It seems that everywhere we turn, Battle Royale is being mentioned. Though not a new genre, the rapid-fire popularity of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and now the free-to-play Fortnite certainly kickstarted the gaming niche into hyper-drive. With more and more games adding the intense PvP mode, and new games being announced almost weekly, one former Ubisoft employee is making a bold claim … one that we could actually see happen.
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Alex Hutchinson is the former Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal and his job included knowing which way the trends flow and what steps need to be taken to keep the creative team’s efforts relevant. Hutchinson recently took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the trend, and how it’s not even close to slowing down just yet.
Battle Royals is not a game type, it’s a game mode, like death match. It’s easy to build on top of virtually any shooter you already have. It’ll be shipping by default CoD and BF and every other online shooter within a year.
— Alex Hutchinson (@BangBangClick) April 20, 2018
“Battle Royals is not a game type, it’s a game mode, like death match,” he started out. “It’s easy to build on top of virtually any shooter you already have. It’ll be shipping by default CoD and BF and every other online shooter within a year.” He also added that implementing this mode would be as simple as choosing to do it, not necessarily obstacle.
Given that he says it’s incredibly easy to build upon, it’s no wonder that so many devs are jumping at the change at a piece of this pie. Even Fortnite, as much as that’s in mainsteam media everywhere, only took two months to develop.
Following Lawbreakers’ compete failure, Cliffy B even joined in on the battle royale action with his latest title, Radical Heights. The 80s spin to the popular genre was an interesting jump, but it was a testament to how everyone has their eyes on this trend. Both the next Call of Duty and Battlefield titles are also rumored to feature this mode, with the next Black Ops forgoing a traditional single-player mode in favor of the PvP fad.
Though the mode is enjoyable, we hope that it doesn’t infiltrate every online game like Hutchinson predicts. When too many companies focus on that bottom line, quality is often overlooked and the market is over saturated as is. If this mode were to be thoroughly explored, it would need to be done right in order to make the jump seem worth it and not a cheap money grab.
