Ubisoft has announced its latest IP, a Battle Royale title no less, in an already dominated space; Hyper Scape.
While I accept there is success to be had, I wanted to take a moment to just rant a little bit about the common theme for every publisher to jump on the bandwagon of a successful game genre. Today, I want to discuss Battle Royale modes in games.
I am so sick and tired of seeing this game mode attached to already existing titles. I’m also sick and tired of seeing publishers try to compete with PUBG and Fortnite. There is no innovation left here guys! Battle Royale is a mode that’s, at its core, simple. I’m no fan of Battle Royale games personally, but I completely understand its appeal and it doesn’t take a genius to realise how successful the genre is. And especially during the global Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a rise in online gaming (across the spectrum) and more people playing Battle Royale games. There is also a lot of money to be made from competitions (winners can millions of US dollars), so there is certainly a multi-level appeal to those that know the games and have the time to invest into playing them.
But this is just another genre of games. It’s not the future nor is it the game mode that everyone wants to play. It has appeal to a specific audience and, arguably, that audience is very well served with the solid offerings that are already out there.
PlayerUnkown’s BattleGrounds (PUBG) and Fortnite are the most successful of these games – despite PUBG going through a load of issues in the early days; and the original Battle Royale games. It’s hard to come anywhere near the success of these games, and they have a very dedicated audience which is hard to penetrate.
Since their success we’ve seen numerous rip offs of the Battle Royale mode; none of which have come close to the success of PUBG or Fortnite, despite some of them being very good.
Apex Legends, for example, is a charming take on the game mode, is free to play (like the others) and is available across multiple platforms, but is relatively unknown, despite it being one of the more successful Battle Royale spin-offs.
Then you have Call of Duty (CoD). The first iteration of the Battle Royale mode came in Black Ops 4 and didn’t do so well. It was clunky and frustrating, however it has since undergone a complete overhaul and has become a stand-alone feature in Modern Warfare – and not a moment too soon as the global pandemic hit. But that was more luck than anything else, and let’s not forget that CoD is one of the most successful franchises EVER. Not just for First Person Shooters (FPS), but ever. In any franchise. And it’s a big gamble for Activision to invest heavily into a free game mode to compete. But the player base already exists. The franchise is known and loved. The assets have already been created and development isn’t from the ground up (unlike if you were building a whole new IP). So it makes sense to try a Battle Royale game. But Activision’s genius here wasn’t that they’d built a Battle Royale game, but rather that the free game; Warzone, INCLUDED Battle Royale modes as well as a wider “Plunder” mode – a timed mode that was more traditional FPS and not another version of Battle Royale. So those that didn’t want to play Battle Royale moods, needn’t.
But when you put all your eggs into one basket, jumping on a bandwagon that’s already gone; it’s my opinion that it’s not going to work. This isn’t just me being facetious, it’s just fact. Let’s take a couple of examples.
The first game I want to draw your attention to is Cliffy B’s offering. For those that don’t know, Cliffy B was responsible for one of the Xbox’s most successful IPs: Gears of War, as well as notable mentions on Unreal Tournament and Fortnite. We’re not going to focus on the personal story of Cliffy B, but rather the game that should have done a lot better than it did, and that was Radical Heights. Interestingly this game was released while Fortnite servers were down, so those looking for a Battle Royale fix could access this on Steam Early Access. But it was buggy, it had been put together in haste and just failed to capture the audience. Not only that, but there was a huge number of controversial “pay-to-win” elements that just didn’t help. When Fortnite came back up, it was the end of Radical Heights, and the servers were closed permanently.
The second game I briefly mentioned above; Blackout on CoD Black Ops 4. Although Warzone has been a massive success, Blackout was terrible and it required you to have purchased the full game, therefore limiting the number of players to those that owned the game. Black Ops was also the forefather for the current Battle Pass system we see in Warzone today. A good thing I’d argue.
Interestingly, we’ve heard that Warzone will not feature Battle Royale mode in the next iteration of CoD, so maybe Activision know something we don’t, or maybe it’s just not been able to compete with the success of Fortnite.
H1Z1 another game that just didn’t do what was expected. The developers, in their wisdom, decided to ignore their community’s suggestions, especially as it was arguably the first Battle Royale game. And it was popular. It had been one of the most successful streaming games on Twitch. The developers tried to make this game as appealing to a wider audience as possible, in the meantime losing its core player base. But it didn’t stop there, the developers ignored cries from the community to revert it to its original state, and continued to add things to the game that just made it unplayable. As it dwindled to its demise, PUBG launched and the rest is history.
These are just a number of titles that come to mind. The Battle Royale ship has sailed.
The takeaway?
Stop making Battle Royale games! We’re not interested! Or, at least some of us aren’t!
