You can lose a match of Fortnite and still leave with a number going up. For Bing Gordon, a founding member of Electronic Arts and its former chief creative officer, that’s the interesting part. A game with so many losers has found something else to give them.
Speaking on MTS’s October 6 interview, Gordon compared that appeal with a trick familiar to casinos: give people a second measure of success, and losing on the first one doesn’t have to feel so bad.
In Fortnite, he said, “everybody feels like a winner, even though 100 players, only one wins, but everybody gets career score.”
His casino example came from a conversation with a Las Vegas designer. The designer’s explanation was a “second currency”: VIP points. A customer could lose money at the tables but gain status, a room, or drinks, giving them something to feel pleased about despite the financial loss.
A Different Way To Keep Score
Gordon presented this as an example of positive-sum design, alongside NFL Blitz, where scoring touchdowns and clobbering the opposition could give different players their own satisfaction. His point was that the official result needn’t be the only enjoyable thing a game produces.
That’s a perfectly reasonable ambition. Winning is a narrow definition of a worthwhile evening, particularly in a game where most participants have to lose. A match can be funny, tense, or satisfying without ending in first place. Rewarding improvement gives someone who isn’t winning yet a reason to keep learning.
The casino comparison adds a less comfortable question: what, exactly, is the consolation helping you overlook?
For a casino customer, VIP status doesn’t reverse the money lost. For a player, progression can be a welcome reward, but a rising meter doesn’t automatically mean the time spent filling it was enjoyable. Those are different stakes, with a similar invitation to focus on the number that makes the experience look better.
The Match Ends. The Progression Doesn’t.
Epic has made progression a reward system that stretches well beyond winning Battle Royale. In its 2024 explanation of shared pass progression, the company described XP earned across experiences advancing multiple passes, with both free and premium reward tracks. Premium rewards still required buying the relevant passes.
That structure gives a match a second outcome: the result on the island and the progress carried out of it. Losing doesn’t wipe the latter away. It’s easy to see why Gordon finds that clever.
It’s also worth keeping your own score. Progression works best when it rewards something you wanted to do anyway. When the reward becomes the reason to endure another match you aren’t enjoying, the meter is doing a very different job. The game can tell you that you’re making progress. It can’t decide whether you had a good time.
