RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
All right, one of the hottest video games in the world right now is called Fortnite. And here's the premise - you are dropped on an island with a bunch of other players, and you have to fight it out. The last person standing wins.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
(Yelling) Duck.
Apparently, people not only play Fortnite, they watch other people playing Fortnite. Videos of people playing Fortnite on YouTube have been seen millions of times - no word if there are also videos of people watching those videos. But there are celebrity players like Drake and Joe Jonas and Chance the Rapper.
MARTIN: And some lesser-known names have also embraced the game. One of them is Mike McCray. He's an AP chemistry teacher at Tippecanoe High School in Ohio. His class made a bet. If their photo of an agreement that was written on this whiteboard - if it could get 6,700 retweets, Mr. McCray would make the final exam about Fortnite.
MIKE MCCRAY: And I said, well, I don't know anything about Fortnite, and I barely know what a tweet is or a retweet is, so I said, what the heck?
INSKEEP: He may barely know what a retweet is, but he got more than 31,000 of them. The story was picked up on game blogs and even some TV stations.
MARTIN: It's not the first time he's tried to make his tests cool, though.
MCCRAY: Like, "The Brady Bunch" was relevant, and so I would always do questions related to "The Brady Bunch," you know? Like, Greg throws a hydrochloric acid-filled football that hits Jan in the nose, or something like that.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
MARTIN: Super cool, super cool.
INSKEEP: "The Brady Bunch" is relevant. Anyway, the test is Fortnite themed, even though Mr. McCray says just playing the game will not prepare them to take it.
MCCRAY: Maybe at some point, I'll play the game and learn something about it. But yeah, I'm real - totally a newbie about the game at this point.
INSKEEP: OK, that's just fine. And maybe one of his students can tell him a thing or two about it.
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INSKEEP: He is currently writing his exam with a little bit of help from developers, and we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll learn the answer within - I don't know - a fortnight. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.