A 13-year-old boy has become the youngest professional player of the hit game Fortnite
- A 13-year-old boy from Kent has become the youngest professional player of the hit game Fortnite.
- Kyle Jackson has signed with esports collective Team Secret, where he will get a share of prize money from any future Fortnite competitions.
- Fortnite is one of the hottest games right now, and is a free survival game which has been downloaded more than 40 million times.
- There are no esports competitions for Fortnite just yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.
Fortnite is a global phenomenon, and a 13-year-old boy from Kent, UK, has become its youngest professional player.
Kyle Jackson is a new member of Team Secret, an esports collective which makes money from gaming competitions.
Jackson goes by the player name of "Mongraal", and is one of Team Secret's four members. The idea is that he will travel the world with the team and take part in Fortnite competitions, winning a share of the prize money.
Jackson told the BBC: "Playing games and travelling all over the world is kind of a dream for all kids."
He's been gaming since he was eight. "When I started playing competitively at nine or 10, I started to realise I was probably better than the average player."
Jackson is still at school and it's currently exam time in the UK. According to the BBC, he's doing well academically and his parents are supportive of his hobby.
"Currently, at school I'm doing very well in pretty much every subject so they're not really worried about me playing as much as I do. I still have time to study [and] revise," he told the BBC.
He's also not allowed to play beyond 9 p.m.
Fortnite is the hottest game in the world right now
Fortnite is the most popular game in the world right now, judging by this Google Trends chart from earlier this month. Look at how searches for the game exploded in March:
There are multiple versions of the game available, but its most popular iteration came out in September and is called Fortnite: Battle Royale.
As the name suggests, the game is a multiplayer competition to the death.
It's a competitive shooter between 100 players as they drop out of the sky from a "battle bus", and navigate their way to weapons and other items on the game map. Players scavenge for materials that will help them survive, and must also avoid in-game dangers - like meteors falling from the sky.
The concept is similar to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, another hugely popular battle royale-style game. Fortnite has exploded partly because it's free and available on lots of platforms, like PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and even iPhone and iPad. An Android version of "Fortnite" is also coming soon.
Another sign of the game's popularity is how many people are watching it on the games streaming service Twitch.
Fortnite is currently the second most-streamed game, at more than 140,000 viewers, behind another battle royale game, Dota 2.