Battle Royale Games
Battle Royale Games Era: The Hunger Games, but with More Lag and Microtransactions
Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene and the Birth of Chaos
Once upon a time, Brendan Greene looked at multiplayer FPS games and thought, "You know what? These maps are too small. People actually learn them and get good. That’s lame."
Inspired by The Hunger Games (where kids kill each other for the entertainment of the rich—foreshadowing the gaming industry), he decided to create a more random, unpredictable game mode. The result? DayZ: Battle Royale Mod—a brutally unfair deathmatch where you could spend 20 minutes looting only to be sniped by a bush camper with an SKS from across the map.
That mod eventually evolved into PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG)—or as it’s legally known today, PUBG: Battlegrounds (yes, “Battlegrounds” is in the name twice because marketing is hard). It introduced millions of players to the thrill of spending 90% of the match looting, 9% hiding, and 1% actually shooting—before getting third-partied and rage-quitting.
H1Z1: The Green Gas of Dead™
Meanwhile, H1Z1 looked at PUBG and said, "We can do that too, but worse." They introduced their own Battle Royale mode featuring the most iconic innovation in BR history—The Green Gas of Dead™.
Did the author play H1Z1? No. But did the author watch Smii7y and the Misfits squad turn it into comedy gold? Yes. And that’s probably the only reason most people remember it.
Like a true relic of its time, H1Z1 eventually collapsed under the weight of its own mediocrity, with its player base slowly migrating to better battle royales—or just uninstalling it entirely out of self-respect.
Apex Legends: Titanfall’s Long-Lost Stepchild That EA Actually Cared About
Respawn Entertainment once made Titanfall, a critically acclaimed shooter featuring wall-running, mechs, and actually good movement mechanics. Naturally, EA ignored it.
But then someone at Respawn whispered the words "Battle Royale" and "microtransactions", and suddenly EA was interested. Thus, Apex Legends was born—a game where:
- You die in 0.3 seconds or you’re an unkillable tank (there is no in-between).
- Every match has at least 14 Bangalore mains who still don’t know how to use smokes properly.
- If your random teammates don’t get their favorite legend, they will immediately disconnect.
Thanks to its unique mechanics, high time-to-kill (TTK), and sliding mechanics that make players feel like they’re in a Fast & Furious chase scene, Apex became EA’s new cash cow—because let’s be honest, if it wasn’t making money, EA would’ve shut the servers down faster than they abandoned Anthem.
Fortnite: Where 9-Year-Olds Will Humiliate You with 90s
Epic Games took one look at PUBG’s success and said, "Let’s just do that… but with cartoon graphics and way too much building."
Fortnite was originally supposed to be a zombie survival game, but nobody cared—until Epic strapped a Battle Royale mode onto it. Now, it’s:
- The only game where a 9-year-old on an iPad can build the Empire State Building in 3 seconds while you’re still trying to figure out how to crouch.
- A game that is literally a metaverse for brand deals—Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Naruto, Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, even Martin Luther King Jr. made an appearance (which, uh… yeah).
- A place where default skins get bullied harder than an MMO player with no microtransaction cosmetics.
Even after years of updates, Fortnite continues to be the ultimate crossover fever dream, where Darth Vader can have a shootout with Goku while Master Chief does the Griddy.
Call of Duty: Warzone – The Game That Takes Your Entire SSD and Your Sanity
Activision saw the Battle Royale craze, smirked, and said, "Let’s do that, but also let’s take everything from you… including your storage space. Along with the most aggressive aim assist known to mankind."
Thus, Call of Duty: Warzone was born—a game where:
- If you die, it’s never your fault (obviously). It’s either hackers, lag, or Activision’s skill-based matchmaking.
- Everyone and their grandma runs the meta loadout. If it’s broken, it’s being used.
- Your PC will overheat before you even get to the main menu.
Call of Duty: Warzone is the game that literally eats up your SSD. At a hefty 125 GB—yes, 125 GB for just Warzone alone—you’ll find yourself with little to no room left for the games that actually deserve to be on your drive. For those of us with older SSDs (you know, the ones that were only 160GB), you might be looking at the tragic reality of having to delete half of your game library just to make room for the latest update. Because who needs more than four AAA titles like Left 4 Dead 2 or The Witcher 3 when you could stuff your SSD with pure Call of Duty frustration?
Sure, those four games might actually have better replayability, more compelling mechanics, and run at a smooth 60fps, but who cares when you can sacrifice your SSD’s health and your sanity with Warzone? All for the privilege of playing a game where you’ll spend 90% of your time rage-quitting because of hackers, lag, and literally everything that’s wrong with the game, but hey, at least you can do it in 125 GB of pure, unoptimized hell.
Seriously, you can literally fit The Witcher 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 4, and Dark Souls III on a drive that could barely handle Warzone, and guess what? Those games have actual replayability and don’t cost you an arm and a leg in storage (or sales). Yet here you are, considering deleting them to make room for Warzone’s next 20 GB update that does nothing but add a new skin to the battle pass...
Battle Royale Today: A Genre That Refuses to Die
Despite years of complaints, broken mechanics, and questionable balancing, the Battle Royale genre is still alive and kicking. Whether it’s Apex’s movement, Fortnite’s ridiculous crossovers, or Warzone’s never-ending hacker plague, there’s always something keeping people coming back for more.
At the end of the day, Battle Royale games are like gambling—you lose 90% of the time, but that one game where everything goes right? That’s what keeps you hooked.
