The original Battle Royale film (japanese masterpiece) was soooo long ago. So how come it's just erupted this last 24 months? Hunger Games is a very very poor equivalent to the original beauty, and now the games are sooo popular. PUBG is effectively the same.. and Fortnite Battle Royael is about to go mobile to be cross platform. Why now?
AFAIK Brendan Green (AKA PlayerUnknown) has form here, as he was involved with the H1Z1 mod and then persuaded Bluehole to build a BR setup from scratch. If you were looking in on the hype and attention, wouldn't you be tempted to jump on the bandwagon / gravy train?
well Minecraft UHC was around before H1Z1 by quite a margin... then came the battle Royale mod for Arma, then H1Z1 came from that... ( although coincidentally both were ruined by cheaters ) then came Pubg, and more than any game prior , they marketed the game through the Live streaming community, and the success went ballistic then everyone saw the money being made, instantly had Dollar Signs in their eyes and shoehorned Battle Royale into games ( GTA V ) or made their own ( fortnite )
Akchually, <pushes glasses up nose>, Fortnite is another example of shoehorning: the game was originally developed as a cooperative sandbox survival game ("Save the World"), then the battle royale mode was added and eventually spun-off into the now-standalone F2P Fortnite Battle Royale.
He also made the mod for Arma 3 prior to the H1Z1 stuff (the Arma 2 mod i believe was made by someone else). They've been a niche for any sandbox-ey FPs that'd allow you to create the mode for quite a while, but successfully getting the idea into the mainstream (which may have been dependent on getting attention from the console market) seems to have gotten it a lot more attention. That'll die off and it'll take its place as a typical or cliched game mode or genre i guess, the way RTS did after the Dune/C&C hype died down (what's your favourite mediocre late 90s RTS? mine was Dark Reign), or the way CTF and conquest became typical game modes. Following this pattern of behaviour, I'm awaiting a AAA game based around the concept of trouble in terrorist town in a bladerunner setting (i know it can't work because of the increasing toxicity of the public internet, but let me dream dammit!). When the movie came out we didn't really have the games to make something like this at the scale it's now being done, and didn't have large enough online communities to keep servers populated to this extent. It's the product of evolution of different areas of FPS gaming as well as overcoming the technical limitations behind having 100 players connected to a single server running a map covering several miles.
I wonder if it's a symptom of our times. I can still remember where completing a games was the result countless hours of effort. It feels to me that over the years we have gone from substance to shiny. As a result a game that you can drop into say spend 30mins to an hour ( no idea how long a pubg lasts) and get your gratification.
Battle Royale is the new MOBA [and/or CCG], because one or two have done well everyone else is all 'oh we can do that too' [like Epic did with MOBA/CCG hybrid Paragon, and to some extent, like they've done with Fortnight's BR mode]... ...and like MOBAs and CCGs, most will be unable to sustain enough of a playerbase to survive and die off, leaving you with 2 or 3 whilst everyone else chases the next bandwagon...
Most single player games are awful or add ons to Multiplayer games. Multiplayer games aren't giving people what they want (maybe bar R6S) If people can't get what they want they'll try something else.
but it's not just games... it's film too. Has anyone seen the original Japanese Battle Royale? It's verging on perfection. and then the Hunger Games waked forth, shining in it's bucket of gloss-varnish format, and effectively screwed the genre entirely.
Those games haven't gone away. I'm about 25-30 hrs into Breath of the Wild right now and while I can see that I would be able to complete the game relatively quickly, I know I'd be missing out a lot of content if I did so. I'm quite prepared to plough another 20-30 hours into a single play-through to be honest. Nary a "quick-fix" multiplayer option in sight (although I tend to leave the shrines for short 30-60 minute sessions and leave the open-world-exploring-type stuff for longer sessions). EDIT: I'd be surprised if a majority of people here answered "No" to that question . I tried to look at The Hunger Games as being more than just "modern and shiny Battle Royale", but I can't do it. Despite everything else that series might be about, the central conceit of the series is the titular (<snigger>...titular...) "Hunger Games" competition, which is basically just... Battle Royale.
The absolutely key to the success for me is something incredibly simple that struck me the first time I played PUBG - no waiting for a new round when you die. Games like BFBC2, TF2 and CS are much better in game, but you die and you wait for 5-15 minutes for the round to end and start again...that's too long for the modern gamer, being able to jump straight back into another game the second you die, that's a formula for success.
Also don't screw it up with updates, the port a fart ehh fort that fortnite is threatening is completely stupid... If they want the casuals to not get sniped the second they stick their head out of cover they should fix the bloody matchmaking, not give the casuals an instant fortrress.
