Fortnite: The game–and the seizures–are free

Fortnite’s High Explosives mode fills large areas of the screen with bright, rapidly moving images that can trigger seizures.

Maybe you’ve heard about the video game Fortnite that now has 45 million players? One reason it’s so popular is that it’s free to download — with its seizure-inducing graphics.

Playing Fortnite involves quite a bit of shooting that creates bright flashes. The flashes are especially likely to trigger seizures when the game is played in “high explosives” mode (available during limited release dates). The high explosives create bigger explosions splayed across larger areas of the screen, which in turn affects a greater number of neurons in the brain’s visual processing system. For reasons not entirely understood, in people with photosensitive epilepsy, flashing light and certain other visual stimuli overload the visual cortex in a way that leads to seizures.

A Fortnite “high explosives” weapon in action

In one user-uploaded, 7-minute, 39-second gameplay video using high explosives, 8 separate image sequences failed to meet the standards for minimizing the risk of visually triggered seizures. Each of those failures represents a visual sequence with a reasonable chance of setting off seizures in persons who have photosensitive epilepsy. The test for seizure risk from images is based on guidelines for reducing visually induced seizures, determined by extensive research on the image qualities that can bring on seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy: motion, brightness, contrast, patterns, color intensity, and flash/flicker .

Please fix this, Epic!

Fortnite’s developer, Epic Games, has come out with remarkably frequent product updates to address performance bugs and keep players’ interest from flagging. (No issues with maintaining players’ interest level — maybe you’ve also heard about parents and teachers struggling to handle kids’ unprecedented preoccupation with this game?) Last week Epic removed a guided missile weapon from the game — for now — due to a bug and some player feedback that using the weapon disturbed the sense of fairness and balance of the game. That still leaves grenades, rocket launchers creating big flashes in high explosives mode.

Problem flash isn’t limited to explosions. The flash in this sequence came from spacecraft lights.

Perhaps the company’s unusually rapid product development cycle would make it possible to modify all the game’s graphics where the image sequences place users at risk of seizures? There are tools available to developers to identify the offending images — what I use to test the gameplay clips is just another version of the same Harding Flash and Pattern Analyzer software. You can read here about the way I do the testing.

Should you be concerned?

Maybe. Estimates are that up to 3 percent of the population has photosensitive epilepsy (among those with any other form of epilepsy, about 5 percent). Photosensitive seizures typically begin between ages 8 – 20, and they can occur in people with no history of epilepsy.  Of the hundreds of children who had seizures during a 1997 Pokémon cartoon broadcast in Japan, researchers found that 74 percent of them had never been aware of experiencing a seizure before.

The prevalence of photosensitive epilepsy is probably underestimated because seizures are not always noticeable, and therefore not always reported or even suspected. The symptoms of a mild seizure may be so subtle that nobody realizes what’s occurred. That doesn’t mean a mild seizure is nothing to worry about; any seizure has the potential to leave disabling physical and cognitive after-effects and mood changes that can last for days.

What can you do?

Parents and teachers are struggling to handle kids’ unprecedented preoccupation with Fortnite. To learn about the effects of video games on the central nervous system, and about finding ways to reduce your child’s screen time, I recommend Dr. Victoria Dunkley’s Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time.

To learn if your child may be experiencing game-induced seizures, ask about any weird sensations occurring while playing video games. See if you can get the child to wear cobalt blue dark glasses while gaming; in these are extremely effective at protecting against or reducing the severity of seizures.

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