The History of Interest in the Battle Royale Game Genre

On 4 February 2019, studio Respawn Entertainment released Apex Legends, which attracted 10 million unique players in just three days, most of whom are currently doing Vulkan Bet esports betting. What’s the reason for such a success?

Where the Battle Royale stems from

Apex Legends is representative of the Battle Royale genre. But in 2018, Battle Royale really blossomed when, in addition to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds from Bluehole Studios, Fortnite from Epic Games entered the competition. While the first title, at the height of its popularity, boasted 50 million sales and 400 million players, Fortnite has overtaken it in these figures and now brings Epic Games about $100 million per month.

Why is this concept so interesting to people?

See what lessons can be learned from the recent surge in popularity of the battle royale genre, and how the game industry has changed over the past few months.

Free-to-play

Will Lewton, director of Rovio London and game analyst, believes that free-to-play competitive games are beating out paid games. It’s not just about the casual audience, but also the hardcore audience – before the advent of Fortnite, PC and consoles were considered “bastions” immune to the incredible power of free-to-play, which has already all but destroyed paid games in the mobile market.

According to the analyst, the ease with which Fortnite has pushed the incredibly popular PUBG off the pedestal suggests that from now on, paid competitive games can “settle for second place only”.

The future is for mods

Recently, popular new genres such as MOBA and battle royale are most often born from custom modifications. The reason lies in the fact that creators of mods are not limited by anything but their own imagination. Which cannot be said about professional developers who constantly have to think about the risks and commercial potential.

New genres are shaped by meme

Genres in today’s industry are forming rapidly. No sooner had the players used the term battle royale, as the genre has acquired almost all possible offshoots – from the parody Totally Accurate Battlegrounds to variations with thousands of players on one map.

Most of these are doomed to fail, but some, according to Lewton, are destined to take the genre to new creative heights.

Mobile devices

Whereas the word “cross-platform” once meant a game’s presence on multiple consoles and porting to PC, it’s now increasingly being used in the context of mobile platforms. Both PUBG and the ability to bet on Fortnite Vulkan have been successfully ported to

• Android;
• iOS.

And this has brought their creators huge profits. Even though the touch screen was considered an unsuitable control tool for competitive shooters for years.

Variation system

The incredible popularity of battle royale shows that the gaming industry has finally realized the enormous potential of player-created stories. If you simply create a sufficiently variable system and put a few competing players in it, they will create an impressive story themselves, without the involvement of a screenwriter.

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