it was pretty good and I wanted to try it and it was really quite good,” Correa told La Vida Baseball. “It took me a couple of weeks to learn to master the game well. And then I spent an hour a day, not much more.

“Of my teammates with whom I used to play most was Lance (McCullers, Jr.), but nowadays I do not play anymore, I’m focused on playing [baseball].”

The Battle Royale genre is an evolution of first-person shooter games introduced in the early 2000s in games like Counter-Strike. Fortnite brings in new elements of survival inspired in part by other areas of pop culture such as the literary saga The Hunger Games and reality shows like Survivor.

Brewers pitcher Jhoulys Chacin still plays.

“I have always liked video games,” the native of Venezuela said. “In this case, they help me relax and have fun with my teammates, something we like to do in our spare time, which is not much during the season,” Chacín told La Vida through his press representative Augusto Cardenas. “I have a lot of fun because it helps me think fast and even though it’s a shooting game, you do not see blood or excessive violence.”

Ready, player one

Fortnite is the latest in a virtual world that increasingly narrows the gap with the real world, thanks to the presence of devices such as Nintendo Labo or Playstation VR.

In the movie Ready, Player One, based on Ernest Cline’s novel of the same name, Steven Spielberg tells the story of a hypothetical future in which humanity prefers to play OASIS, a parallel reality to a real world, which is getting increasingly darker.

“It’s just a hobby for me and for us on the team. I don’t believe that we are close to getting in that deep,” Martínez said.

The proximity between baseball and video games is nothing new. Practically since the beginning of video game consoles, there have been sports games and specifically baseball. Several Latino players have been featured on the covers of baseball video games such as MLB The Show, which had Miguel Cabrera in its 2014 edition. Francisco Lindor’s image adorns the game RBI 2018.

Veterans like Martínez, Correa and Price have found that playing Fortnite is another way to exercise their competitive fire. They do battle to survive in the video game even as they prepare to play baseball in their real lives.