Students at Sacramento Country Day have highly varied interests, but one common ground can be found among many: gaming.
Gaming has been prevalent on the Country Day campus for years and shows no signs of slowing down with the recent release of “Fortnite: OG.”
Many games that held Country Day in a chokehold years ago continue to do the same today. In 2018, Octagon published “In the eye of the storm,” a story about the video game Fortnite. To this day, Fortnite is still an influential game on campus.
In a 2018 poll of 103 Country Day students, 24 percent reported playing Fortnite. Over five years later, Fortnite is still among the most played games by students, with 25 percent of respondents reporting playing the game.
For some students, Fortnite is more than just a game to mindlessly pass the time — it’s an outlet for them to hang out with their friends outside of school.
Junior Dylan Sullivan is a veteran gamer, and gaming remains a significant part of his daily routine.
“I’ve been playing video games since I was about five. It’s essentially been for my entire life. All of my soccer teammates had Minecraft on their phones, so I was able to convince my parents to buy it for me so I could play with them,” Sullivan said.
Junior Cara Shin also started her gaming career with Minecraft when she was young.
“I started playing video games with my brother, Caleb, in lower school. We mainly played Minecraft, but later on, we moved on to other games. I started playing Fortnite about three months ago, and I’ve been playing ever since,” Shin said.
Fortnite has remained one of the most popular games in the world since its release due to its ability to attract new players consistently with new features and content.
The game is cooperative and exciting, which is a large part of why it is so popular.
Junior Zealand Schroeder’s favorite part of the game is the social aspect.
“It’s almost like being able to hang out without leaving your house,” Schroeder said.
The game recently experienced a resurgence in popularity among veteran players with the release of their recent season, “Fortnite: OG” on Nov. 3.
OG stands for original, a reference to the fact that the developers of Fortnite decided to bring back the original map, weapons and items that were taken away in 2019.
According to the gaming analytics website Fortnite.GG, there were over 235 million active players last month after the new season’s release. On top of this, Fortnite reached its all-time concurrent peak for players on Dec. 2, with 11.6 million concurrent players.
The previous season’s concurrent player count peaked at 2.87 million players, according to Videogamer.com, and according to Google Trends, searches for Fortnite increased by over 400 percent following the release of “Fortnite: OG.”
This season’s release has also brought some Country Day students back to the game.
Freshman Ryan Scripps is one of these returners. He has enjoyed playing Fortnite throughout the years, but took a short break once his friends stopped playing.
“All of my friends went back to playing once the OG season came back, so I just joined in with them,” Scripps said.
Players returned to the game after a long time for many reasons — some got bored with the other games they had been playing and wanted to switch it up, some were just coming off of a short gaming hiatus and some wanted to relive all of the good memories they had made from the game in the past.
“A big part of why I started playing Fortnite again was to relive many memories that I wouldn’t normally be able to experience again,” Scripps said. “Some of my best gaming memories were from when I played Fortnite with my friends when I was younger, and the OG map returning makes me feel like I was playing with my friends back then.”
With an influx of OG players, a friendly feud has formed between newer players, who the community views as those who try super hard and be “sweaty,” and the OG players, who are just trying to have fun.
Schroeder is familiar with this trend and has been an active part of the Fortnite community since the release of the game.
“What are Sweats? Well, Sweats are the newcomers of the game. They spend a lot of time playing and believe they are extremely good at the game. Despite what their name would imply, they tend not to be that good,” Schroeder said.
“OGs are players that have been playing for a long time but just play the game for fun. Generally, they’re better than the Sweats due to their abundance of experience,” Schroeder said.
This feud between the OGs and the Sweats has become extremely popular on social media platforms, such as TikTok and Instagram.
Trends like this spread like wildfire among players due to comedic videos and memes on these platforms. This trend has also extended into the Country Day community.
Schroeder is aware of this trend and believes he is an OG.
“If you’ve got a Sweat on your team, good luck winning. An OG, on the other hand, you already know how the game will end,” Schroeder said.
Sullivan also believes that he is an OG and that their side of the internet feud is better.
“I’m definitely an OG. I just feel like we were able to enjoy this season more because of the nostalgia involved,” Sullivan said.
Some friendly banter has arisen between the two sides of this debate at Country Day.
Shin believes that despite her lack of experience, she is still more skilled at the game than some of the school’s more adroit players.
“I only got my first Victory Royale about a month ago, but I still think that, at this point, I’m better than Dylan,” Shin said.
Senior Aiden Cooley shares a viewpoint similar to Shin’s.
Cooley has only been playing for about a year, but in that time, he has come to love the game and has become competitive with his friends.
“In Fortnite, there’s a mode called ‘Creative,’ which allows you to play with or against your friends in private lobbies. This mode allows you to settle debates with your friends about who is better at the game. I love to play this mode with Zealand and Dylan, and a lot of the time, I win,” Cooley said.
The OG season of Fortnite has brought many Country Day community members together in ways they haven’t been able to for years.
“I’ve been playing games online with my friends way more often since the release of the OG season than I have since middle school. I guess it is just fun to relive some old memories with my friends,” Sullivan said.
Video games like Fortnite also serve as a stress reliever for many students.
“Playing games just helps me de-stress and take the edge off from school,” Schroeder said.
Fortnite’s OG season ended on Dec. 2, but this isn’t deterring students from continuing to play after its end.
“I’m definitely going to keep playing now that the OG season is over,” Schroeder said. “I like the game, and the fact that the nostalgia from the OG season is over won’t stop me from having fun with my friends.”
— By Andrew Burr
