Your browser does not support the video element. Even if you've never played, by now you know of "Fortnite." Five years ago the battle royale debuted for millions of people across the world, becoming one of gaming's biggest titles and even launching some of its top players into new stratospheres of celebrity. But what's more interesting is what Fortnite could yet become -- and how the game could reshape the internet as we know it. DrLupo has made millions while streaming to his 4.5 million followers on Twitch and another 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube.

If you're in a household with teenage video game players, you will know the sound of Twitch streamers and YouTubers. Right now, my sons seem to live on a steady media diet of wildly enthusiastic young men, playing the same games, in the same ways, using the same slang. Over lockdown I have heard the words "What's up?" and "like and subscribe" enough times to last me until the heat death of the universe. Last weekend, my wife emerged from my youngest son's bedroom and said to me, between clenched teeth: "Is there no one different for them to watch?" And true, from the outside, game streaming can seem like a monoculture, dominated by energy drink-sponsored dudebros.

A few months ago, a friend introduced me to this peculiar horror game he was playing on Nintendo Switch. The game, Dead by Daylight, originally came out in 2016, but quickly enveloped my life. Working from home with minimal social interaction and looming financial precarity put a heavy strain on my mental health, and a horror video game where I'm constantly fighting for survival felt like a kind of virtual exposure therapy. If you haven't played before, here are the gameplay basics for Dead by Daylight. Five players are in each round: one killer and a team of four survivors.

Game enthusiasts and industry personnel attend the Epic Games Fortnite E3 Tournament. It's turned kids into couch potatoes. It's caused professional athletes to crash and burn at their jobs. It's even infiltrated daily conversations with its own vocabulary. Fortnite arrived on the scene last July as a free-to-play shooter by Epic Games.