Is Fortnite giving our youngsters combat skills?
These youthful assassins have not had any military training or met up with a wee Yoda-esque figure to become skilled in the deadly arts.
No, all they have done is play a game called Fortnite.
If you haven’t played the game – as I hadn’t until last month – then here’s the lowdown.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdYou and 99 other players jump out of a zeppelin school bus and freefall down to an island.
Scattered throughout various landscapes is everything from machine guns to sniper rifles, dynamite to hand grenades, bazookas and balloons.
As I later came to learn, you can also chop down trees to get wood to make impromptu shelters when the bullets come raining down on you.
Now I’m a veteran – well, just plain old – gamer who has played to an adequate level of difficulty on shooters like Goldeneye, so when my son started using Fortnite to socialize online with his pals, I jumped in with both thumbs.
And proceeded to be massacred.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdI didn’t stand a chance. These online aces – most of them yet to have hair sprouting from their armpits – are trained killers.
Through constant gameplaying they have learned survival skills and combat tactics which it would take a real soldier at least a few tours of active duty to come by.
So is Fortnite effectively turning our youth into tiny terminators?
I know one thing, if aliens ever do attack Earth then I’ll be putting my faith in the younger generation.
After what I’ve witnessed on Fortnite those poor aliens don’t stand a Murray Mint’s chance in a microwave.