At 46 (and a bit), I've finally decided to quit Fortnite. Yes, you read that right. The game with the flossing emotes, neon skins, and chaotic building battles (not for me) has been part of my life for longer than I'd ever planned.

What started as a way to bond with my teenage kids spiraled into a solo ritual I couldn’t quite let go of, even long after they’d moved on to other games and grown into different phases of life.

I know, I know, what is a middle-aged man doing playing such a nonsense game. REAL middle-aged-gamers are on far grainier games.

But look, cut me some slack, I've been a casual gamer for ages. I'm not good enough at any one game (except Goldeneye, I was boss at that back in Uni days), to earn proper gamer tags or badges, but have played pretty solidly since my teens. That means through a number of generational changes and a fair few broken controllers.

So when my kids started to show interest in videogames, I was delighted. I could move from the usual run 'n gun violence of whatever COD was out at that time and look at some co-op games and more family fare. But, there's only so long you can play LEGO Harry Potter, Little Big Planet, Mario (+ Kart) etc, and inevitably the trends creep in.

We, my wife and I, did quite well in holding off on letting our boys play from an early age and even then we chose some fairly routine platformers and bright racing games (now it's a bit different with my youngest spouting off insults and gamerspeak on Seige and my eldest routinely rinsing me on FIFA - now EA FC), but they wanted to play what their friends were playing. This thing called Fortnite, ostensibly an FPS that was coded differently so blood didn't appear and you had the Battle Royale elements to shoot your way to the last survivor status.

Depending on how deep you go in learning about Fortnite's Free-To-Play model (it harvests money) or looking into the notion it ripped off PUBG, threw on some NEON and let the accounts go bonkers, you'll have come across something, anything that has been touched by Epic Games enormo game. Live events mean meticulous planning of family dinners, dances, crazes, skins, high-profile guest appearances and tie-ins. It is utterly addictive.

Eventually, after much pleading and pouting, I caved and we booted up Fortnite for the first time. I would play initially, test the waters for the violence count, certain that a sniper would release our brain matter at any second. They didn't and the game is not massively violent anyway. The mechanics are the same sure, but deaths are indicated by a dissolve into pexels/pixels rather than agonized writhing and screaming and the whole thing was just fun. Bewildering, sure... I couldn't build for shit and kept cycling my weapons instead of reloading. But I was hooked.

So, when we first picked up the controllers together, it was magic. Fortnite was more than just a game. For a short while, it was a shared experience, a digital campfire around which my kids and I laughed, fought side by side, and occasionally danced in victory. For a while, I wasn’t just Dad - I was a squad member, a builder, a last-man-standing. But time passed and their interests drifted toward newer titles, Valorant, Elden Ring, something with way too many keys on the keyboard, but I stayed behind.

At first, I told myself I was “keeping up with the kids.” I'd check in and show them a replay of a good 'kill' or claim my KUDOS when I won. I am also a little competitive, so to view my status or rank as being better than my kids allowed me to feel good about myself until the dopamine wore off.

Then, I said it helped me decompress after work. Before I knew it, I was grinding weekly challenges alone, buying V-Bucks I didn't need, and rocking a Peely skin in lobbies full of kids half my age. Somewhere between Chapter 3 and yet another reworked map, it stopped being about fun and started feeling like obligation. Worse, it became a quiet, pixelated echo chamber - a way of avoiding everything from unread books to real conversations, stacks of dishes, piles of clothes.

This isn’t a swipe at Fortnite. It’s a masterpiece of modern gaming: slick, endlessly evolving, and bizarrely creative. But the game is built for those who live and breathe digital culture at warp speed. At some point, I was no longer playing with anyone - I was just logging in, chasing feelings I used to get but no longer did.

I've an addictive personality too, so the 'one more game' element was hard to ignore. It’s like being the last guy at a party that ended two years ago, still dancing under the strobe light while the DJ’s already gone home - also ironic, given my day job.

There was a little ceremony when I deleted the game, my wife halfheartedly smiled, knowing I will probably find a different game to fall in love with, the kids basically said 'about time' and my cat, licked its butthole while maintaining eye contact. Life goes on.

Quitting Fortnite isn’t about reclaiming lost time or suddenly becoming “productive.” It’s about letting go of a crutch that stopped supporting me.

I’ll miss the goofy joy, the absurd crossovers, the weirdly satisfying chaos. But I’m ready to close that chapter. Maybe I’ll pick up a book. Finally weed the garden. Maybe I’ll just sit still for a while.

What I know is this: it was fun, and it served its purpose.

But like my kids growing out of bedtime stories, I’ve outgrown this one too.