Lost meets Hunger Games: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds turns around battle-royale genre
Outpost Games’ latest creation, SOS, is also looking to make an impact, but with a different take for video gamers. Here the battles are made into a reality show, with The Hunger Games used as a basic template
Other studios have thrown their hat in the ring and found success. Now, new California developer Outpost Games is entering the fray, but it has a different take on the category.
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Instead of copying the concepts of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the fledgling studio is coming at the battle royale genre from an entertainment angle.
“We didn’t want to feel like we are chasing a trend. We wanted to do something that was universal and timeless,” says Wright Bagwell, CEO of Outpost Games. A veteran who worked on Electronic Arts’ James Bond and Dead Space games, he said: “We have to stop thinking about gamers as consumers and think about them as performers.”
That led them to the creation of SOS. The game takes the battle royale genre and turns it into a reality show. It pits 16 contestants against each other and places them on an island full of ancient ruins and monsters. The goal for each player is to escape within the 30-minute time limit and the only way to do that is to get one of the first three relics in order to win a seat on the chopper that will ferry them to safety.
The gameplay can be chaotic, constructive, funny and thrilling. It all depends on the personalities of the online competitors.