Like almost everyone else on the planet, I’ve been playing a lot of battle royale games and asking: Why are these so good?
I think there are a few unique things happening in the genre:
- The games push skill and are willing to punish players for making mistakes, which goes against the trend in game design for the last couple of decades.
- The monetization is very light touch, focusing only on cosmetics and not power upgrades. How cosmetic desire is drastically increased by giving players a huge audience.
- BR games create stories by combining deeply systemic gameplay with PvP for the first time.
If you want to read more, I was commissioned by both The Guardian and GamesIndustry.biz to write about how these games have taken over the world:
- Why People Can’t Stop Playing Fortnite on The Guardian
- Ten Surprising Things Battle Royale Can Teach Us on GamesIndustry.biz
