And this is another thrill or addictive aspect: running round popping loot boxes early on in the hope that you’ll hit the jackpot in some way.Īnd if your game does end quickly? Hey, fire up another one it’s already forgotten. Particularly if they happen to get a fluky loot early on and stumble across a great weapon, piece of armor, shield or whatever. The thrill of against-the-odds survival, and battling to be the best out of a massive field of 100 players (or 60 for Apex).īut even though the competition is numerous, generally speaking, the map is large enough, and potential tactics diverse enough, that even a lesser-skilled player can perform relatively well in a match – which is rewarding. The new kids on the block from Apex Legends pose for a selfie (Image Credit: EA) Why are battle royale games so popular?Ī key point is that something about this concept has captured our gaming imaginations at a very fundamental level. And it’s likely a bit of both.Īnyhow, let’s look more closely at these three contemporary battle royale giants next, and discuss why these games – and the broad genre itself – have become so popular. That speed of adoption shows that it’s either a fantastic game, or it’s a measure of just how popular a good battle royale title can quickly become. This exploded onto the scene in February of this year, gaining 50 million registered players in its first month, a colossal achievement considering it took Fortnite four months to reach that. Then there’s EA’s newcomer, Apex Legends, set in the Titanfall universe. By 2018, it had spread across all the big console and mobile platforms, and had a player base of over 200 million as of November 2018. With subsequent releases on both Xbox One and PS4, as well as mobile versions on iOS and Android, the game soared past the 400 million player milestone mid-2018.įortnite Battle Royale, a spin-off of a co-op survival shooter where players build stuff to fend off a zombie horde, hit early access in September 2017.

PUBG was the trailblazer for the modern battle royale game as we know it, surging in popularity even when it was in preview (early access) on Steam from March 2017. Subsequently, Greene ported his mod to ARMA 3, then became involved in H1Z1: King of the Kill as a consultant, and then moved on to the big one when he created PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (or PUBG) in 2017.

Then DayZ emerged, a zombie survival game which was a mod for ARMA 2, and in turn, that spawned its own BR mod produced by Brendan Greene in 2013, in which the loot was scattered about the map (with no central cache of weapons everyone starts around).

History of battle royale games