Origination of all Battle royale games: what you knew could be wrong

PUBG, aka PlayerUnknown's Battleground, is the most hot video game in 2017 to 2018, hands down. The unique gameplay and intense atmosphere made this game gone so viral so quick. According to data from Steam Charts, PUBG’s peak player count reached its highest point ever in January 2018 at 3,236,027, and the game has sold more than 5,000,000 copies in total. The game itself has become a part of Internet culture inevitably.

With PUBG going viral, more and more game developers jumped in and try to stir the water, and the concept of "Battle Royale Game" draws more and more attention. A battle royale game is a game where a bunch of players (usually a couple of dozens to a hunduard) spawned on a limited map, collect gears and fight against each other to be the last one standing. From the famous Fortnite Battle Royale, H1Z1, to the less popular games Last Man Standing, Realm Royale, to the latest unique Ring of Elysium, it's hard to say that battle royale is going to be left over anytime soon.

However, these games are not what we are going to talk about today. What we really are going to talk about, is the very origin of all the battle royale games. You may have fought one of those fights or two, but do you know what inspired the battle royale game concept itself?

The Hunger Games? Not really. 

Speaking of the origin of battle royale games, most people may think of a 2012 movie The Hunger Games, and take that as the inspiration of battle royale games. Indeed, the movie The Hunger Games and the battle royale games we are playing today do have some identical features. The novel based movie tells a story about 12 boys and girls , aged between the ages of 12 and 18, being picked to compete in the Hunger Games: a nationally televised event in which 'tributes' fight each other within an arena, until one survivor remains. That seems to be extremely alike with the concept of battle royale games, and it indeed is a good movie franchise. However, the true origination of battle royale games can go back way earlier than this movie.

The whole story

To find the origination of  battle royale games, let's take a look at the whole story of its development, starting with the most popular game Fortnite Battle Royale.

As we all know, Fortnite Battle Royale was released following the sudden success of PUBG. Fortnite was originally a coop survival zombie game where you can build stuffs to defend yourself from zombie horde. Fortnite Battle Royale is a spin off of Fortnite which features Battle Royale gameplay.

PUBG itself, is a standalone game based on PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battle Royale, a custom map created by PlayerUnknown (Brandon) himself. Brendan later on supervised the development of PUBG by Bluehole, a Korean game company.

Before the PLAYERUNKNOWN’S Battle Royale, from 2014 to 2016, there were ArmA 3's Battle Royale mod, H1Z1: King of the Kill. Now we are very close to the beginning.

The earliest battle royale game is some times considered Minecraft Hunger Games. This is a combination of Minecraft and The Hunger Games movie, but this is not the start yet.

Now we have the movie The Hunger Games, which was first released 2012. In the same year, DayZ mod appeared.  technically speaking, DayZ doesn't set players against one another. There aren't any built-in objectives other than "live as long as possible". But many folks end up shooting at each other anyway because people are like that. If you're careful you could keep playing the same character for weeks or months at a time.

The True Origin

Back to the story, before The Hunger Games and DayZ mod is the true origin of the concept of battle royale, which is, well, Battle Royale, a 2000 controversial Japanese novel-turned-film written by Koushun Takami.

The film tells a story in which a dystopian government strands a junior high school class on an island. The classmates are given a random assortment of weapons and forced (under threat of exploding collars) to kill each other until only one is left standing. It's all televised as a horrifying spectacle to keep the populace scared and divided. Sounds like The Hunger Games? Well, this movie is actually earlier, and is the true inspiration for Brandon, PlayerUnknown to create the PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale, which turned into PUBG and inspired all the battle royale games came after.

Battle royale games and movies

From the development of the concept "battle royale games", we can see that the birth of battle royale games have a deep bond with movies. From the Battle Royale (2000) in the very beginning, to the more popular one The Hunger Games (2012), they do share a lot of things in common and have a great intense atmosphere. Except for these movies, do you know that the congratulating phrase on PUBG when you win, "Winner winner, chicken dinner", was firstly gone famous in the true-story-based movie 21 (2008). The origin of the phrase itself however, is another LONG story to tell.

If you are interested in these movies, you can buy or rent the DVD or Blu-ray discs or find them in some Blu-ray download sites. There is this Leawo Blu-ray Player that is specially designed for high definition DVD/Blu-ray playback, and can provide you the best watching experience for free.