Battle royale game

A battle royale game or battle royal game is a type of video game that blends the exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game with last man standing gameplay.^[1][2] The name for the genre is adapted from the early entries in the field which were inspired by the Japanese media franchise Battle Royale,^[3] as well as being a computerized form of a traditional battle royal. Typically, such games feature a large number of individual players or small teams, placed into a large environment without any equipment. Players must scavenge for weapons, armor, and tools to hunt down other players while avoid being killed. Over time, the safe zone of the map decreases in size, with players outside that safe zone dealt damage or killed, forcing players into smaller areas and into encounters. The last player or team alive is named the winner.

The genre had early roots in survival games such as DayZ, in which players struggled alongside or against each other to obtain basic necessities to continue living in a persistent sandbox filled with various dangers. This led to the development of game mods that sacrificed the game's open-endedness in favor of focusing on hostile interactions between players to determine an eventual winner. One such game was the Battle Royale mod for ARMA 2 (inand 3 developed by Brendan Greene, known by his online alias, "PlayerUnknown".^[2] Greene continued to adopt his format as a consultant for H1Z1: King of the Kill before becoming the creative developer at Bluehole, Inc. of a standalone game representing his vision of the battle royale genre, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. While Battlegrounds was not the first battle royale game, its release to early access in March 2017 drew a great detail of attention, gaining over six million units in sales over four months,^[4] and is considered the defining game of the genre.^[5]

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