The attention economy is dead, but Fortnite might hold the key to an answer

Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritising between them.” The trend, they write, has persisted for a while, and only now promises a revenue slowdown — as told through disappointing quarterly results from a few of the major games publishers. Last month, Netflix mentioned in its 2018 earnings report that “we compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO.” As Polygon noted then, Netflix sees the game as its “stiffest competition” because, to the streaming giant, the most valuable consumer metric is screen time. (Apex managed to find a wild 25 million players in just under a month, after a surprise, no-promo release; it’s currently the only real competition Fortnite has in the space.) “It’s not that it’s particularly better or worse suited for the attention economy than others, but it does strike a chord with generations, who typically have more time to allocate, which is why it is doing so well in the attention economy,” says Severin.