UPDATED: March 15, 2018 at 10:52 p.m.

DETROIT — Oshae Brissett had seen the video game a few times. Howard Washington, his roommate, kept playing it despite Brissett thinking it was boring.

Then Washington brought his Playstation 4 down for the game at Miami in mid-February. Washington told Brissett that he just needed to try it again.

“I started to get into it playing on his PS4,” Brissett said. “And then, once we got home I downloaded it and got hooked.”

That video game is called Fortnite Battle Royale, and it’s not just Brissett who’s been hooked. Fortnite, a free download, was released in late September and by early-February, it set a record with 3.4 million concurrent players. Many of No. 11 Syracuse’s (21-13, 8-10 Atlantic Coast) players have been caught up in the Fortnite craze as well, as it’s become the most popular team activity off the court.

“It’s like a team-bonding kind of thing we do to have fun,” Washington said. “Come to practice and talk about it. We watch videos on our phones, like we’re watching film for basketball.”

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Fortnite was officially released on Sept. 26 for PC, XBOX and PlayStation. It’s a 100 Player vs. Player battle-royale style game that mimics the storyline of “The Hunger Games.” All 100 players get dropped into the same map with nothing but a pickaxe. They then search for weapons and building supplies, such as wood or bricks, all while a deadly storm shrinks the playable map and forces spread-out players to come closer together. The last player alive wins. There are three game modes: Solo, duos and squads, which allow teams of up to four.

Bridget Slomian | Senior Design Editor

The casual sports fan might have just heard of Fortnite for the first time when late Wednesday night turned to early Thursday morning, right after the Orange beat Arizona State in a play-in game. Music stars Drake and Travis Scott, along with Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, teamed up to play the game with “Ninja,” a former eSport athlete who now streams himself playing video games on a platform called Twitch.

The stream garnered over 600,000 concurrent viewers, smashing the Twitch record. The story of the unexpected team gained traction from major outlets, including ESPN and CNN, and was shared often on social media. Many of the players, including Washington and Syracuse forward Matt Moyer, watched parts of the stream when they heard about it.

“It was cool to see that it’s not just us playing Fortnite,” Moyer said. “A lot of other people are.”

Washington, sophomore Tyus Battle and walk-on forward Patrick Herlihy were the first to discover the game, each finding out about it through outside friends at some point in mid-October.

Battle said he downloaded the game at first, but didn’t play it much. Then the game started gaining popularity and Syracuse players started spreading the word — Howard introduced Brissett, Battle showed Moyer — and it quickly became one of the team’s favorite activity.

“That’s probably number one, honestly,” Battle said when asked where Fortnite ranks in the team’s off-court activities. “Because we’re usually too lazy to go out, bowling and whatever else. Everyone loves playing video games.”

Herlihy said that he, Battle, Brissett, Moyer, Washington and Paschal Chukwu are the ones who regularly play the most. Generally, they’ll play together in four-person squads with whoever is available at the time. The players will sometimes post Instagram stories of themselves playing, including whenever they pull off the difficult feat of winning the game.

The team had different answers when asked who the best player was. Washington chose himself, Battle and Brissett. Moyer said that it was Battle, and then added it that it could have been Herlihy. Brissett said that Battle and Washington are, but that he was a close third. Battle said outright that he was the best player on the team. That prompted junior guard Shaun Belbey, who was sitting next to Battle, to shake his head.

Chukwu, who said he recently got into the game during the ACC Tournament, didn’t include himself in the list of best players. He said his main focus right now is to hone his building abilities.

Bridget Slomian | Senior Design Editor

Fortnite released a new limited-time edition of the game that features five 20-person squads playing against each other. Chukwu said the goal is for the entire team to compete in that mode at some point when everyone is back on campus.

Nearly every SU player who plays Fortnite agreed with Battle in saying that it’s the team’s number one off-the-court activity.

“If it’s not basketball,” Brissett said, “we are definitely at home playing Fortnite.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Shaun Belbey was misnamed. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 15, 2018 at 10:11 pm

Contact Tomer: tdlanger@syr.edu | @tomer_langer