We saw the end of REND. I’m sad about that. I liked REND, I thought it had neat ideas, but it had a problem wherein it never reached the critical mass of players needed to make those ideas work at all and then it went away, which I can’t imagine bodes well for Frostkeep Studios. It may have had a neat take on the whole survival sandbox and battle royale marriage, but none of that matters if you can’t produce a game anyone wants to play.
But then, that in and of itself raises a question about whether or not this genre is, well… a sustainable genre. Clearly there are developers with ideas out there, but it strikes me that increasingly neither the lighter-than-a-full-MMO experience of survival sandboxes nor the “we’re different from Fortnite so please play us instead” battle royale games have actually gotten a whole lot of traction. So what do you think? Do battle royale games and/or survival sandboxes actually have a future with new titles being developed? Or are they the next wave of MOBAs, MMOs developed to follow a trend that’s already been satisfied?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
