Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, Fortnite, H1Z1, Arma 3 and Rules of survival are great examples of the success of battle royale games. It is a genre of video game based on last man standing gameplay: eliminate other players until you are the last player in the game. The formula is the sum of the survival, exploration, and scavenging elements of a survival game mixed with a FPS. Run away, shoot and choose to collaborate or not with other players, but keep in mind the most important objective: be the last man standing.
At Sekg, we have tried ranking those games that are in vogue in a top five. In the first comes the second most-followed game on Twitch, right after League of Legends, with more than five million followers and and almost fifty thousand visits. It is considered the defining game of the genre; Playerunknown’s Battleground – aka PUBG.
1- PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG)
In March 2017, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was released on PC in early access, and quickly became a popular and successful game. The basics, like in all this kind of game is that the all players start with no equipment apart from a pickaxe for resource gathering, and a parachute used into hostile territory.
PUBG was designed by Brendan Greene and based his work on his past experiences modding Arma 3 and H1ZI in order to create a next-level last man standing gameplay. PUBG feels like a maturation from its predecessors. It feels more streamlined and intuitive, putting a greater emphasis on gunplay, strategy, and intuitive resource gathering.
PUBG is available for Xbox One and is the second-best-selling PC game in 2017. On December 21 was released the last and final version of the game on Steam, where PUBG’s community counts more than one milion of players, overcoming by a lot the second biggest, Dota2.
In second place of our ranking comes Fortnite Battle Royale, an extension of the popular game Fortnite that uses similar mechanisms as PUBG.
2- Fortnite BR
The Battle Royale mode for Fortnite was offered free-to-play on September 2017 and is available on Microsoft Windows , MacOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It gained over ten million players two weeks after its release.
You can play with 100 players as an individual or in a four-man squad, but the rules are the same: the last player or squad standing wins the game. Fortnite BR has the singularity that you can set up traps to eliminate other gamers. Using building skills,destructible environments and intense combat. Not only can you kill your opponents, but above all plan the best strategies to finish them the most efficient way.
In the middle of our top we decided to put: KING OF THE KILL!
3- H1Z1: KING OF THE KILL
If you like the Battle Royale mode and zombies, H1Z1 is your game. You become one of the heroes unaffected by the H1Z1 virus, and now fights against zombie hordes along other people. In H1Z1: king of kill, unlike PUBG and Fortnite Battle Royale, players don’t choose where they parachute on the map, being directly dropped in an area populated by other players. You can play in solo, or in teams of 2 or 5 players.
H1Z1: King of the Kill recently shortened its name to H1Z1. Along with the name change, the user interface department made some adjustments that simplified the menus and updated the look of the game.It was launched in February of 2016. Developed by Daybreak Game Company for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
In the penultimate position is a great mod for a great game: DayZ.
4- Arma II: DayZ Mod
DayZ is a multiplayer open world survival third-person shooter. Designed by Dean Hall, it is a variation from the tactical shooter video game ARMA 2. Originally an Even if It is an expansion pack created in 2010, it is now available as a separate game. The game is a military simulation that includes the dynamics of a battle royale game, putting an intense focus on realism.
PC Power play game magazine has given it the prize of the best game of the year. Famous websites and blogs focused on videogames like Kotaku and Eurogamer also describe the mod as possibly the best zombie game ever made.
Last but not least, we chose to include one of the most downloaded game on Android with more than 5 million downloads: Rules for survival.
5- Rules of survival
It was a mobile game available on the Play Store and Apple Store. Starting the game, you got air-dropped onto a desert island, with other 120 unarmed players. This island is infected by a poison gas, and the safe zone is slowly becoming smaller and smaller as the poison spreads. You can play alone or team up with a group of 4 players in order to survive and be the last man standing.
The developers of the game, NetEase Games, said it is not just about a game, this is about life and death fighting.
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Battle Royale gales have become recently very popular. But it was not the precursor of the genre. The origins of battle royale games start in online survival games like Minecraft and ARMA games. But the story is even longer, because the battle royale fever does not come only from video games. After the release of the popular film The Hunger Games, in 2012, a Minecraft mod based on this film was developed; “Minecraft Survival Games”
It is said that both the mods and the movie, were inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale. Battle Royale is a Japanese horror novel written by Koushun Takami and published in 1999. After becoming a bestseller, the book was made a film adaptation, Battle Royale, which later came a sequel to the book, Battle Royale II: Requiem. After the great success of both, Takami published a manga based on the film.
It is clear that the Battle Royale genre success does not stop growing. Important companies of the industries are starting to work on battle royale games, like Crytek and Rockstar, among others.
Another videogame giant Valve could be thinking about developing a mod for Counter-Strike:GO and would become the latest company to jump into the battle royale genre. Despite not being confirmed yet, a battle royale mod for CS:GO, which recently was elected best eSports game during the Game Awards, seems to indicate great success in the future.
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