The Potential Fall of Battle Royale — GGDB
"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Introduction:
Today we're gonna look into the history of the Battle Royale genre and the quick fall of the various games that they have been having such as H1Z1 and Battlegrounds with their stagnations and mishandling of certain aspects of the games and the mode that it makes use of.
Many of these games have been trying to replicate the magic of the original Last Man Standing game modes coming in the form of mods for ARMA II and Minecraft that took inspiration from the popularity of the Hunger Games movies which themselves probably took inspiration from the original Battle Royale novel released in 1999 - more on that later. - aside from Hunger Games itself being based on the novels with the same name.
We're gonna try to decipher the issues and the steps to take for the survivability of the genre in order to understand both the failures of the current management of the games and the successes. Which come in the form of greed, lack of polish and more.
Similar to the Zombie Craze of 2012+ where every game tried to be Day Z that led to the creation of scams such a The War Z - Later renamed Infestation - and the rise and fall of games like H1Z1.
The Battle Royale mode is certainly in danger of falling on its face. But to understand how, we must look at the beginning and go from there.
Act I
The Beginning
The beginnings of the Battle Royale mode are somewhat very clear to the eye, for the most part, it is conformed of the simple concepts of survival in the human instinct, the last man standing, and the Battle Royale novel and movie.
There's a few that are inspired by other things, but obviously, there's no real pinpoint origin for any of it, to search for it would be to live for the answer and die without it. Because in all honesty, I believe that we simply do not know and it goes far beyond our current knowledge.
This reason I will list here; is why the mode is so successful, as well as it will serve a different purpose in a certain lawsuit. - More on that later in the article. - But beyond that, many games have been shot out of potential obscurity, only to fall back on their face when another one comes out and makes something better than the other one did.
The Culling, Player Unknown Battlegrounds, H1Z1 Battle Royale, Fortnite, Darwin Project, SOS, HUNT and even Devolver Digital's own SCUM.
There's also a very clear connection between all of these, and that is the fact that most of these names came from the Zombie Survival Craze that DayZ created.
Last Man Standing:
The Battle Royale mode is based on the simple mechanics of the Last Man Standing trope which has been around for centuries now, from an easy concept like the Gladiator matches where they fought till the last man is standing in the Coliseum ground arenas, to the modern era where this concept has since transcended upon the use of Video Games.
Free-For-All, Deathmatch, Elimination, Survival, Hunger Games and obviously, Battle Royale.
The only difference from the days of old is that we no longer kill ourselves in real life for the sake of entertainment, we kill beings that do not exist in a virtual realm.
There's not one single 'Inventor' of the Last Man Standing because it has been around since days unknown, many people could be quoted for the invention of the concept of using human beings for entertainment in the battle for survival.
The purest form of human natures and instincts shown in the way of violence and survival.
You can romanticise it, you can abhor it, or you can be indifferent to it. But there's obviously something that truly appeals to every one of us in this concept of survival, and that is its simplicity and the instincts of survival and perseverance.
Battle Royale:
Battle Royale was written by the Japanese author Koushun Takami, and released in April of 1999, it bolstered 666 pages in its entirety. A novel that would be later published in English in February of 2003.
Similarly to most of the survival Battle Royales out there, the novel's Royal began with the introduction to the island of Okishima as a group of students awaken in a classroom ON the vacated island surrounded by troops after being led there by a fake field trip that in a nutshell happened to be a lie to cover up a military project and experiment to aid the Japanese government test out and research survival skills and battle readiness, although in all actuality it is meant to be a terror tactic to quell any event of rebellion or insurrection.
This novel would be adapted several times to different mediums, creating two movies Battle Royale and Battle Royale II: Requiem as well as a manga iteration of the novel.
This, in extension, would also influence the many last man standing games out there such as the current lineup.
Being left on an island and forced to survive for no reason at all other than it is a fun game.
A Simple Concept:
The entire subgenre bases itself in the stagnation of innovation; meaning, it is all based on a simple concept and execution that all try to replicate to various successes or failures.
Namely, the last man standing trope, stands within the same grounds as the Souls-like genre, with minor changes or innovation, the series in itself is based upon the simple concept of getting thrown in a world where you must fight to be the last man standing on top of the hill.
With this said, the common tropes for this games include:
- Desolate map - 100 Players or less - Weapons scattered around the map - Spawning on the island - Spawning from a plane - Objective: Survive. Kill or be killed.
Nonetheless, it is this simplicity that the entire catalogue of Battle Royale games owes its popularity to, as stated before, there's appeal in the simple concepts of survival in an island where you must gather your own equipment and gear.
Like the Gladiators of old, Battle Royale allows us to prove our worth in failure and success without the bodily harm of death.
Survival Modes:
The many connections to the Battle Royale mode run deep, for the most part, most of them came with inspirations from either a movie or they came directly from the creation of a popular mode that pinned everyone against each other and the world in a similar manner named: DayZ.
The only obvious distinction being the focus on sheer survival and the addition of Zombies to the mix.
And so, most of the games in the current lineup of Battle Royale games would come from this craze in its deep connections, all of them trying to be DayZ but better but always failing to capture what made it special in the first place, The War Z's pathetic attempt, Unturned trying to put a coat of Minecraft paint on the concept, H1Z1's many promises and quick death, The Forest, 7 Days to Die, Fortnite and its survival mode and Escape From Tarkov which would be the closest one to the original magic of DayZ with several Battle Royale gimmicks.
It's ultimately very sad coming to see how all of this came to be, through the cannibalisation of another mode that could've been special, were it not for the corporate meddling and competition to see who could make more money out of the concept.
You know what they say, though, History tends to repeat itself.
Act II
Player Unknown
With the rise of the Battle Royale, intrinsically comes the rise of Player Unknown. Brendan Greene an Irishman born in Ballyshannon.
His rise was all but inevitable, coming from the love of a woman in Brazil, both divorced not shortly after, nonetheless he remained in Brazil to make up the money for his return, in this time he came in contact with the mod DayZ.
This was when he decided to try his hand at making a mod, and so, he created DayZ Battle Royale. From this on, he would go on to work on H1Z1 King of the Hill as a consultant for Daybreak.
Ultimately, he went back to his modding, where he would give rise to the ARMA III version of DayZ: Battle Royale, this time, with his name in the forefront: PLAYERUNKNOWN'S: Battle Royale. He would go to release three parts of this mod, base mod, Ghost Hotel and finally; The Dev Kit.
He would be working on the mod, however, when the Korean Bluehole Studio reached out to him to make his mod a full game.
This game going on to become one of the best sellers on Steam not years later while it was still in Early Access: PLAYERUNKNOWN'S Battlegrounds.
ARMA II & and Beyond:
As stated before, in his modding days PlayerUnknown would've released a variety of mods for the Bohemian Interactive games ARMA II and ARMA III as well as being contracted by Daybreak to work on H1Z1 as a consultant for the game.
Garnering a variety of players that would be taken straight from the DayZ craze of 2012 and beyond, that so cleverly, would be maintained in his future titles as well.
Giving the fall of DayZ would guarantee the Battle Royale mod a mainstay of which it can thrive not long after with a simpler concept and execution without the constant game breaking bugs that would give way in the DayZ Experience.
Battlegrounds:
Development for PLAYERUNKNOWN's Battlegrounds began in early 2016, after being contacted by Bluehole studios in the midst of his development of the ARMA III mod, they began as a 35 man team but would shortly after be expanded to 70 developers by the time June of 2017 arrived.
With Greene's previous experiences with the mods, the game gave rise to them being spun out to Bluehole Ginno Games later renamed PUBG Corporations in September of 2017 with Chang-han Kim serving as CEO.
This mod would become what Greene would call the final iteration of the Battle Royale concept that he had been working on ever since his first Battle Royale mod in ARMA II's DayZ. Taking use of Unreal Engine 4 development time would be eased contrary to ARMA and H1Z1 who did not use proprietary game engines such as UE4.
The game would launch in Early Access on March 23rd, 2017. A date that would give way to the fastest growing game on Steam and a rivalry between Epic and Bluehole. - More on that later.
Popularity:
PLAYERUNKNOWN's Battleground would receive a variety of great reception altogether, Metacritic giving it an 85/100, GameInformer a 9.5/10, IGN 9.5/10, Polygon allowing it to have a 10/10.
Beyond so, Battlegrounds surpassed numerous player count records, with Bluehole Studio releasing statistics of the first four months of release that showcased that over ten million rounds had been played.
Battlegrounds would go to make over $100 million sales in revenue, Battlegrounds would've proven extremely successful for Bluehole studios, with its value skyrocketing fivefold in 2017 to a price of US$4.6 billion.
It is estimated that Battlegrounds has drawn in more than US$712 million in revenue in 2017 alone.
As of today - 3/5/2018 - PLAYERUNKNWON'S BATTLEGROUNDS sits at the number one spot of SteamCharts with 2,600,471 players playing right now.
Act III
Epic's Rivalry
Fortnite; a game that was first revealed in the Video Game Awards all the way back to 2011, in the midsts of the DayZ craze, yet another zombie-focused game was to come out, this time in the form of a cartoony tower building defence Co-Op game.
This was Fortnite's original version, a game that has gone through many changes and iterations, that began development arguably seven years ago if not more, it was revealed at the Spike's Video Game Awards and reportedly revealed early, too early, because the game would only end up coming out in 2017, when people would've already forgotten about the game that was first revealed seven years ago.
"Three weeks after we came up with the idea before we even made the game [we decided to] switch things up a little bit and do something different and fun [With Fortnite] a world where you explore, you scavenge, you build and ultimately you survive."
— Former Design Director: Cliff Bleszinski, 2011 SPIKE's VGA.
That is how Cliff Bleszinski first chose to describe Fortnite as. But what he describes is the early access, paid, Save The World game mode. But, today Fortnite is mostly if not at all known for the complete modification of the game that was launched forward as a competitor to PUBG.
Fortnite Battle Royale; Epic saw green in it, and they were right.
Rise of Fortnite:
With its rise came the inclusion of microtransactions to sustain a constant growing player base and keep them returning, with changes to the maps, addition of new weapons and beyond. Ever since September of 2017, the game has changed significantly over the months and it has picked up a lot of attention.
For the most part, Fortnite has relied in a similar way to PUBG on the people that play their game on Twitch and YouTube and this has led the rise in popularity of Fortnite with YouTubers such as Smi7y and Kryoz to name two such examples bringing the game forward and playing it on an almost consistent basis.
Several of the changes that have come to Fortnite being showcased by the streamers and YouTubers that play the game, serving as free exposure to all the different ways that you can have fun with the game and the new weapons, which in part serves a much better purpose than simply advertising the game on a widespread basis, people already see the changes this way and Epic benefits from it.
Some of the changes since September 2017 include:
- Inventory UI Change - Free Heroes for Save The World - Launch Pads - Battle Royale Stats - Many new heroes that you can individually buy via microtransactions - 25v25 Mode for the VGAs - Teams of 20 - Smoke Grenades - Leaderboards - Small Shield Potion - Silenced Pistol - Shooting Refinement - Boogie Bombs
and many other things. All in an effort to keep the game alive and people returning for more with the new changes and additions that keep the game fresh and engaging every time
Lawsuit Threats:
“We’ve had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG’s development as they are the creators of UE4, the engine we licensed for the game, after listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.”
— Bluehole VP Chang Han Kim
To the avid eye, this is a ridiculous claim, the topic of plagiarising their game is one that has been certainly debunked several times by many YouTubers and gamers alike. I won't take much time away from you by regurgitating the same that everyone has said time and time again regarding this claim by PUBG.
Such as the fact that you can build stuff in Fortnite and not PUBG, you don't get to drive vehicles in Fortnite, there's a cartoony focus instead of a serious one, you don't customise your character's clothes and instead get skins, yadda yadda.
Fortnite is not stealing the 'formula' much less copying. So it wasn't long until we had Kim changing his views on the manner from claiming Fortnite copied the 'formula' of their game to 'it's not about the idea itself, it's about Epic Games'
“We use Unreal Engine to develop PUBG, and we pay a large amount of royalties based on the size of our success to Epic Games”
— Bluehole VP Chang Han Kim
A rivalry originally based upon a formula has become a money issue, citing that it 'wasn't clear in the press release'. Which certainly astounds me because how could that be? It's not like he was directly citing gameplay formula and no the issues that were cited at a later date.
Anyway, I digress and there shouldn't be more to be discussed regarding Bluehole's blatant overreaction in the honest opinion of this author.
Popularity:
With Fortnite's release of their Battle Royale mode came to a buttload of money for Epic, they were right in their gamble and their scores seem to be pushing past a lot of expectations that many people seemed to have for the game.
Reportedly, back in the 28th of February, that fortnite had made a leap in its numbers, one that surpassed its previous 60K player count, to garner over 3.4 M concurrent players by the time February rolled in.
Of course, this is all as Epic says it, there's no real way to confirm such numbers as there's no real steam counter or actual live counter for player activity.
But according to Githyp, at the time of writing this at 1712 hours on March 12th, the current number of viewers watching fortnite streams reaches the 314,692 Viewers situating Fortnite as the most watched game on Twitch, with PUBG standing right behind it.
All in all, certainly incredible odds for the game that garnered a potential lawsuit because of BlueHole's overreaction.
Act IV
The Issues; Greed
Time and time again we have seen stories of game companies cannibalising games, but none as horrid as the cannibalisation within Epic Games.
The story of Paragon and Fortnite is one that has been told before, but the main issue here is not the cannibalisation itself, is that Epic did not give Paragon a chance, and it knew that even if it didn't give it a chance it would still come out on top.
Why? Fortnite's success had guaranteed so, and so, Paragon was cancelled after three new updates and a year on Early Access, with a fall on player counts and people going to play Fortnite instead, Epic games saw the opportunity to put the final nail in the coffin. For more information on Paragon, watch the video below.
Cannibalisation; For Money:
With all this being said, I believe it kind of illustrates the issue with some of this, this has been a game of who makes more money and who gets to come on top, it has been since DayZ and it will continue to be.
While, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting money, that's what every company should pursue, the issue comes when people start making decisions based on money and money alone. Without placing player interest at the forefront of their game.
Nonetheless as it hasn't happened yet, we must still see the issues that came before, because if we don't learn from history we're doomed to make the same mistakes.
Competition; DayZ Encore:
All in all, the Battle Royale genre, or as I will come to call it, the Last Man Standing subgenre, has been thriving, much in a similar manner to the game that I have been describing numerous times in this article.
DayZ, a game and mod that garnered so much popularity that single-handedly caused the inevitable rise of Arma II Operation Arrowhead from very basic numbers capping at 6k players to 18,996 players as the all-time peak.
Along with a whopping 45,398 players as the peak for the standalone DayZ game in December of 2013. All in all, a very lucrative game and mod for Arma that would've completely justified its purchase. Today, Arma III stands with 56,185 players for its all-time peak and 22,745 concurrent players.
DayZ sure saw the rise of many things, and as I have been explaining a few times ad nauseam in the article; DayZ caused the rise of the last man standing trope, it facilitated it and it saw to it that PlayerUnknown would obviously arise from it.
Today we currently have a plethora of games trying to be DayZ and similarly, we have a plethora of games trying to be PUBG or Fortnite, a competitive environment causing the cluttering of the genre, when only two games seem to captivate the player base.
And this is dangerous for a genre, stagnation will see to its death if some new ideas don't get thrown in the ring like Fortnite and its cartoony, base building ideas. In a list of games like PUBG, Fortnite reigns because it innovated accordingly. While the rest of the games only aimed for creative bankruptcy taking very direct inspirations from Player Unknown's work.
Because they see green, they see money and they attempt to capitalise on it without innovating and completely offering the same experience that PlayerUnknown's game is already offering.
This very issue caused DayZ's death and the rise of the Zombie-less survival games like Escape From Tarkov.
They innovated on the idea accordingly and stood upon DayZ's grave when no other game had anything to capitalise upon because DayZ's death marked the end and the culmination of creative bankruptcy, it killed DayZ; it could cause the Battle Royale's death as well.
Act V
Conclusion
“Other companies will, of course, enter the marketplace, but I would just hope they put their own spin on the game mode and not just make a carbon copy!”
— Brendan 'PLAYERUNKNOWN' Greene
In conclusion, I believe that the Battle Royale genre has a lot to go and a lot to do still, with the rise of the Fortnite Battle Royale and the high player counts of PLAYERUNKOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, there's still life in the subgenre, and plenty of it.
But it should learn from the subgenre that preceded it, to not commit the same mistakes in their quest for who can make more money within their selected game modes.
Previously, it had been DayZ's turn to shine, now it is PLAYER UNKNOWN and Epic's Fortnite. Don't make the same mistakes, don't cannibalise yourselves and most of all, constantly innovate or suffer stagnation, there's only so much that this simple concept can bring to the table for players.
And most of all, keep player interests in mind, don't just go out there to make money, with things like the Fortnite and PLAYER UNKNOWN'S rivalry and beyond.
It shouldn't be stated that rivalry is healthy in the work environment, but only if you don't let it become toxic and stagnant while blatantly jumping into the mix copying the games to a tee
Don't become creatively bankrupt.
Author's Notes
Another Ending
As always, this is my opinion for this article, what do you think of the rivalry between Fortnite and PUBG, do you agree that stagnation and creative bankruptcy will lead to the death of the Battle Royale? I don't know, it'd be interesting to hear different thoughts.
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