Why Battle Royale Games Like ’Fortnite’ Are Everywhere (It’s Not Just Money)
When Electronic Arts' gaming showcase kicked off on Saturday in Los Angeles, one of the first games up for discussion was Battlefield V. No surprise there—the forthcoming title is part of one of the longest-running and most popular first-person shooter franchises in gaming. But in the course of showing off what was innovative about the latest iteration, the two developers on stage wound up paying fealty to emulation. "Every day, we'll bring something new," Oskar Gabrielson, a general manager at Swedish game studio DICE, said with a grin. "And as part of that journey, after launch you'll get something I know a lot of you have been asking for!"
Standing next to Gabrielson, DICE's Lars Gustavsson was all too ready to wring some drama from the announcement. "It's…" he said.
Another beat.
"Royale!"
Adding a battle-royale game mode to Battlefield V may have come with pageantry, but it was no surprise. After Fortnite’s much-chronicled rise to cultural ubiquity over the past year, the last-man-standing challenge is officially the most popular game-within-a-game in town. While it's nothing new—Minecraft's "Hunger Games" mod, widely recognized as battle royale's first appearance, landed in 2012, and games like Day Z and H1Z1 popularized it—last year saw Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and then Fortnite propel it to new heights.
The reasons for the rise are many. Battle royale's emphasis on solo achievement, stripped of team tactics, makes it an easy and fascinating spectator sport, perfectly suited to watching it on Twitch streams. Fortnite isn't just free to play—its gargantuan revenue coming from players buying costumes or subscribing to premium challenges—but it, like PUBG, can be played on mobile devices as well as on game consoles and PCs. Yet, there's something else at play here too. Battle royale’s appeal isn’t simply about outlasting everyone else. It's about making you feel, in a surprising way, truly alive.
