YouTube star Elliott ‘Muselk’ Watkins accelerated his gaming content empire thanks to Fortnite. Now in an exclusive interview with Dexerto, the Australian has praised Epic for “redefining the industry” with their mega Fortnite releases which have continued in Chapter 3.
Muselk has played his fair share of games on stream and for his wildly-successful YouTube channel. Boasting 10 million subscribers combined across his main and secondary channel, he has one of the biggest empires on the platform.
While it was built on the foundation of Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch, the skyscraper shot up thanks to Fortnite. Four years on from the game’s explosive rise and Muselk is still reaping the benefits with millions of views on each and every video he posts.
With a quiet Chapter 2 all things considered, and Fortnite’s player base slowly waning, Epic has managed to win players back in Fortnite Chapter 3, with Muselk telling Dexerto the developers have “redefined the industry”.
Muselk blew up massively on YouTube thanks to Fortnite.
“New content and new features are always amazing, but Epic is doing a great job. I think it’s impossible to be a developer of a game which is the size of Fortnite and not have people constantly criticize it,” he said, talking about the Chapter 2 backlash.
“If you look at how games were updated and run before Fortnite, Overwatch was considered to be a decent live-service model with their one update every 3-4 months, but Fortnite redefined the industry by pushing content out constantly.
“They run fast, they break a few eggs, but it worked.”
It’s not just been new weapons and cosmetics to keep the money rolling in. It’s innovative new gameplay mechanics and features that keep players coming back. Each LTM, each little easter egg, it’s a fun little mechanic to explore — just like the new Pizza Parties which Muselk played around with.
For Muselk as a content creator, it also gives him a solid future in Fortnite. There’s little need to worry about searching for the next hit game — although that’s always on the star’s mind. Instead, he can look for the small nuggets of content in each update that inspire a new video.
“There’s not a simple answer to [what new content makes it into a video] really because every new patch is different. There’s some things where they add a new weapon and you get away with gameplay with that new weapon,” he explained.
“However, the fun happens when the update adds something random, a bit of a wild card. It gives you unique ways to build a totally new idea out of it.
“For example, when they had Santa in the truck riding around the map, that was cool because that’s an element in the game you could tinker around with — taking out Santa, dressing up as him and trolling players thinking you’re the NPC, those kinds of things.”
It’s those out of left-field ideas that keeps Muselk interested in Fortnite — both as a YouTube star and a player. While the star is always on the lookout for the next game, Fortnite is as healthy as it was back in 2017 in his eyes, and the future for Epic’s battle royale is bright.
“Obviously I love doing what I’m doing, but I think it’s hard because you’re always on the lookout for cool new things you can make content with. The good thing with the games industry is you never know when that’s going to come,” he said.
“I don’t know what the next game is after Fortnite. I’ve got games I’m passionate about, like playing DOTA in my spare time, but the next game for content I can’t really say.”
