Under the scorching California sun last Tuesday, 50 celebrities and 50 professional video game players gathered near the north end of a soccer stadium in Los Angeles to play Fortnite for $3 million in prize money. It was the very first officially sanctioned tournament for developer Epic Games’ mega-hit battle royale game, organized by the company itself and geared toward raising money for charity. And it was a monumental success by most metrics: It handily eclipsed the first official day of the game industry’s E3 expo, which was happening just two miles north at the city’s convention center, and drew more than 1.1 million viewers live on Twitch.
The line to get in sprawled across every available stretch of sidewalk around the Banc of...
