The Future of Battle Royale

Last summer, PUBG took the gaming world by storm and introduced many of us to the battle royale game mode. Since then, Fortnite had pushed them aside and set themselves not only as king of battle royale, but king of all games. Fortnite is everywhere, and even those who don’t play or know games know of the juggernaut that is Fortnite. Today many companies are hopping on the battle royale bandwagon, but is this going to be a new standard, or just another trend?

We likely won’t have to wait long for an answer to this question, because when Battlefield V and Call of Duty Black Ops 4 come to the market with their battle royale modes this fall, we will undoubtedly find out whether there is room in the market for everyone or if it will oversaturate the market to the point that they begin to fail. As for what I think though, I truly see battle royale fading out, or at the very best becoming just another multiplayer game type for various larger scale games.

I’ll break that statement down by starting with the scenario of it becoming another game type in multiplayer games. Already, there are a ton of battle royale games on the market, but nothing is even coming close to Fortnite in terms of success, and I don’t know what anyone can do to take this away from them. What I can see, however, is a game like GTA V or Call of Duty that is already successful and maintain a high retention rate spending a little extra to give consumers another thing to do in the game, and giving them another reason to spend more money. Smaller titles I just don’t see having the time to put into something as large as creating a battle royale map and continuing to update and give content to the mode along with another full multiplayer or single player experience.

While today it seems like battle royale is too big to fail, I just see it as another trend, bound to be left behind when the next trendsetter comes out. When Overwatch came out, the hero shooter was set to become the hot new thing, and where is the genre now? Many of the competition failed, and all that’s left is Overwatch. Secondly, I think that one reason battle royale will fail is actually because I think Call of Duty is going to fail at it, and scare away others. Call of Duty is one of the biggest and most well-known commodities in gaming, but I just don’t see the style of COD meshing with the style of battle royale. COD is about twitch reactions and quick action, whereas battle royale depends on defeating opponents through tactics and gun skill. If my prediction comes true and Black Ops 4 fails (at least in terms of their battle royale mode) then companies looking at potentially creating their own mode will realize how hard it is, considering one of the biggest names in games can’t even do it successfully.

As for now, I love playing Fortnite, and when PUBG eventually comes to PS4 I’ll give it a try for sure, but I’m not expecting the mode to last long. Even my love for Fortnite is beginning to fade, as I used to play multiple hours a day, and now I’ll sign on 1 or 2 days in the week to complete challenges and get a win or two, and then wait for the next week to come. Time will tell whether battle royale is here to stay, and maybe years from now I’ll come back and read this, and realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong, but as for now, battle royale will be the trend that lived and died in 2018.