Romesh Ranganathan takes on his family at Fortnite: ‘I have everything on the line’

A while ago, I wrote a column about the division in my family that Fortnite was creating, with my kids playing it nonstop and then allowing me to play before confirming that I was, as I feared, a “noob” (translation: someone without skill in the area of gaming).

This was distressing, as I have always considered myself a gamer. Admittedly I became slightly disenfranchised when online gaming emerged, which allows you to play anyone from anywhere, as, for me, the whole point of gaming is escapism. And escapism, to my mind, is not being repeatedly beaten at a game by an 11-year-old from Ohio while he calls me a “little bitch”.

Before all that, though, I was an addict. At my sons’ age, I was locked into my Amiga 500. I used to play Batman, the New Zealand Story, Rainbow Islands, Speedball. I remember playing Wonderboy and getting to the very last level, after hundreds of attempts, before my younger brother, in an effort to help, accidentally pressed a key that exited the game, burst into tears and ran away. I felt so bad for him. I also loved him slightly less after that.

I remember becoming so entranced by Super Mario World on the Nintendo 64 that I sat down to play it at 5pm in my student accommodation and stayed there until I had finished the game at 8am the following morning. This shows you both how much I loved gaming, and also how truly pathetic my university social life was. But that’s for another time.

My gaming past means I feel the disconnect with my children all the more keenly. I end up saying things such as, “I used to game, you know, and in my day they were proper games, not all this claptrap”, and they look at me like some sort of ancient artefact they have no interest in. And then they carry on playing Fortnite.

Don’t get me wrong: we have had some fun times gaming together. We play each other at Mario Kart, and I even invested in loads of Nintendo Labo kits, where you build cardboard tools with which to play the games. What this has mainly involved is the kids watching me trying to put something together repeatedly, before losing my temper and my wife asking the kids to “leave Daddy to calm down for a bit”.

When my Fortnite column was published, the noted egamer Frankie Ward got in touch on Twitter and offered to give me some training. This felt like a dream come true: I could become good at Fortnite, win the respect of my kids, and then use that respect to turn them against their mother somehow. I contacted Frankie, but she was on her way to an etournament in Sweden, so she arranged for esports commentator Daniel Falcone (yes, that’s a thing, and a lucrative one) to come to Crawley and help us out.

‘The post-Brexit simulator’: Fortnite

I thought it would be fun to get all the family involved. I asked my wife, and she immediately said no. She is happy to game with the kids, but as soon as she heard there might be a photo in the Guardian, she made it very clear that she was out. My mother, on the other hand, was keen as mustard before I had even explained what we were going to do. This implies that she was desperate to get into the paper, but the truth is, my mum is perpetually frustrated at how little she sees us; this was more of an opportunity to spend some time with the grandkids.

It also occurred to me that my mum being able to play Fortnite might be the best thing ever for her relationship with the boys. They currently see her as the loud woman who kisses them way too much when she turns up at their house. Most of their time with her is spent doing that cartoon-eyeballs-popping-out thing while my mum hugs the life out of them. It might be beneficial for them to see her as a Fortnite player. Additionally, it would be nice for me to have somebody present whom I can definitely beat.

My mum saw my brother and me grow up with computer games, and has always been bemused by how much we love them. Occasionally, she has expressed distaste for what’s being played (she finds beat-’em-ups to be a damning indictment of human nature), so I wondered how she was going to take to a game that required you to drop on to an island and kill absolutely everybody else there until you are the last person standing, in what many have dubbed the “post-Brexit simulator”.

The day of the training arrives. Daniel has set up three screens, and the boys start playing immediately, admiring the “skins” Daniel has chosen (this is your onscreen avatar, which could be anything from a robot sentinel to a skirting-pretty-close-to-licensing laws version of Chief Hopper from Stranger Things). While the boys play, Mum and I receive our basic training before preparing to fight it out as a family.

Mum goes first. Daniel begins by setting us up in an empty, onscreen environment so we can familiarise ourselves with the game. As well as running around and picking up weapons, we have to look out for rejuvenating potions; we can also build things to hide behind, which is apparently the skill that distinguishes the really great players. I understand that games are not rooted in reality, but the idea that you would knock up a fence while being shot at feels like something you wouldn’t even suggest at a development meeting, let alone allow as a big part of the game. Having said that, my son is playing as a banana, so I might be judging this by the wrong criteria.

Mum’s inexperience means everything she does is celebrated: shoot someone, applause! Walk out of a room, applause!

Daniel watches Mum for a little bit and then adjusts his tasks accordingly. Instead of showing us how to use various weapons and execute some cool kills, he very quickly ascertains that he is going to have to scaffold the learning a bit. He asks my mum to try something simple â€" walking into a house. That takes half an hour. You use the right-hand stick to control where you are looking, and the left-hand stick to control where you are walking. Mum spends most of that half an hour walking into a wall while looking up at the sky. I start telling her what to do, and she asks me how come I am already so good at this; I realise that her problem is that she has no experience of gaming at all. By dint of simply having played a game, any game, I am able to move around with no problem.

It is both a relief to know she is that crap, and incredibly frustrating to watch. I keep saying things such as, “Oh my God, Mum, are you serious?” as she once again fails to walk through a door. Again and again she imprisons herself in a room, completely unable to leave, putting me and the boys into hysterics.

But then the boys do something wonderful. With Daniel’s help, they realise that they are going to have to help their grandmother pick up the basics. So they join the game and start leaving various weapons and potions around where she is playing, giving her little tests in how to pick things up and access them. They talk her through what to do, and congratulate her when she manages it. She is loving it. They start positioning themselves in places and asking her to try to shoot them. They don’t even mind when she asks them to get closer and then, as she tries to shoot, looks up at the sky hundreds of times. I am actually impressed.

Then it is my turn for training, and I have to confess that here I am slightly envious of my mum. While Daniel is brilliant, my mum’s inexperience means that absolutely everything she does leads to a family celebration: shoot someone, applause! Walk out of a room, applause! Manage to spend 30 seconds without looking up at the sky, applause! While the boys remain supportive, I receive no accolades for my efforts; they already expect me to be a certain standard. I am beginning to regret bringing Mum. This woman will be declared a champion simply for managing to walk out of a room.

‘It is Theo v Mum v me. Mum and I play on out of sheer pride.’ Photograph: David Yeo/The Guardian

Daniel explains that I am justified in finding Fortnite hard. It is a notoriously difficult game to get to grips with, particularly because you have to start playing against other online players, who are already brilliant at it. Your early experiences are mainly getting killed almost immediately, and then waiting for another game to start. It’s a hurdle that Fortnite’s makers have addressed, somewhat controversially, by introducing game-controlled bots, which aren’t as good as real-life players. The idea is that you can practise against those, rather than be murdered by a group of kids who have spent 10 hours a day playing from their mum’s basement for the last six months. (The other thing Fortnite’s makers did, last weekend, was replace the whole game with a black hole, before unveiling Chapter 2 and a rebooted world two days later. Which means we might need to train all over again.)

Our family session completed, the tournament begins. The idea is simple: whoever first completes a kill will be declared the winner. Daniel has set up a “rumble”, so that if you are killed you will simply reappear and keep going, with that death going against your team’s score. It is my eldest son, Theo, v Mum v me. Theo immediately bags himself a kill and is declared victorious, but Mum and I play on out of sheer pride. I have everything on the line here; a defeat will be unrecoverable in terms of gaining any kind of respect. I will have no choice but to offer the kids the opportunity to request a new father, one who can assemble Nintendo Labo structures, and move on to a new life.

Fortunately, the online players of Fortnite prove my saviours. They are all very good, so it quickly becomes obvious that neither Mum nor I is going to have any chance of killing them. Every time either of us approach anything like a scrap, we are dispatched immediately. One particular player identifies me as a weak link and keeps seeking me out to kill me again. This is not my proudest moment.

Daniel says he is willing to wait in the studio until one of us gets a kill, but it feels slightly unfair to keep him here for a month. So Theo is declared the winner, and Mum and I hug as worthy losers, before she is once again applauded for having given it a go.

Has my training turned me into the expert I hoped I could be? Certainly not. But it has given us some quality family time, the sort I might previously have assumed was possible only through the medium of board games or days out. The boys enjoyed teaching us about “their” game. And I have been reminded of how hilarious it is when your parents are irretrievably rubbish at something. We have all agreed to have another go sometime. As long as there are no photographers involved, my wife might even join us.

Hair, makeup and grooming: Sadaf Ahmad using, for Shanthi, Milk Makeup, Pat McGrath, Charlotte Tilbury Cosmetics and GHD hair; for Romesh, Tom Ford for Men and Bamford Grooming Department. Sofa: John Lewis & Partners Cromwell Chesterfield

• If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email weekend@theguardian.com, including your name and address (not for publication).

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