Special Feature: The Battle Royale Battle Royale Part I — The Calm Before the Storm
It feels like the battle royale subgenre of shooters exploded in popularity overnight. These are first or third-person multiplayer shooters where matches begin with a large group of players, but each one or each team fights to be the last one standing.
The genre started rising to relevance through mods for games like Minecraft, ARMA 2, and DayZ, after modders felt inspired by The Hunger Games series. Following this, a small team in South Korea made an entire game out of the concept through PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (abbreviated as “PUBG.”) to capitalize on the popularity. It seemed like the kind of title that would be big, especially at $30 (or an equivalent in other markets), but few foresaw it becoming such a massive phenomenon. The early access version sold over one million copies in mere weeks, and as word spread about how many players were enjoying it, its sales continued to increase.
It’s why Epic Games took the same approach with Fortnite for the aptly named Fortnite Battle Royale. The experiment was successful enough that you’ll find plenty who don’t know there was a Fortnite game before this, and that this title was made with its assets — and the original title was no slouch in terms of popularity. The console and PC versions are still being updated, and it’s keeping the audience engaged and attracting new fans.
Both Fortnite Battle Royale and PUBG have since been ported to mobile platforms, where they’ve also made millions in profits for their developers. In fact, some school administrators have tried to get both banned from being played on school grounds, because students are so addicted to them.
Both games have done their jobs in making the battle royale genre a hot commodity, and you now what that means: Several other developers and publishers now want a piece of the pie. It’s truly the successor to the hero genre, another subgenre of first and third-person shooters popularized by Overwatch, which other publishers wanted to capitalize on. This isn’t to say Overwatch and some of its inspirations aren’t still popular, but it’s no longer the gameplay style others are going after by the bulk.
Mentioning the hero and battle royale subgenres together is a little fortuitous, because there’s a developer that recently tried to capitalize on the popularity of both when they were at their hottest: Boss Key Productions, a development studio started by Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski after leaving Fortnite developer Epic Games. This also showed why simply chasing the latest trends isn’t always the best idea, as the developer shuttered last week, after neither of their experiments took off.
The first among these was LawBreakers, Boss Key’s take on the hero shooter genre. Critics referred to it as a respectable effort, though not a remarkable one. But while its player count was similarly respectable at first, it continued to dwindle weeks after its release. It was a hot story when its player count dropped to ten a mere three months after its release, which left the gaming audience to predict its slow and imminent death, particularly considering it happened after a free weekend. Publisher Nexon previously blamed PUBG for its issues, but Boss Key admitted that it simply failed to find an audience in early April as they put its support to rest.
Boss Key moved on to Radical Heights, their attempt to capitalize on the battle royale genre with an 80s-style “radical” aesthetic to distinguish it. The game’s starting popularity was slightly better than LawBreakers, but its player count still wasn’t high, and support started hemorrhaging after a couple of weeks.
In the end, it was too little too late to save the studio from its untimely demise, which became clear Bleszinski posted a letter on his Twitter account announcing Boss Key Productions’ closure. This was reportedly announced a mere hour before employees found out, which explains why it happened so suddenly. Bleszinski says he’ll be taking a break from video games, since he’s obviously burnt out by both failures, but hopefully the employees land on their feet.
The announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII last week came with another sign of how prevalent battle royale games will soon become. The game will include several changes compared to previous installments, but the biggest and most topical will be the addition of the “Blackout” mode, a battle royale mode. It will feature several characters from all the Black Ops installments, and will include massive renditions of their stages as maps. This is being implemented in lieu of a single-player mode, which developer Treyarch said didn’t receive enough engagement in previous titles. There’s also a rumor that Battlefield V will have one, though we should find out for sure when it’s revealed on Wednesday.
This is only the beginning of the Battle Royale Battle Royale, because you can bet that a plethora of other developers and publishers will try to capitalize on this phenomenon. Don’t be surprised if every major publisher has one in the near future. More games in the genre could be announced at E3 2018 this year, so look forward to a follow-up post sometime afterward. Whether it comes shortly afterward or takes a little while depends on how many are revealed, so don’t get too upset if you don’t see it by, say, around this time next month.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
