The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 29 April 2018 29***

I n this world, my friend, there are two kinds of people – those who play Fortnite and those who don’t understand it. Or even know it exists.

If you’re in the latter group, here’s a thumbnail: Fortnite is a game that is either a work of genius, the most dangerous thing to happen to teenage minds, a complex legal rip-off, or an unnecessarily brutal example of corporate policing. Or, probably, all of the above.

It also happens to have become a global phenomenon – currently the biggest game in the world, with three million people playing at any one time. It holds the record for the most “how to complete a level”-style cheats uploaded in a single month to YouTube, and recently set a record for biggest single live gaming stream, with more than 1.1 million viewers. Quite a feat for something which, to the casual observer, came out of nowhere.

For parents, however, these numbers will come as no surprise. While they may not quite understand the game – a multiplayer shoot-em-up with an age rating of 12+ – or its appeal, they do know it is extremely addictive. Their children simply can’t stop playing. Even grown men are addicted; one gamer’s girlfriend launched a petition on change.org to get the game banned

It’s the survival game that boasts 40 million players and has British teenagers hooked. Charlie Montgomery charts a success story

How Fortnite took over the world

because it was becoming so detrimental to their relationship. Nearly 4,000 other women signed it.

Jake Roper, YouTube star and host of online channel Vsauce3, said the closest thing he’s seen to the Fortnite craze is the explosion of cryptocurrency. “I think [what the game is experiencing] is a lot like what happened to crypto last year,” he said in one interview. “Some people had it, people vaguely knew it existed, but suddenly it was like, ‘I gotta have this’. Everyone was into it.”

“All the boys at my school love it and all the girls hate it,” my 14-year-old daughter Beth explains. “We had our end of year exams in the hottest week in April,” she reminds me. “After school the girls were all outside in the sun, and the boys were all at home playing Fortnite. I swear, there were

Worried: Nadine has been forced to introduce rules for son Alex

boys in my school who didn’t turn up for the end-of-years on Friday because they were playing it.”

Fortnite is what is called a “co-op sandbox survival game”, where you have a character plonked down in a computer-generated world (the sandbox) of immense but finite dimensions, meet other players (the co-op) and either kill them or work with them to survive.

So, who are the Machiavellian and secret brains behind the game currently out-earning Candy Crush Saga, Clash of Clans, and Pokémon Go on a weekly basis – with a total haul so far of some $126 million (£91.5 million)? Did it take a PhD in behavioural sciences to make Fortnite successful? No. It just took everyone else’s success, with Fortnite sampling the best bits from all the gaming hits of the past five years – from Minecraft, to its hugely successful rival, PlayerUnknown Battle Ground (PUBG) – all mashed into one. Which is where all the trouble begins.

Epic Games, the US software development firm behind Fortnite and its spin-offs, was originally set up in an engineering student’s parent’s basement – in this case, University of Maryland undergraduate Tim Sweeney. In 1991, Sweeney released a game called ZZT, in which players shot monsters and found treasure.

Sweeney’s dad Paul sold copies of ZZT by mail order and Sweeney tinkered, studied and set up Epic Games with Mark Rein, a brash salesman with a lot of ambition. He suggested the team set about building a game engine – effectively, a software “chassis” controlling the core demands of a game, from its physics to its animation. Rein knew that many

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Ever since my 13-year-old son Alex began playing Fortnite, he has been stuck in his room for what feels like the best part of one.

The other night, I caught him smuggling in a takeaway; the prospect of breaking away from the game, which he plays online with strangers, to have dinner with his family, was unthinkable.

If he had his own way, he would play for 10 hours a day, stopping just for loo breaks. Welcome to my new world.

I kick myself for letting him talk me into buying him a PS4; Fortnite is free, hence its popularity: “But it’s good,” he says, “it teaches you strategy.” All I want him to be strategic at is his homework.

Having started to mature into an ambitious child, Alex has turned overnight into the teenager I

always dreaded. I should be grateful he’s not roaming the streets, that his zombiefication is happening where I can keep watch. But this addiction fills me with horror.

I have sought advice; Rachel Vecht, from Educating Matters, tells me one of the most common questions is how parents can police screen-time. “Banning screens altogether is not the answer. Kids crave what they can’t have.”

Besides, there will always be some new game for them to be obsessed with.

So, I am implementing some new rules. Screentime will be limited, and only after his homework is done. If this doesn’t work, after a warning I will confiscate the screen. If that doesn’t work, I will get rid of the PS4. Wish me luck.Nadine Wojakovski

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developers license game engines when designing new projects, so Sweeney built the engine, the team designed a game and Rein maxed out his credit card until – in May 1998 – the company shipped Unreal, both a first-person shooter game and a software engine.

Critical acclaim, healthy sales and licence fees from other game developers poured cash into the company. Epic grew and, in 2012, Chinese games giant Tencent snapped up 40 per cent, valuing the company at $825 million (£598 million).

When Fortnite was released last July as a paid-for game, reviews were positive. But it was the launch, in September, of a free-to-play mode, Fortnite: Battle Royale, that had hordes clamouring to be the last one standing. It now has more than 40 million players worldwide.

The game’s success, however, has been ascribed to its easy gameplay, animation-like graphics and goofy costumes (which make it almost as fun

to watch as it is to play), a distinct lack of bloody violence – and a knowing sense of humour that only adds to the camaraderie.

Players can chat to their friends while playing via headsets, and everyone else via the “Emote” function – which offers a limited, positive range of smiles and nods.

You can choose to protect others from being bullied. When you’ve done something amazing, you can even show off by doing a little dance. The Floss – based on a curious zigzagging of the hips and hands – has fast become the new Harlem Shake in schools. Despite its addictive nature, is there really anything for parents to worry about?

“Not at all,” sniffs Andrew Reid, doctoral researcher of serious games at Glasgow Caledonian University. “People have been trying to prove video games cause violent or addictive behaviour almost since they were invented, and there has never been a single conclusive piece of research to prove they do. There are lots of people researching Fortnite right now, and no one’s proved anything.”

Record-breaking: at any one time, up to three million can be playing the game

On the go: players can now download a version of Fortnite on their smartphones