Which Type of Game Will Take the Place of Battle Royale?

Note: This is ported content from my previous blog. It may appear in a format different than intended. It is also from a version of myself that was younger and dumber. I like to keep this content around for posterity.

Declining Popularity of Battle Royale

As you all may know, Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds were two major players in an explosion of a new popular genre that rocked the internet- Battle Royale. But that was in 2017, and these games are slowly but surely losing popularity.

Popularity of Fortnite from Google Trends.

It probably doesn’t look like the game is declining, but that’s because the game just released season six, with a lot of new content, on September 27th. You can see a peak there as interest in the game was rekindled, but you can see the downward trend before and after the release. Already, Fortnite is starting to reach another low, and it’s only a matter of time before the game can’t recapture interest, even with new content.

Fortnite compared to Minecraft, past six years, from Google Trends.

In this graph of Fortnite compared to Minecraft over a longer time period, we get a better picture of the game’s decline. You can see the game is in it’s peak, even higher than Minecraft, but it is starting a decline, just like Minecraft did. If Fortnite follows a similar trend as Minecraft, it will still remain a well-known game for years to come (everyone still knows what Minecraft is), and updates and meme value (people making fun of it) might cause its decrease to slow, but people will gradually play less and less, and eventually it will die out. But that’s the thing- what will replace it? Is it even possible to know ahead of time?

Criteria of a New Game

Something that immediately comes to mind as a criteria to this new genre is color. We can see this with Fortnite and PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds). PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was first to the battle royale scene and started the trend, but quickly lost popularity to Fortnite. Why did Fortnite become known for Battle Royale, even though PUBG started the trend? The answer is the style of the game. PUBG was more realistic, but Fortnite had players in goofy skins dancing around in a cartoonish environment with unrealistic proportions. And it makes sense that games like these are more popular; young children are one of the biggest consumers of video games, and colors get their attention. This is one reason why Call of Duty, while popular, never became famous, but Minecraft did.

Beyond color, nothing stands out as a criteria that makes a game a trending game, besides good design, but that’s a given. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to figure out the next trending game, I just need help to do so.

I liked this article, written by an unknown author at GameDesigning. While seeming a bit outdated (it didn’t include Fortnite), I could pull a few popular modern games from there. The ones that I considered “trending” like Fortnite are Angry Birds and Grand Theft Auto V. The others I feel were either too old to be relevant, weren’t popular enough, or were “popular,” not “trending,” meaning their popularity has been relatively stable over a long period of time. The article did mention Pokemon too, and although Pokemon as a series has never been trending, one Pokemon game was notorious for trending- Pokemon Go.

So, with this article and prior knowledge, I have a list of the most trending video games over the past years. In chronological order of their release, it goes: Minecraft, Angry Birds, Clash of Clans, Grand Theft Auto V, Clash Royale, Pokemon Go, and Fortnite. On average, we see these games coming out every seven months or so, so the next one should be almost due. But what do these games have in common? Well, except for Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V, a lot of these games are free, so we can make that a big factor, but not a deciding factor, for a game’s popularity. The game needs to be available to the masses. Also, the game must not be over-hyped. This one popped into my head because I just thought about No Man’s Sky, a game that people thought would be popular but promised too much.

A picture I took from No Man’s Sky’s store page, on Steam.

Also, back to the list, the game must be mobile or have a mobile counterpart. The only exception here is Grand Theft Auto V and Fortnite. Fortnite does have a mobile app, but it didn’t have one at first, which is why I listed it as an exception. But, if you go back to the Google Trends graph of Fortnite earlier, you can see that it releasing a mobile app on the iPhone in early April caused it’s popularity to increase (second peak). So, we can predict that a popular game will likely be mobile or have a mobile counterpart.

But to determine Fortnite’s successor’s genre, we need to look at the genres of past games. Angry Birds is a puzzle game, Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are tower defense, Grand Theft Auto V is an action and adventure game, Minecraft is an indie survival game, Pokemon Go is an augmented-reality game, and Fortnite is a battle royale game. What do these genres have in common? Well, most of them have no set story or bound on the user, which eliminates story-telling games. But, beyond that, trending games have a wide variety of genres.

Conclusion

Unless I do a lot of digging (and who wants to do that for a blog post), I guess it’s impossible to predict the genre of the next popular game. It’s just too random. But I can tell you this, the next trending game will be colorful and have a mobile piece to it, and it will feature lots of player involvement and strategy. I already can’t wait, even though I’m not even exactly sure what it’ll be next. Could it be a completely new genre?

Sources

1. Title Image Photo: Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash

2. Comparisons: Google Trends

3. Angry Birds Info: Angry Birds

4. Minecraft Info: Minecraft

5. Clash of Clans Info: Clash of Clans

6. Clash Royale Info: Clash Royale

7. Fortnite Info: Fortnite

8. Pokemon Go Info: Pokemon Go

9. Grand Theft Auto V Info: Grand Theft Auto V

10. Most Popular Games Info: Most Popular Games

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