PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is on the cusp of defining the future of shooters for the next few years, but it’s not the only name in the emerging Battle Royale-shooter genre. PUBG is a massive hit with more than 11 million copies sold and the record for the most concurrent players at any one time on Steam, but it is attracting imitators like Fortnite: Battle Royale and its creator previously created H1Z1: King of the Kill.
I’m going to compare all three of these games as a primer for anyone new to the space. I did this once already back in July, and GamesBeat has done similar comparisons for multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs) and digital card games. My previous comparison, however, came out before Fortnite got its Battle Royale mode, so it’s time for an update. Let’s start with the basics.
All of these games borrow their premise from the Japanese book and film Battle Royale, which is about a class of students who must fight and kill one another until only one person is left. This is a concept that is also seen in The Hunger Games. Now, however, the term “Battle Royale” is transforming into the shorthand term for any game where dozens of players drop onto a game map to gather resources and battle to the death.
But if you could choose only one, which one should it be? Well, I have an answer to that question.