Welcome! I recently accepted adulthood when I realized I have no idea what the allure of Fortnite is and will never make even a slight effort to find out.
The local arcade where i have been taking my son for years doesn't do paper tickets, it just puts points on your card. He's never been into picking out prizes so i just kept racking up points for him and eventually got enough for the biggest prize, a ps4.
I asked the youngest adults who voluntarily talk to me which games to try and they all suggested fortnite.
It turns out the ps4 comes with a headset with a microphone so you can talk to your online teammates. I eschewed this opportunity. But the sound still plays through your tv speaker or headset if your teammates talk to you, and i found out quickly that it's better to wear headphones even if you're not using the mic.
It turns out the 8 and 9 year olds that play this use the n word a lot, and they hit the hard R with vigor. It's hard not to stereotype the ethnicity of the prepubescent voices you're hearing when they casually make racial slurs a synonym for "that guy over there" but it took effort not to tell them how disappointed i was by their language and disrespect.
Similarly, homophobic slurs appear to still be in style with the younger crowd, but usage of f....t seems to be more negative. For example, if a child said this n....r just walked up and shot that f....t, it would be complimentary of the shooter, but saying this f....t just walked up and shot that n....r, it would imply dismay with the shooter.
These weren't the only pejoratives I heard. Apparently there's a thing called a "noobskin", and I'm one of them. It's easily identifiable. You can spend money to buy a "skin" that just makes your character look like a literal clown, or some other costume, instead of the default outfit they wear which looks like combat fatigues. Using the default skin is something new players do, so noobskins are generally looked down upon and are not given opportunities for protection or other team activities that might be available to peers who spend money on the game.
Common usage of this term includes things like "oh no we're all dead let's see what our last teammate was doing... oh no, he's a noobskin... wait why is he running into that tree... oh no he sucks. You suck noobskin. Damn n....r, you're terrible. Look at this n....r, he's horrible." Said in the voice of an angel faced boy lacking supervision and ball hair.
There's also an indeterminate amount of age based discrimination. I tried talking on the microphone and was told that i sound "like someone's dad trying to learn how to play", which is admittedly true, but it was not said with the kind inflection of someone who was excited to play with me or appreciated the effort i was putting in to spend time with the younger generation.
Overall playing fortnite was a valuable sociological experiment but not one I'll soon repeat. Also you build walls and run around and shoot people but i didn't get very good at that.
