<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> A battle royale game, also spelled battle royal, is a video game genre that blends the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game with last man standing gameplay . Battle royale games challenge a large number of players, starting with minimal equipment, to search for weapons and armor and eliminate other opponents all while avoiding being trapped outside of a shrinking "safe area", with the winner being the last competitor in the game . The name for the genre is taken from the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, which presents a similar theme of a last - man - standing competition in a shrinking play zone . </P> <P> The genre's origins arose from mods for large - scale, online, survival games like Minecraft and ARMA 2, before becoming their own standalone games . While the 2017 game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was not the first battle royale game, its rapid growth popularized the genre with over 25 million copies sold by the end of 2017 . In 2018, the free - to - play Fortnite Battle Royale rapidly became a cultural phenomenon, overtaking Battlegrounds in terms of player numbers and revenue . </P>

Where did the term battle royale come from