Not many gamers may be aware that Rod Fergusson, now the leader of the Gears franchise as Studio Head of The Coalition, worked at Epic for a very long time.
He is credited as Producer, Senior Producer or Executive Producer not only for the first Gears of War games but also for other Epic titles such as Shadow Complex, Infinity Blade I and II and Bulletstorm.
It stands to reason, then, that he would have had the chance to look at Fortnite while the game was still in development. Interestingly, in a video interview with Game Informer from E3 2019, Fergusson himself confessed a few days ago he would have wanted to cancel Fortnite and in fact even tried to do that while he was still at Epic.
Before I left I tried to cancel Fortnite. That game would not have passed my bar for something that should keep going.
Yeah, by leaving and saying 'It's all yours!'.
Needless to say, the whole gaming landscape would look very different today if that happened. The Battle Royale phenomenon had already been ignited by PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, but Fortnite itself fueled multiple initiatives by Epic Games, from the push for cross-play to the Epic Games Store and even the Unreal Dev Grants program may not have been massively expanded into the $100 million Epic MegaGrants program without Fortnite's war chest.
As you might recall, Fortnite struggled quite a bit during development and at some point was widely considered to be in development hell. The PvE mode, later renamed 'Save the World', launched in July 2017 to moderate success. However, it was the addition of the free Battle Royale mode that boosted the game's popularity to entirely unimaginable levels. The rest, as they say, is now history.
Meanwhile, Rod Fergusson is now busy finishing up with Gears 5, due to launch September 10th on PC (Microsoft Store and Steam) and Xbox One.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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