The Buffalo Bills and global payment giant Visa have launched a new Fortnite map in the National Football League (NFL) Zone.
The new Buffalo Bills Zone features various memorabilia and imagery from the franchise’s past while also celebrating its present members and games.
Built with Fortnite Creative tools, players can interact with the virtual environment using their avatar and explore a variety of terrain on the map. Their avatar will also sport the iconic Bills uniform, allowing players to immerse themselves further into the franchise’s experience.
Players can explore a winter city reminiscent of the real-life Buffalo landscape on the map, complete with a simulation of Niagara Falls. They can also admire the exterior of the Bills’ stadium, along with a nearby festival with iconic vehicles, balloons and tents set up during game days.
Loading buses and city structures will also display the Bills’ logo, further emphasizing the franchise’s importance to the NFL Zone. The map provides interactive capture-and-hold gameplay, pitting players against one another to secure hard points and earn higher scores for their team.
The hard point also moves around constantly, allowing players to admire the environment and the Bills’ legacy while preventing any unruly players from camping a spot for their team.
The new zone comes from the NFL’s metaverse world on Fortnite, first released in early December 2022. Also presented by NFL’s official payment technology provider Visa, the NFL Zone was meant to engage new fans in the gaming world. With more young people enjoying game experiences, the NFL’s Fortnite map presents a way to recreate the experience and joy of football through the online metaverse.
“Fortnite has become one of the go-to destinations for audiences seeking immersive, social experiences, and we see a massive opportunity to bring NFL football to a new generation of fans with NFL Zone,” NFL VP of video gaming Ed Kiang said.
“Through developing a robust catalog of content with top gaming personalities and pairing it with a persistent presence in the metaverse, we’ll be able to grow generational fandom off the field and enhance the connection audiences have with NFL football.”
Bringing football to new game fields
The NFL is no stranger to the importance of modern gaming in engaging with newer audiences.
Its long-time NFL video game franchise, Madden, was developed and published by Electronic Arts. It has since seen great success among young men. The series has consistently topped game sales charts, selling over 130 million copies since its inception in 1988.
Releasing a map on Fortnite was a reasonable step forward for the company, considering the massive popularity of Fortnite’s creative maps.
With the update of Fortnite Creative’s toolkit, the NFL’s new maps are expected to further increase in quality with new assets and more intriguing gameplay. Players can find numerous attractions in the NFL Zone alongside the new Bills section.
The NFL Zone offers different portals to other NFL-team-inspired maps, some of which include the San Francisco 49ers, the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The map also has a public Hub section providing comprehensive information on the NFL’s history and franchises.
The NFL Zone also takes advantage of Fortnite’s customizable game modes. For example, it has transformed the standard “search and destroy” gameplay to a “seek and sack” format. It also has a gameplay featuring Visa in a tag-like system that allows players to grab bags and drag them to various NFL stores.
