Supercell’s latest mobile hit Brawl Stars has taken CHS campus by storm, creating fun for students, but concern for some teachers.
Brawl Stars is a third person shooter game, similar to Epic Games’ Fortnite which took the world by storm almost 5 years ago. Players can choose different characters and game modes in order to be the team or player on top.
Game modes solo and duo showdown, are the classic battle royale-like modes, where players spawn into the map, can collect energies to improve their health statistics and fight to be the final player standing. Most Brawl stars games typically last around 2-4 minutes, eerily similar to the short form content which is currently flooding social media platforms.
The reported average of 728,335 players for the month of September (2023) has skyrocketed to 4,266,077 for the month April, some of which are Calabasas High School students, such as CHS Junior Kaden Dorafshar, who has noticed an increase in community as a result of students playing together,
“Brawl Stars is so much fun! I love the community it creates among my friends and classmates.” said Dorafshar, ”It’s great to see people bonding over it.”
“Brawl Stars is my favorite game to play on my phone right now,” added Junior Julian Saab, “I love how versatile the gamemodes and characters are.”
Although Brawl Stars is comparable to previous hits, such as Fall Guys and Fortnite due to it’s cartoon-esk graphics and similar gameplay, the main difference between the two is that players can purchase in-game currencies to unlock new characters and upgrade pre-existing ones – while players can still earn their way to advancements by putting in game time, anyone willing to pay a pretty penny does have the option to proceed quicker. In other games with a similar appeal (Fall Guys and Fortnite), players can only purchase cosmetics which don’t affect gameplay; once players enter the map, it’s a completely even playing field.
Although this may seem like a rare case of a fad taking over the student body, similar instances can be seen in the past, such as Monopoly-like multiplayer, richup.io, where CHS students played avidly to expand their empire and the 2023 World Cup taking over classrooms this time last year.
Some teachers stress concerns over increased gameplay in the classroom, such as, CHS Social Studies teacher Brian Edelman, who argues that if gameplay gets to the point where students distract their peers, teachers should step in and that students should remain accountable for their actions.
“If it gets to the point where they’re distracting their peers, I will step in and talk to them on the side about it” said Edelman, “I’m a firm believer in checking yourself before you wreck yourself.”
