My colleague First Dog on the Moon replies. I put a call out on Twitter: “Anyone in Hobart got an Xbox I can borrow for a week to play Fortnite?” How can a game be addictive if it’s hard to get and no one will play with you?

There is so much hype about this game being addictive and accessible. It is two days into what was meant to be my week getting addicted to Fortnite. “I’ll play Fortnite with you,” he says without much enthusiasm – before looking at my phone and telling me it is too old to download the game.

But one of the editors from Vice, a 20-year-old called Shaad, knows the game. At this festival in Hobart people are always rushing off to see German post-punk industrial techno, and look confused when I ask them to play Fortnite with me. None of my friends want to play with me and short of hanging outside primary schools to find Fortnite friends, I have to hit up people I know. Shaad showing Brigid how to play Fortnite Photograph: Brigid Delaneyīut getting addicted to Fortnite is much more difficult than I anticipate. Yes, I do know that game! My editor asks if I would, perhaps, play Fortnite for a week to see how addictive it is? Of course, as long as I can put V-Bucks on expenses. Did I know there was a new game that all the kids are playing that takes their attention away from their school work and makes them stay up all night killing each other, he asks? You just play all night, and maybe if you’re good enough, you eventually are the last person on the island.Ī few days later, my editor calls when I am in Tasmania for two weeks covering a festival. But as dinner is called and we start another game, I realise it doesn’t matter. You play with your friends – looking out for each other – with up to 100 people playing at once. It is fast and the stakes are high (you could and will die). It is the most exciting 15 minutes you can have as a 10-year-old. As they are explaining this to me, they are killed. They explain that a storm comes through the island and you have to move closer in, where the danger of being killed is high.

“Just hide out on the edge of the island,” I urge, as their avatars in their shameful grey skin, with their blunt non-V-Bucks axe, enter a barn where they will surely get killed. I watch them play Fortnite and have to remember to breathe.

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