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1) Lots of general controversy re: Apex Legends and ❤️ @JerryCap but want to respectfully outline why I think it is unlikely that we will see 10 successful new Battle Royale games per year as suggested yesterday.
2) $EA’s Apex Legends is unique in several ways. I don’t believe its early success means that barriers to entry in console/PC videogaming are low. Also important to emphasize "early" - long way to go before $EA and Respawn can declare victory i.e. a durable new franchise.
3) Unique aspects: Vince Zampella is the gaming equivalent of Steven Spielberg. He made some of the most iconic CoD games and Titanfall was a cult hit that never broke out. TF2 evidently still a favorite of a certain FinTwit stalwart. His games will always get attention.
4) There are only a few other studios/game developers like this: Blizzard, Bungie, Bethesda, DICE, Treyarch, Bioware in RPGs, the Houser brothers. PUBG/Fortnite benefitted from being the first BR games to get to scale and Epic has done a great job keeping Fortnite fresh.
5) More importantly, Apex Legends is a fantastic game. It’s not easy to make a shooter that “feels” great like Apex Legends. Aim assist, hit boxes, recoil, variation between guns, so many dynamics just with gunplay, let alone movement.
6) The revive, ping and character mechanics are innovative and additive. And the graphics slot nicely in between Fortnite and PUBG – higher rez than Fortnite but still family friendly. Really does seem like they hit a nice seam with this game.
7) And any shooter, especially a Battle Royale, has to get to scale quickly – high quality matchmaking is central to any PvP experience and this requires a large player base. I think Battle Royale games may need significantly north of 10m MAUs for good matchmaking.
8) Map design is another critical aspect for shooters. And while BR games today have only one map, they are massive maps. I’m not sure designing one awesome, huge map is any easier than designing 10 smaller maps especially given all the established science around the latter.
9) So success from here for a new Battle Royale entrant likely requires a great, innovative game (tough to do) from a relatively established studio/developer that quickly gets to scale. Apex Legends fits nicely between Fortnite and PUBG. We will see how other studios respond.
10) There will be more competition, but I suspect Battle Royale games will end up being relatively consolidated with 5ish big games just like traditional shooters (CoD, R6, BF, CS:GO, Overwatch, maybe Destiny). Importance of scale/matchmaking is so underestimated.
11) IMHO, these BR games will be mostly incremental and act as gateway drugs to more traditional shooters over the next few yrs.
12) BF5 woes seem more self-inflicted than the result of competitive pressures. Would've been much more successful if they had made 1-2 key decisions differently. Also all Frostbite games are starting to feel the same.
13) Way too early to declare Apex Legends a success. However, the early Twitch numbers, 10m total players and 1m peak concurrent players are impressive and they do mean *something.* Apex Legends has a chance.
14) Success from here will be driven by how responsive $EA/Respawn is to the community - i.e. Reddit and Twitter - and Respawn’s ability to keep it fresh and interesting, which has been a strength of Fortnite.
15) Operating a game as a service is difficult and requires a new mentality where the devs almost co-create the game with the players. Very different from the way games have traditionally been developed. A successful launch is only the first step. Will see if $EA can execute.
16) Too early to worry about monetization for Apex Legends. Large internet co’s don’t worry about monetization until a service has over 500m or 1b users ( $FB and $GOOGL respectively). I would put that number at over 20m MAU’s for F2P BR games.
17) Re: monetization for Apex Legends if one insists on worrying 😀. Lots of irons in the fire with loot boxes and characters. Concerns around skins given 3rd person are well founded but if the engagement is there in a durable way, monetization will follow.
18) Every AAA game developer has to be embarrassed at their marketing relative to Apex Legends. Complete surprise, a few million max to pay streamers and was the best launch of the last 12 months. Would be funny to compare to the BF5 marketing budget. Betas might be overrated.
19) Finally, all of this commentary has been focused solely on gaming. The emerging Oasis/Metaverse characteristics within Fortnite might be the most important development in technology right now and are separate from the game.
20) AR also quite important but it is already happening and will run on iOS/Android. Fortnite could be something new. Exciting times!
