If segments of the technology sector have proved anything, it’s that it likes to try to spin old things as brand-new. That argument could be made of Epic Games’ new developing Fortnite venture, as a LinkedIn job posting from last week seeks a UI programmer intern to help the studio develop “a new experience in the Fortnite ecosystem” – specifically “an open world survival crafting game within a physics sandbox.”
As one might expect, details on this project are few and far between, particularly since this is related to UI creation; requirements listed in the posting are some of the usual expectations of knowing C++, a portfolio of UI and HUD creation, and familiarity with Unreal Engine 4 and 5. That said, we’d find it hard to believe that this survival crafting title won’t be multiplayer at the very least considering everything else in Fortnite is.
This circles back to the earlier referenced argument that Epic already made a multiplayer survival crafting game: It was the original pitch of the shooter back in 2011 and the crux of the gameplay in its 2017 early access release, before the studio captured the lightning in the bottle that is battle royale. That saw development focus shuffle primarily towards that mode, saw the original game pushed as a separate mode called Save the World, and then saw that mode’s development hit a glacial pace in 2020.
