Fortnite is undoubtedly one of the best battle royale games of recent times. Launched back in 2017, the popularity and hype of the game continue seven years later in 2024 as well, thanks to the developer’s efforts to keep the game updated and fresh.
The game has about six game modes, among which the battle royale mode is hands-down the most sought-after. One of the brilliant minds behind the mode was the director Donald Mustard. The mode involves 100 players skydiving onto an island and hunting for gear to defend themselves from fellow players. Players can either choose to fight alone or with up to four other players.
Mustard just last year stepped down from Epic Games. He later spilled the beans on his exit and the concept of Fortnite Battle Royale mode during an interview.
Donald Mustard on leaving Epic Games
After a 15-year-long stint at Epic Games, Donald Mustard announced that he was exiting the company in September 2023. Mustard had been instrumental in helping scale Epic’s Fortnite into one of the biggest games that the world had ever seen. He also contributed to introducing multiple crossover characters and celebrities to the game’s metaverse.
During an interview with Game Files, he cited the reason as working on new projects for his departure from Epic. Mustard had reportedly been working on a secret new project. He refused to speak much about the project except that it wasn’t a game.
In 2023, Mustard decided to leave Epic.
He was working on a secret new project, about which he’ll only say that it wasn’t a game. “It started to be out of alignment with all of the stuff Epic should be focusing on,” he says.
Mustard told Epic CEO Tim Sweeney he was leaving.… pic.twitter.com/cTLz5v9mGE
— iFireMonkey (@iFireMonkey) April 22, 2024
Mustard shared that he told Epic CEO Tim Sweeney he was leaving. Mustard further reveals that his goal is to develop technologies and processes, to help figure out the medium of storytelling in the future. He said,
“What is the storytelling medium of the future? And what does that even mean? Honestly, I don’t know what it means, but I’ve got some ideas, and we have some ideas.”
He went on to say that his vision and his project started to be out of alignment compared to all of the stuff Epic should be focusing on. Thus, he decided to step down and focus better on his ‘undisclosed’ project.
Fortnite was designed during an Uber ride
During the interview, Donald Mustard also revealed the story of how Fortnite‘s most famous battle royale came into being. He shared that the genre first caught his eye in Minecraft. Later in 2017, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) and its 100-player matches gained massive popularity on Steam.
Mustard shared that back then he thought that it “felt like a really unique take on: How do you bring lots of people into a thing?” He then goes on to share an incident that led to the birth of the mode. Just before the official launch of Fortnite in mid-2017, during a car ride, Mustard and Epic decided to have its own battle royale.
He recalled,
“It was Tim Sweeney and Paul Meegan, who was the president of Epic at the time, [and] Kim Libreri, Epic’s CTO. The four of us were in the back of an Uber in California, headed to a meeting at Disney…We were already toying with this [idea that] we need to do a battle royale. We should do this. And what if we did it in Fortnite? And so, in that car, we decided. We’re like: ‘We’re doing it, we’re going to re-task the team, we’re going to put it in Fortnite, we’re going to make a battle royale.’”
He further said that it was at that point, that he realized that to do it they would require a design document in about three hours. And thus, sitting in the back of the Uber he began writing a one-page document. This document ended up being Fortnite Battle Royale.
Describing the idea of 100 players skydiving onto an island, he said, “A school bus is going by us in traffic, and I’m like: Players are going to be on a bus in the sky and we’re going to jump out of it.” Consequently, two months after the launch of Fortnite in July 2017, Epic Games launched battle royale in September 2017 and the rest is history.
