Fortnite’s The Simpsons mini-season is an undeniable success.
Average player numbers for November are the highest since March but, more importantly, Fortnite is fun again. The tone in the game’s subreddit has shifted from the gloom of Chapter 6 Season 4 to optimism: some are praising this as one of Fortnite’s best-ever seasons, others are hoping Epic might extend it.
And it’s not nostalgia for The Simpsons. That certainly helped—it’s one of the few TV shows that spans generations—but more important are the balanced loot pool with plenty of powerful weapons, a fully themed map overflowing with easter eggs, cartoonish overblown mechanics (a revolver than attaches a floaty balloon to players being the standout), lots of movement items and a smaller map, helping trim the mid-round lull you often get in Battle Royale.
It’s a huge contrast to the recent Star Wars mini-season, which dropped a few themed locations on a big, existing map and whose signature weapons—lightsabers—were underwhelming.
The Simpsons map was fully on brand.
As I write this, Epic hasn’t hinted at The Simpsons remaining past November although I can see them popping up in Blitz, the game’s five-minute mode, whose star has dwindled after its electric start. Instead, the new Chapter 7 is set to replace The Simpsons on November 29, with leaks pointing to a West-Coast theme of Hollywood films and Las Vegas casinos.
So what can Epic learn from The Simpsons’ success, both for the upcoming chapter and for future mini-seasons?
Cribbing from Springfield
It’s crucial that the map needs to match the theme.
The end of Chapter 6 Season 4 was a jumble of military outposts, Japanese villas and Star Wars bases lingering like a wookie’s bad smell. The Simpsons map was fully on brand. You could jump on the family sofa to re-enact the show’s opening credits and listen to Bart’s prank calls at phone booths. Even Spider-Pig’s dirty hoof prints were in the right place.
These details aren’t frivolous—they’re essential for creating a sense of place, for making you feel like the designers care about the little things. It makes you want to spend time in it. Chapter 7 seems well-placed for a committed follow-up: if Epic leans into a movie theme you can imagine a different film for each POI, with famous scenes recreated and inside jokes retold, and an overarching Hollywood glamor tying it all together.
If Epic can nail the map theme, then it also needs to stop funnelling players into specific points of interest. When Chapter 6 Season 4 launched, if you wanted to win it was almost mandatory to land on two specific locations with bosses who dropped powerful medallions. When those bosses vanished, the focus was boosting your “O.X.R. rank”, and if you didn’t land in the right spot you’d lag behind. There were some locations I barely saw.
In The Simpsons, the mini-bosses who drop mythic and exotic weapons spawn randomly each round. So do the donut storms that rain down high-tier weapons. Every POI becomes viable, encouraging you to explore the map and choose your drop spots not because of their proximity to bosses, but on their own merits. Early on I found a beach in the corner of the map that was unexpectedly littered with chests, and it became my favorite drop spot for the season.
This mini-season has also proved that smaller maps work. For The Simpsons, Epic shrunk the play area and cut the lobby to 80 people, rather than the regular 100. That size, combined with plenty of movement abilities, made it easy to zip around and find other players if you wanted a fight. Epic sped up the storms too, making matches faster and more urgent.
The more mobility in Fortnite, the better—and it all worked perfectly with a smaller map.
As somebody whose natural play style is slow and cautious, it pains me to suggest faster rounds. Tension is a key part of Battle Royale and speed can erode that. But I felt the balance they struck in The Simpsons was about right. Epic will have also seen players complaining that the Chapter 6 map felt too big, leading to boring periods in the middle of matches. Leaks suggest Epic may vary the shape of the storm so it’s not just a conventional circle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they tweaked the timings too.
Of course, nailing the map’s size and theme means nothing without the right items, and The Simpsons has shown we need more over-the-top weapons and mobility items.
Krusty’s exotic Mr Blasty, which attached a balloon to whatever you hit with the first bullet of a magazine, was the most fun I’ve had in Fortnite in ages. If I didn’t find that, I could pick up the reworked infantry rifle, a fully automatic headshot machine. We got a slingshot that spat radioactive clouds to drive enemies from hiding spots, and a ray gun that turned targets into electrified cartoon skeletons.
Shockwaves should, I believe, always be the core of Fortnite’s movement, but The Simpsons also gave us fish that granted teleportation and an anti-gravity drink. The more mobility in Fortnite, the better—and it all worked perfectly with a smaller map, giving you the freedom to roam wherever you wanted. Playing it safe with weapons and mobility for Chapter 7 would be a mistake.
For the first time in a while it feels like the community is fully behind Epic. No pressure, then.
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