We boarded the first Battle Bus some time late in the afternoon. I remember it was still the tail end of summer, just a few short weeks ago. I could finally see myself the way I was: a cute girl in a skirt, this time, or a horrible monster the next if I wanted. Not enough monsters, not enough skirts to go around. It was still hot out, and the island had an aroma of sweat that hung over it like the air after a monsoon. It was a type of swear, maybe the earth was sweating, maybe we had finally taken this all too far.

It wasn’t my first choice to launch alone, but some times that’s just how it is out here. We’re all storm chasers of a type – hunting for the center of the eye. Will it be my former best friends house? The place my brother got divorced in at tilted towers. They say war is hell, but only here have I had to look at everywhere I’ve ever been, including the places I never quite hit the price of admission for.

FORTNITE: BATTLE ROYALE is a Videogame for the PLAYSTATION 4, XBOX ONE, PC, SWITCH and MOBILE GAMING DEVICES. Up to 100 people per match duke it out, in a ruthless fight for survival.

But that’s what we do, day in and day out. I’m surrounded, maybe I’m drowning – I remember Darth Vader from that movie I watched. Look, it’s Son Goku. I am more terrified of a fish-man than I ever have been in my life. Every month, accruing trophies that tell people around you: look at me, I was there. I fought on the island, on this day. Our own little medals to carry into the afterlife.

I like the party island. I like showing off, fucking sue me. If I’m going to put these little devil ribbons all over my body, choke down these floating goku heads, let me have a little fun. These little dances. I’m always excited to find out how a new videogame teaches Kill, and Fortnite has it all in spades.

A rotating cast of strangers to dance with, no names, no faces – except for what you meet on the road. Weapons and equipment OSP. I’m gonna be the best – I don’t even have to do anything.

Just one little touch of Victory Royale. I deserve it. I believe in myself, I believe in my team. I believe it’s best to stockpile ammo for a long range gun, a shotgun, and some type of SMG. Meet them halfway, and these are the rules and laws of surviving on the island. If you see someone – shoot, even if they’re just roleplaying. None of us can win if everyone hangs back. I want to meet you on the island, so I can drop you to your knees and watch you disappear beyond the storm. I know that will never be a quest, but god damn does it feel good getting good at it.

Everybody’s got a problem, but look at the island. It’s always got a new, familiar place to see. A city center, a mushroom village. The Daily Bugle or a Pirate Ship. I’m here – and the game has plenty of little cozy shacks and houses, too. Empty places littered with posters and art, it makes me – it makes me look around the island and go “What happened here?” There are no bones, no puddles of fat and blood.

Darth Vader is here, and that’s all of the sign of life I need. Darth Vader is my friend and sometimes me – but near often enough. To tell you the truth, I only got the lightsaber a few times. I still went for it, because I still in a heart too stupid to be alive, think that Darth Vader could kill Goku.

VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE BLOODHUNT is a Videogame for the PC. Players pit Vampire, Werewolf and other creepy-crawly clans against eachother to answer the question: WHO CAN AFFORD THE MOST EXPENSIVE APARTMENT IN LA?

A fog-covered dance club bleeds its way into crumbling sewers. Vampire incarnate crawl stone beams and dripping tapestries died red, and I know that the longer I continue this description the more points I would have earned if I read it out loud. I am a Vampire, a Werewolf, a monster all claw and tooth and hair, scale. The future sucks, but the buildings look cool again. The fucking freaks who wear suits, those are the ones we’re afraid of: well, whatever, at least in Vampire: the Masquerade we stand in something romantic for monsters.

Race through the streets with me. I’m sweating. I’m panting. I have a submachine gun held tightly to a heaving chest, my breath is echoing through metal and wants to fire through the barrel in a way that tears through your chest. Out here, there are no rules – you can walk on walls by jumping close to them.

Screaming ghost images becomes mechanical, I mean: you can pick them up if you want. We’re racing and rushing through the streets of several different cities, all trying to pick a scrap of real estate worth fucking dying over. It’s important to some vampire, somewhere I’m told. It would be more honest, I think, to tell me I need to kill the other vampires because they Fucked Up somewhere down the line and became more Bastard Percent. I want to kill someone’s misstress for you for a percieved slight at the party – but the smoke is coming.

The smoke, the fog, the storm. Coralling and telling everyone where to put the very final last stand. Hang out for a second, enjoy a little carnival game. Feed on a civilian! Jump on a trampoline – childhood’s gotta end sometime, and you’ll see some nice houses along the way.

I should just leave it here, but I saw the room on Fortnite people….display their skins to each other. They aren’t displaying like you do in a youtube video, you know what I mean? I remember getting to know the othere players doesn’t matter that much: I take the experience out on a few people in deathmatch mode. It’s not really that surprising though: you can see any videogame character naked now.

Life for the Vampires turns out to be more waiting in a haunted goth club, a dedicated player base keeping matches proceeding in a way where you start to recognize consistent tactics over time.

I don’t connect in a way that’s too obvious, but god: it actually feels really good to sail through the air slowly as a fashionable vampire and fill concrete and ash with lead. A religious experience, with blood streaked skies and piercing lightning. A lot of people played Fortnite for Goku, though.

BATTLE ROYALE is a movie based on a book version of a nightmare.

That’s property, though, right? Fortnite’s just got so much to see, always, a little sticky in places, a little experimental here. It’s all the same though: the rush through delineating valleys of real estate. Racing through church-lined streets racked with iron gates. A bunch of imagery that you recognize, with some toys sprinkled in. Battle Royale’s are all about being Number one for just long enough to get killed by someone else. The houses don’t matter – tilted towers is just a place for loot drops.

It can be filled in with something as imaginative as I want – or I can just remember dropping a dance move as Goku in a giant apartment building. That’s a kind of story, too.

All Battle Royale Games should be about the thrill of placing a bullet between Goku’s head across a canyon from more than 100 yards only to be cut off by watching someone else do it, but are only about that some of the time.

Tripping through a rotating cast of lego-set versions of all of the branches of civic life we WISH someone would shoot us in – or the kinds of places nobody really bothers to blow up in movies anymore. Fortnite is like an IV drip of the basic needs the eyeball has – and you can give it money to look like however you want. Including Darth Vader.

I’m on a mad dash for the end of that circle. I want it to be a nice house, or something pretty to look at. Sometimes though, it’s just a little fuzzy ravine. You can’t pay for that part of the experience, we’re out here toy soldiers in our own little way. I can’t focus on anything else every single game, and to cut me off at the end is to deny me my whole purpose. Back to the Battle Bus. Take a break, on Dragonball Island or in Crime City. Have some time in your day to be killed by three thousand Goku’s. To walk blindly into a shimmering Goku, to see his true essence – to come away believing Goku could beat Darth Vader.

Some suits will become so legendary over time – that seeing them is to know death. I feel that fucking way about Venom now, I see a picture of being ruined by venoms in dissonant scenarios involving rifles that feels like a ripple in reality. The truth of the matter is, what the hell do I sound like if I can’t picture the pure thrill of revenge on Venom, two games in a row?

While the circle closes around us and chokes us out for dear life. I am surrounded by my friends, staring down the end of the world now. A military complex, church, gas station. A scrap of blood soaked grass down by the beach, a canyon. Choking on water in the bottom of a mine, riddled with shrapnel that melts my bone and skin together through welded fat. Of course – it’s a cartoon splash.

Sometimes out here, through the scope – you see another kind of horizon. It’s The Metaverse and it’s all anyone is talking about. Lifeless, breathless places of microsoft word art and starched by people who’s most favorite part of the day is clocking in at their own companies, and they love hearing us talk about Goku vs. Darth Vader, because of everything else they learn about it. If I see him through the scope for too long – can he see through me?

I’m in the valley with the gun and wu-tang flag. I can see both of them over my head – both of those great big eyes in the sky, will they notice me, or notice each other first?