Though Fortnite owes its claim to fame to its ubiquity as a battle royale game, by 2021, Epic Games’ flagship property had exploded into the basis for thousands of cross-genre games created within the Fortnite game engine.

Enter Discovery: Fortnite’s pivot from its focus as a singular Battle Royale mode to a content-forward, in-game platform that centers the hard work of dedicated player-creators of all levels.

Learning from the lessons of streaming and e-commerce platforms, we used extensive tagging, tiling, categorization, and image treatment rules to ensure legibility in a sea of user-created content.

We prioritized interaction patterns that made it intuitive to navigate, feature, favorite, and share thousands of games both in and out of active game sessions. We also introduced a handful of features that let players jump into recommended games after every round, join their friends’ active lobbies, and otherwise stay up to date on their mutuals and favorite creators.

Off the successes of launching Discovery in-game, we extended our systematic approach to live online through a full redesign of fortnite.com.