The hottest word of 2017 has to be “eat chicken”, and the most popular game of 2017 has to be PUBG: Battle Royston, which popularized it. Battlegrounds: Battle Royale has set six world records and the game’s highest number of simultaneous online users at 2 million.
But at the end of 2017, one chicken-eating game emerged from the twilight of PUBG: Battle Royale: Fortnite. With 21.8 million views in a week on Tiwtch, Fortnite has topped the online charts in terms of player numbers and downloads, and has significantly surpassed 2017’s battlegrounds BATTLEGROUNDS: Battlegrounds in every number of weeks. In 2018, Fortnite took over from PUBG: Battle Royale to become the most popular game.
Battlegrounds: Battle Royston is on the wane
With Fortnite’s success at the top, the decline of PUBG: Battle Royale has become a reality. According to SteamCharts, PubG recorded its first negative growth in player numbers over a 30-day period in February 2018, reaching -5.6%. So why did pubG: Battlegrounds, the game that had no rival in gaming in 2017, languish?
First, the content of the game is too violent. “Pubg: Battle Royale” is a realistic style of battle Royale type game, the picture is very realistic, lighting and physics engine are relatively good, basically restore the real world. However, because the pictures are too realistic, some shoot-to-kill content is too bloody and violent, which may mislead some players and audiences to set up incorrect value orientation.
Second, plugins and optimizations affect the game experience. As the saying goes, “tall trees catch wind,” and the same goes for games. Plugins have been around since pubG: Battlefields became a hit. Although the blue hole official efforts to ban the account, but it is still only a palliation of the symptoms, the current official for plugins obviously there is no reasonable and effective governance method. And, according to “Sina hotspot” understanding, the blue hole company may also have some kind of connection with the interests of plugins, so it is difficult to see results in the action to stop plugins. For many players, plugins can easily crush the average player’s half an hour or more of gameplay.
While PUBG: Battlegrounds was a huge hit last year, pubG: Battlegrounds was plagued by serious game optimizations, perhaps because the game was so popular that players didn’t pay much attention to these minor issues. But this year, with so many games in the market that seem to be catching up, pubG’s game optimization problems have been magnified to the point that they are the second biggest reason for pubG’s user churn. These two issues caused many players to lose confidence in the game.
Third, the national service audit was blocked, the online far from being possible. It’s hard to do anything alone in today’s world without China, and games are no different. The success of PUBG: Battle Royston could not have been possible without the support of Chinese players. According to a Report by The Wall Street Journal citing SuperData, PUBG: Battle Royston has racked up $1 billion in cumulative sales as of May 2018, 40% of which came from Chinese players. You can see how much influence the Chinese market has had on PUBG.
It has been more than half a year since Tencent announced the agency of PUBG: Battle Royston last year, but there is still no news of pubG: Battle Royston being released in China. The better part of a year not only wore out players’ patience, but also made pubG IP less popular than it used to be.
Fourth, similar games intensified their encroachment. Last year it was PUBG: Battle Royale, but this year it has become more competitive than ever. Abroad pubG: Battle Royale faces challenges from Fortnite and H1Z1; In The Chinese market, PUBG battle Royston faces competition from a number of domestic “chicken Eating” apps, such as netease’s “Wild Op Puls”, Tencent’s “Infinite Rules” and West Hill House’s recently popular “Freedom Zone”.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, Fortnite is the biggest dark horse in the chicken market
Since PUBG became a global hit, chicken-eating games have mushroomed. But the only game that can challenge PUBG’s dominance is Fortnite, so how did Fortnite become the front-runner?
Stand on the shoulders of giants and create new and creative gameplay. Fortnite created a brand new game model by studying market games, drawing on the drawing style of overwatch, which became popular in 2016, absorbing the creative gameplay of sandbox games, and integrating the chicken eating gameplay of PUBG: Battle Royale. Fortnite has already proven its innovation with over 40 million registered players.
Take the free-to-play model. Fortnite is popular among gamers because of its free PVP mode. Fortnite could make the game more accessible to a wider audience than pubG: Battleground Battle Royale’s all-pay model, given that players in China and other less developed regions prefer to play free-to-play games.
The game style is better liked and better polished. Fortnite is very similar to the popular Overwatch in 2016. The overall art style of the game belongs to the comic book style, which is more acceptable to the general public. In addition, the theme of Fortnite is positive and progressive without bloody and violent scenes, which is in line with the main social melody of various countries. Fortnite was a prototype game for Epic, the original Unreal Engine, and the game was well polished. Thanks to Epic’s optimization of Fortnite, the computer hardware requirements of Fortnite are so low that most average players’ computers run smoothly, with no jagged or torn graphics even at very low graphics quality.
There are fewer cheats and bugs. Game plugins have been plaguing major mainstream game manufacturers, it can be said that game plugins is the terminator of the game, can be a high-quality game to the abyss of destruction. Fortnite, on the other hand, doesn’t have that many plugins so far, and it allows players to experience a pure environment. Furthermore, fortnite has fewer bugs than other games in the genre, and so far there have been none that have seriously affected the player’s experience.
PC “eat chicken” game will continue to be popular
After fortnite succeeded in displacing PUBG: Battle Royale at the top of the PC “Eat Chicken” market, fortnite’s numbers did not surpass pubG: Battle Royale’s peak, which is surprising enough to make you wonder how long the “Eat Chicken” game will continue to be popular. The answer is that in the short term chicken-eater will still be alive and well, but in the long term chicken-eater is now maturing and even declining, and it will only be three or five years before it disappears in the public eye.
In the short term: PC chicken market differentiation, and the temporary formation of “two super strong” pattern
In 2018, Fortnite will surpass PUBG, and the PC chicken eating game market will be divided, forming a two-super pattern of fun chicken eating represented by Fortnite and traditional chicken eating represented by PUBG.
After Fortnite became the most popular chicken eating game, it had a profound impact on the whole chicken eating industry. “Fortnite” fire, will certainly set off a “fun to eat chicken” wind in the market, “fun to eat chicken” will become the second half of this year “eat chicken” game theme.
At the same time, with the maturity of “Eat chicken” market, more and more “eat chicken” games have been put into the market, especially the rapid growth of domestic “eat Chicken” games. Among them, netease’s “Wild Action Puls”, Tencent’s “Infinite Rules” and Xishan’s “Freedom Zone” are all popular chicken games. “Eat chicken” market will be by “one super strong” to “two super strong” transformation.
Both Fortnite and BATTLEgrounds: Battle Royale are battle Royale games, but Fortnite is more fun and BATTLEgrounds: Battle Royale is more competitive, and the core gameplay of the two games is still the same. The rise and fall of the two games reflects a shift in interest in the type of “Eat Chicken” games, rather than the quality of the game.
Fortnite may have seen a surge in popularity in the first half of the year, but with a steady stream of chicken games coming out this year, fortnite is not only facing the challenge of former champion PUBG: Battle Royale, but also a host of up-and-comers. But in the short term, it’s likely that fortnite will continue to lead the way, and there will be more than one “Chicken” game.
In the long run: Chicken Eat Games into the middle of old age, falling is only a matter of time
In a short period of time, the chicken Eating market is thriving, but it will disappear within three to five years due to three fatal flaws.
First, chicken games have a shorter life cycle than MOBAS. The reason why “Eat chicken” game has a short life cycle is that it is not competitive and belongs to an entertainment game. For example, some players just want to race cars in the game, and enjoy the scenery in the game, which is enough to show that the game “Eat Chicken” is very entertaining.
Second, Eat Chicken has a simple gameplay that doesn’t escape from traditional FPS games. The “Eat chicken” game on the market is pretty much the same. It’s all about collecting equipment, running poison, and finally getting into a gun fight. This is a good example of the “escape” and “kill” core gameplay of Eat Chicken, but in the long run players will lose interest in the game.
Finally, the common problem with plugins in FPS games will accelerate the decline of “chicken fever”. FPS games have always had the biggest hit-out problem, and because of the high latency requirements of FPS games, a lot of ballistic model calculations are done locally, which gives a lot of hit-makers an advantage. This is the root cause of the persistent hit-outs of FPS games. The proliferation of plugins will seriously affect the player experience, and eventually players will abandon the game.
Anyway, Fortnite takes over from PUBG: Battle royale “, opened a new era of “chicken”, “chicken” game by a simple shooting game slowly into a shooting as the core of the sandbox to create games, in the gameplay innovation can help “chicken” game live longer can only wait for the answer of time, but it is certainly “fortress nights” play mode will fire through the great river north and south.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110