The David vs Goliath of Battle Royale
(Source: windowscentral.com)
The mainstream gaming industry today has hit its all time low with a healthy dose of oversaturing the “Battle Royale” genre. It started with a mod from DayZ that pitches players into a pit or map to scrounge for weapons and armour. Soon, the genre took off from there. But one case in particular has shined amongst the rubble, PUBG. Created by Brendan Greene or known under the alias, PlayerUnknown, the game made its way being on top of Steam’s best selling charts for weeks despite being in Early Access. Now taking off Tencent has collaborated with the company to produce a mobile version of the game and has positive reviews since its worldwide release.
PUBG has is its realism gameplay and modern setting which features commercial vehicles like an AC 130 cargo plane and Lada cars. Modern weaponry which was beloved by gamers alike drew back the fans that were playing since the good old days of DayZ mods. Despite there are various small titles of battle royale games like H1Z1 and King Of The Hill, the huge advantage of PUBG was due to it’s “strike first” marketing technique. While other games were in closed testing, the PUBG corporation launched its game onto Steam. The game piggybacked onto a niche genre that no big company has ever touched yet which resulted into huge success.
But there is another contender that stands toe to toe with this gaming giant. Fortnite is a game created and produced by Epic Games and in particular has its own unique profile. With its new Battle Royale add on, it was made to compete and try to get that slice of pie on how well Battle Royale games are doing in sales especially PUBG. The release and launch of PUBG which prompted Epic Games to create a battle royale mode was made with a mere 2 weeks time. Both games had the same concept, mechanics and gameplay. So how is a game with cartoonish graphics manages to stay physically identical and comparable to its realistic counterpart?
PUBG had its strike first and piggybacking methods while releasing the game at a strategic time unlike other games before. But Fortnite had used other methods to get in the game. Epic Games started off by paying its way to big Youtubers as sponsors to promote their game to the general audience. Normally, the hype for this kind of advertising can be quick to die off but in this case in particular had its product aggressively advertised to its audience over and over again till it gets into the mind of the audience. With a swayed and opinionated audience on its side, naturally this boosted downloads and ratings on its system. What further escalated is that Drake had played Fortnite with a popular Twitch Streamer, Ninja, followed by sponsorship speculations but was immediately dismissed by Ninja himself.
The hype and rivalry of these 2 games could never be settled down with a stalemate anytime soon with PUBG gaining 3.2 million players on average and Fortnite having 3.4 million players and counting. With both of its mobile versions released, both of their markets have expanded even further than anticipated and continues to break charts today.
