Battle Royale: the origins and history of Fortnite and PUBG's game mode | Trade | Technology and science | Video games

Since 2017, one mode of play has been positioned above the others on the video game market: the Battle Royale . First with Playeruknown Battlegrounds then with the free mode of Fortnite many companies are setting up this mode for their future games.

How was the Battle Royale born? What is your story? In this article we will try to reveal why it has become such a popular game mode in the last year, dating back to the beginning of the use of words Battle Royale .

It is necessary to point out that there is no historical record of the first appearance of the term in an entertainment product, rather than a type of fight in the fight and a published book in 1999 of Japan who explored this concept. Without further ado, it is the history of Battle Royale :

First appearance: Wrestling

The concept of Battle Royale was used in his debut as a type of professional wrestling. The fighters, enter the same space to fight in an all against all, being the last fighter standing in the ring declared winner. Unfortunately, this way of fighting was one of many that existed for clashes of more than two fighters in a ring.

For example, the World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. (WWE) created its own Royal Battle called Royal Rumble whose first edition was 1988 . The main difference from the original mode was that instead of starting the fight with all the participants inside a ring, the fighters would come in one by one at intervals of 2 minutes (now they enter all the minutes and a half).

Battle Royale (1999), Japan

In April 1999, a novel was published by the company Ohta Publishing with this name. Written by Koushun Takami Battle Royal became a resounding success, and was then brought to the big screen with two films of the same name: Battle Royale which was based on the book, and Battle Royale II: Requiem his direct continuation.

This novel tells the story of a Japan with a large share in the World War II establishing the Great Republic of Asia. East creating a highly controversial game that took place each year: Battle Royale .

Game participants were randomly selected from all schools, public and private, from the state. The participation of a school and a hall between the 4th and the 5th secondary was drawn by lot. The main objective of the game was to survive, and only one of the game's students could do it.

Wrestling and the book laid the groundwork for what would be known as the Battle Royale ]: a large group of fighters face each other in limited space and only one can win [19659014] The Hunger Games (2008)

The trilogy written by Suzanne Collins in 2008 also explored this concept of Royal Battle, but itself commented that more was based on the history of Theseus and The Minotaur focusing on the feeling of being unable to do anything against death in such an event.

The argument is put in a fictitious country called Panen where The Capitol a central territory of the region, directs 12 districts that are divide the jobs needed to maintain the country works. Due to a rebellion, The Capitol created The Hunger Games where each district chooses two people, called tributes, to fight in an arena to the death. Only one can remain standing and the entire event is broadcast on TV.

The Hunger Games follows the same rule as the Battle Royale : everyone must die and only one can be the winner. Unlike other examples, in this case there is a central area where participants can pick up weapons and resources early in the battle, but they may have other tributes for killing them for trying.

This example is important, since it is this series that propelled one of the first appearances of the genre in video games through Minecraft

Minecraft: Survival Games

Originally called the same as the trilogy of Collins, Survival Games is a game mode of Minecraft where participants are transported to a central area of ​​a map with coffers filled with weapons and resources.

this game mode was born on private servers to correspond to thousands of users who wanted a fast and full-featured game, different from the survival mode of Mincraft, where there is not much risk more than a few monsters on the map.

They changed the name of " The Hunger Games" in "Survival Games" to avoid future copyright problems

Weapon 2, DayZ and Weapon 3: [19659026] Weapon 2 is a shooting and war simulation video game created by Bohemia Interactive Studio in 2009 . In this game, the user can give instructions to other squad members to develop strategies and defeat the enemy on the map.

In the 2012 the famous modder Brendan Greene better known as "PlayerUnknown" I created a modification of the game, DayZ who made it a horror of survival for the addition of zombies and a realistic way of representing fractures, infections and others

After the release of Weapon 3 in 2013 this mod was also adapted for video game, but the development team of DayZ decided to separate and create their own game.

Ark and The Culling:

In the 2015 on Wildcard Studio created a mode Battle Royale based in the game Ark: Survival Evolved Called ] Ark: South vival of the fittest . What began as an independent strategy to differentiate the two games, was completed by integrating the first into the second by the terms of the license.

In 2016 it was created in Early Access a game called The Culling created by Xaviant Games . This game had the premise that players only have 25 minutes to explore, loot and build elements to fight with each other. This project was also a failure in its attempt to exploit the Royal Battle as can be seen in Steam and its negative ratings

PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds

PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds was launched on March 23, 2017 with Brendan Greene leading the development group, using his experience of the Battle Royale mode that he acquired at DayZ ] and H1Z1 where he participated as a consultant.

This game was positioned as the most-played title of this year, and remained so for several months on the platform of Steam . The main premise was that 100 players were thrown from a plane to face each other on a map of 8km2 collecting weapons, ammunition and clothing to be the last man standing at each turn. 19659031] The innovation of this game was to have a kind of boundary barrier that was shortened from time to time, forcing players to stay in a specific area and fight each other to make the faster and more dynamic turns. China followed the liberation of PUBG but none of them was as successful as Greene . However, a new competitor would appear from Epic Games

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Without a doubt the most popular video game of the last year of the Battle Royale Epic Games succeeds to do what PUBG could not at the time: to position itself in the eSports and to exploit money in a monetary way.

While this mode is free, the strategy of the company developer Fortnite is to offer aesthetic elements in the video game . Nowadays, it's one of the few games that has versions in Nintendo Switch mobile devices, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and .

In addition, Fortnite: Battle Royale would become the representative title of cross-play, allowing users of Xbox and PC and mobile devices, 39; enter the same game using their own terminal. Sony still has some problems to allow cross-play with other consoles, but it has been confirmed that they are considering this option for the future.

The future of Battle Royale:

Without a doubt, all companies have seen the number of revenues of Epic Games and have also joined this new trend. Games like Dying Light, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Dota 2 and others have also confirmed a mode Battle Royale.

While none of the previous games "invented" this would be the Battle Royale, a good adaptation could do wonders in the industry. This is shown by PUBG and Fortnite who daily add millions of games with people who want to be the last survivor.