Gameplay
Battlegrounds is an action game in which up to one hundred players fight in a battle royal, a type of large-scale deathmatch where players fight to be the last alive. Players can choose to enter the match solo, or with a small team of two or four people. In either case, the last person or team left alive wins the match.Each match starts with players parachuting onto an island, approximately 8 by 8 kilometres (5.0 mi × 5.0 mi) in size,[1] from a plane without any items outside of customizable clothing options that they select prior to a match. Once they land, players can search buildings and other sites to find weapons, vehicles, armor, clothing, and other equipment. These items are distributed throughout the map at the start of a match, with certain high-risk zones having better equipment.[2] Players then proceed to either stay hidden to avoid being killed or hunt down other players whilst continuing to search for more equipment. Killed players can be looted to acquire their gear as well. At random, a plane will fly over various parts of the playable map and drop a loot package containing items which are normally unobtainable during normal gameplay, the package also emits a highly visible red smoke, drawing interested players near it.[2] Players can opt to play either from the first-person or third-person perspective, each having their own advantages and disadvantages in combat and situational awareness.[2]
Every few minutes, the playable "safe" area of the map begins to shrink down towards a random location, with any player caught outside the safe area taking damage over time and eventually being eliminated; in game, the players see this as a shimmering blue wall that contracts over time.[3] This forces players into more confined areas and increases the chance of encounters with the surviving players. During the course of the match, random regions of the map are highlighted in red and bombed, posing a threat to players that remain in that area.[4] In both cases, players are warned a few minutes before these events, giving them time to relocate to safety. On average, a full round takes no more than 30 minutes.[5]
At the completion of each round, players gain in-game currency based on how long they survived, and how many other players they had killed. The currency is used to purchase crates which contain cosmetic items for character customization.
Development
Lead designer Brendan Greene, better known by his online handle PlayerUnknown, had previously created the ARMA 2 mod DayZ: Battle Royale, an offshoot of popular mod DayZ, and inspired by the film Battle Royale.[6] Greene had been inspired to create the Battle Royale mod as he found that in most multiplayer first-person shooter games, there was too much repetition, as maps were small and easy to memorize. He wanted to create something with more random aspects so that players would not know what to expect, creating a high degree of replayability; this was done by creating vastly larger maps that could not be easily memorized, and using random item placement across it.[7] Greene also was inspired by an online competition for DayZ called Survivor GameZ, which featured a number of Twitch.tv and YouTube streamers fighting until only a few were left; as he was not a streamer himself, Greene wanted to create a similar game mode that anyone could play.[7]When DayZ became its own standalone title, Greene transitioned development of the Battle Royale mod to ARMA 3. Sony Online Entertainment (now the Daybreak Game Company) had become interested in Greene's work, and brought him on as a consultant to develop on H1Z1, which was split into two separate games, the survival mode H1Z1: Just Survive, and the battle royal-like H1Z1: King of the Kill, around February 2016.[8] Greene had completed his work with Daybreak around the time of this split, and was contacted by Chang-Han Kim of the South Korean developer Bluehole, offering him the opportunity to work on a new battle royal concept. Within a week, Greene had flown out to Bluehole's headquarters in Korea to discuss the options, and a few weeks later, became the creative director of Bluehole. He moved to South Korea to oversee development.[7] According to Greene, this is the first time a Korean game studio has brought aboard a foreigner for a creative director role, and while a risk, he states his relationship with Bluehole's management is strong, allowing Greene's team to work autonomously with minimal oversight.[5]
Development began in early 2016, with plans to have the game ready within a year.[9] Kim served as executive producer for the game.[7] Bluehole had a team of about forty developers supporting Greene's work; Greene said that many of these developers are voluntarily putting into longer work hours into the game due to their dedication to the project and not by any mandate from Greene or Bluehole's management.[7]
Design
Battlegrounds represents the standalone version of what Greene believes is the "final version" of the battle royal concept, incorporating the elements he had designed in previous iterations.[5][10] Faster development was possible with the game engine Unreal Engine 4, compared with ARMA and H1Z1, which were built with proprietary game engines.[5] The game was designed as a mix between the realistic simulation of ARMA 3 and the arcade-like action focus and player accessibility of H1Z1.[4][7]Based on Greene's experience with the genre, an island with many terrain features was picked as the first map. The map design scope was to offer players many possible options for strategic and unique gameplay.[3] Some buildings and structures were designed to depict the style of the brutalist architecture of the Soviet Union during the 1950s. The developer team then playtested architecture features and random item placement systems, looking at both how close-quarters encounters went, and for open terrain areas.[3] The goal was then to optimize the right distribution and placement of weapons and gear across the map, to encourage players to make strategic decisions about how to proceed in the game without overly penalizing players that may not find weapons within the first few minutes of a round.[5] As of May 2017, two additional maps are currently under development: one set on a fictional island in the Adriatic Sea that had part of the Yugoslavian territories which will include snow-covered areas, and a second set in the remains of a desert city that has been ravaged by war and sandstorms.[11]
The freefall from an airplane at the start of each match was a new feature for the genre, to encourage strategy between staying with the pack of players or seeking out one's own route for a better chance at finding good loot.[5]
Among features that Greene anticipates adding include custom games, modding support, and means to incorporate the game with streaming services like Twitch.tv that would enable replays or other features amenable to treating Battlegrounds as an eSport.[5][7] He also plans on introducing microtransactions to allow players to use real-world funds to purchase loot crates that provide randomly-selected cosmetic items (aka "skins") which they can then trade with other players; while Greene recognized the issue with skin gambling, he believes that Valve had since put safeguards in place to support a "skin economy" that will provide further revenue for them without concerns over gambling.[12] Greene anticipates adding a campaign mode with co-operative player support, though there is "no serious lore" being developed for the narrative and compared to similar modes in Watch Dogs.[13] The developer plans regular content and balance updates following full release.[14][4][9]
Release
Bluehole used closed alpha and beta periods with about 80,000 players to gauge initial reaction to the gameplay and adjust balance prior to a wider release.[7] The early access phase on Steam began in March 2017 for the Windows version.[15] This early access period is set to last approximately six months.[15][16] Bluehole plans to port the game to consoles, which will be released sometime following the completion of the Windows release, with the company already having a team starting on the Xbox One port.[17] Greene was part of Microsoft's press conference during Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 to announce that Battlegrounds would be coming to Xbox One as a timed console exclusive sometime by the end of 2017.[18][19]Professional competition
To celebrate the game surpassing two million copies sold, Bluehole announced a 2017 Charity Invitational event, inviting 128 players to compete over their official Twitch.tv channel to raise money for the Gamers Outreach Foundation, with Bluehole matching all donations up to US$100,000.[20] The competition ran in early May 2017, and raised at least US$120,000 from viewers along with Bluehole's US$100,000 match, and served as a prototype for future eSports events.[21]Reception
In early access
As an early access title, most video game websites opted not to give a detailed review, though highly praised the game. Chloi Rad of IGN gave Battlegrounds a preliminary 9.0/10 rating, calling it "a tight, focused, and no-frills experience that places it leagues above the competition".[22]Battlegrounds made US$11 million in the first three days of its early access release.[23] By the second week of April 2017, the game had sold over one million copies, with a peak player count of 89,000,[24] SuperData Research estimated that the game's April sales exceeded US$34 million, putting it as one of the top 10 highest grossing revenue games for the month and exceeding revenue from Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.[25] By May 2017, the game had sold over two million copies, with total gross revenues estimated at US$60 million.[26][17]
Several journalists commented on the game's rapid growth towards a large player base for a game that was still in early access. IGN's Rad believed that the popularity of the game was due to its fast-paced nature compared to similar type games available at the time, such as H1Z1 and DayZ. She thought that the design balanced the solitary periods when the player is scavenging or sneaking around with those of being in combat with others, and the approach is readily accessible to new players with very little dead time to get into a new match.[27] Andy Moore for Glixel considered that Battlegrounds's popularity comes from how the game encouraged players to engage due to the situation they are placed in rather than from the player's own disposition, comparing it to the Stanford prison experiment, and thus able to capture the interest of players that may normally eschew these types of games.[28]
Rock Paper Shotgun's Michael Johnson described Battlegrounds as "a tactical shooting sandbox, a story generator, and a horror game all in one, providing some of the highest highs in multiplayer gaming", as reason for its popularity.[1] Rob Zacny for Waypoint found that Battlegrounds offered the same type of entertainment experience for viewers that many other player-vs-player survival games have, but because of the lack of persistence, players were more likely to experiment with resources rather than hoard them, leading to humorous or unexpected situations that are often absent in survival games and making the title more enjoyable to watch and play, leading to its popularity.[29]
The game, while in early access, has already received alternate gameplay modes created by players, determined by unenforceable rules that players agree to abide by, that have been popular with streamers. In one case, "Zombie Mode", all but four players pretend to be zombies, who may sometimes distinguish themselves by removing all clothing and are limited only to collecting melee weapons and consumable items, and must rush to attack the other four players, who are able to collect all gear and attempt to outrun and defeat the zombies.[30]
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