Moderation over banning Fortnite in sports: U of R prof

Playing too much Fortnite is becoming a big enough problem that some professional sports teams are restricting or banning athletes’ playing time.

In October, the Vancouver Canucks banned Fortnite from their NHL road trips and now the Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly restricted playing time before MLB games.

Fortnite is a cross-platform video game that made the battle royale format popular and propelled some video game streamers into multi-million-dollar careers. Similar to the Hunger Games franchise, it pits 100 players against each other in a battle to be the last one standing.

“You have a particular goal, you want to finish the game at the top or be the winner in the particular game and then ultimately you end up doing that quite a few times because you can get so close to winning that it becomes so addicting,” said University of Regina professor Alec Couros.

Couros studies video game addiction as part of a wider look at how digital media changes our lives, specifically the effects technology, social media and poor online behaviour have on children, high schoolers and university students.

He said Fortnite games are designed for a 20-minute burst, depending on how long the player survives. When these 20-minute games are repeated 50 times, it becomes time-consuming.

He explained games like Fortnite can be addicting because they are challenging yet achievable for most people, comparing it to escape rooms.

“Designers create escape rooms so that a certain number of the population can actually achieve them,” Couros said. “If they weren’t in some way achievable, they wouldn’t be as addicting as they would be.”

Last year, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized video game addiction as a mental health disorder. Couros said signs of addiction include mood swings, social isolation and aggression. He explained one of the biggest indicators is when video games start to interfere with your every-day life tasks like homework or your job.

Another downside with online, multiplayer video games is that they often expose children to trash-talking and foul language which Couros called unhealthy, aggressive competitiveness.

“It can be a very sour place to grow up, especially if you don’t see any types of competitiveness or rivalry or camaraderie in other aspects in your life. If that’s all you see, you’re not going to see competitiveness as a good thing,” said Couros.

He explained that kind of bad sportsmanship can be stopped during school athletics in a more supportive environment where the focus is on helping players get better at the game rather than being a hated adversary.

He said an outright ban on video games by sports teams would suggest there’s no benefit at all when that’s not the case. Couros pointed to video games helping with team-building, strategy and visualization skills, suggesting playing video games in moderation.

“Something like Fortnite, for instance, could provide some relaxation,” he said, “but if you’re spending too much time on any game or a game like that, over time you’re going to have some mental fatigue.”