If you are not a cinephile, you might not know that the gaming genre of battle royale gets its name from a Japanese film from the 2000s, based on a novel from 1999. The story follows students forced to fight on an island until only one remains, and this idea inspired many game developers over the years. With the playoffs in our PUBG weekly coming up over the weekend, it’s a good moment to look at what makes the battle royale genre so special.
Brendan Greene, better known as PlayerUnknown, began working on battle royale mods for Arma 2 in 2013. These mods introduced many features that became central to the genre, such as a shrinking play area and the need to search for weapons and armor. The Arma mod built a cult following before the standalone game Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds released in 2017, becoming an overnight success and laying the groundwork for the entire genre.
To ride the wave of PUBG’s popularity, Fortnite, which at the time was a PvE third-person shooter about defending against AI, pivoted into battle royale. That decision changed everything. The free-to-play model brought the game to young players who could not easily buy full-priced titles, and the cartoon-inspired visuals appealed to a wide audience. Fortnite became a global hit and is now much more than a game. It sits close to being a Metaverse-like space and even appears in the Olympic Esports lineup.
After Fortnite, Apex Legends in 2019 and CoD: Warzone in 2020 expanded the competitive landscape. Both are free to play and highly competitive, which helped them build large communities. The genre works naturally for esports, and tournaments have been plentiful over the past five years. PUBG still stands as the benchmark for the more realistic approach, but Warzone and Apex are also extremely popular.
The unpredictability of battle royale games, combined with simple rules that allow anybody to jump in, makes the genre easy to try but exciting to master. The tension of a shrinking battlefield creates an adrenaline rush that few other genres can match.s people coming back. This is especially true for our PUBG playoffs players, who will compete for the A1 Adria League Weekly title this weekend. Make sure you don’t miss the action.
