Exploring Game Hacking: What the "Fortnite" dances reveal about the future of games culture

Can you dance to the "floss"? "Fortnite: Battle Royale" has left its mark on the digital world and trade fairs like Gamescom. It owes its place in pop culture to young players.

At a wedding party, children suddenly jump onto the dance floor and swing their arms back and forth in perfect sync with the beat in front of their stomach and back? If this behavior would have been a mystery months ago, adults now know: There is flow - because " The Floss " (in German: "Dental floss") is a dance that belongs to the popular online game " Fortnite: Battle Royale ".

But how did "Fortnite: Battle Royale" get so popular? And what can other developers learn from it?

There is no one reason for the success of "Fortnite: Battle Royale", but if you turn back the timeline, you end up in a place where trends arise with great regularity: the schoolyard. The game joins a number of other hypes such as loom rubbers, fidget spinners, and Beyblades.

The schoolyard is first and foremost the place where people of the same age come together regularly and form groups - because it is a basic human need to want to be part of a group. Adolescents are particularly group-oriented and want consensus within them. While the social ties to the parental home decrease during school time, those to peers are becoming increasingly important.

The need to belong to a group is satisfied through the exchange of so-called legitimacy signals. Signals of legitimacy are signals that show "You belong, we share something".

An effect internally and externally

And this is where "Fortnite: Battle Royale" provides the perfect signal of legitimacy with its ability to make characters dance at the push of a button - for example when an opponent has been eliminated. Because even outside of the game, the youngsters can perform the dances from the game for the best.

The dances work internally and show the group membership ("I know what you are talking about, you know what I am talking about, you belong!") And externally by offering the opportunity to delimit the group from the adults (" What are they doing? Oh nice. They dance. Strange, but cute! ").

There is an amplifier inherent in dancing itself, because "dancing acts as a social glue," says the American evolutionary and cognitive biologist Tecumseh Fitch. Dances have the social task of expressing connectedness and the certainty of belonging. Dancing people can experience themselves as part of their society. Dances are becoming a universal hallmark.

Dances are universal because they function independently of the language. If a young person dances the "Disco Fever" dance while on holiday in France, another young person will immediately know that they both have common interests: "C'est le 'Fortnite'!" Belonging can be felt regardless of gender, origin or social class. And because the "Fortnite" dances are so reduced, everyone can take part, in contrast to the game itself, no skills are required.

There is dancing in many games

Game developers know that, that's why the dances didn't just exist since "Fortnite: Battle Royale". Similar elements can be found in games like "Second Life" (2003), "World of Warcraft" (2004), "League of Legends" (2009), "Final Fantasy 14" (2010), and "Destiny 2" (2017).

But there is one thing that the "Fortnite" makers at Epic Games have done better than the other game developers. Most of the dances in "Fortnite" come from well-known series from the early 1990s and 2000s. The "Turk" dance, for example, comes from the series "Scrubs" (2001-2010), the "Volksmusikfest" dance from the film "Dumm und Dümmer" (1994), and the "Fresh" dance from the series "The Prince" by Bel-Air " (1990-1996).

This is exciting in that these dances were cultural-historical memes before they were built into "Fortnite: Battle Royale". They have already proven their virality. When children dance after it, they usually do not know the origin. It doesn't matter either, because it's just about making them catchy and easy to imitate.