Part of the elemental appeal of zombie fiction is the permission it provides to imagine which household item, when pressed, you might use to stove in the face of a lunging, undead version of Mrs Brown from No 37. In the glare of such an apocalypse, familiar domestic items such as tea towels, cafetieres and loo brushes must be reappraised, their value now dependent on their ability to cause brain damage rather than efficiently dry a plate, deliver coffee, or clean the glum residue from a toilet bowl. Do you reach for the bread knife (rasping, noble), or the biro (intimate, cruel)?
The 17-year-old film Battle Royale further elevated the premise. In the film a busload of high school students are gassed and delivered to a remote island. There, they’re provided with a map, a pocketful of rations and a single weapon each, which range in efficiency from crossbows to paper fans. The class teacher, played by Takeshi Kitano, informs the class that they must, during the next three days, fight to the death till only one student remains. The structure is similar to that of a zombie film except your friends and colleagues are no longer the lumbering, insentient undead, but scheming, very much mortal enemies.
Battle Royale influenced countless books and films, from The Hunger Games toa Marvel Comics Avengers spin-off. Its premise has been borrowed by video game designers too, although never with as much verve and success as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (a forgettable title initialised to the more memorable PUBG by many players). This independently produced game launched earlier this year and has, in recent months, become a phenomenon of near-Minecraft proportions; in September the game broke the record for the highest number of concurrent players on Steam (the video gaming’s version of iTunes). Last week, more than 1.5 million people around the world simultaneously logged in to the game.
In PUBG 100 players arrive at a small remote island in a fleet of fat transport planes. You choose at which point to leap from the aircraft and whereabouts on the quilted island below to drift towards on your parachute. On land, it’s a case of arming yourself with whatever item is to hand: a frying pan in a kitchen cupboard, a sickle in the shed, a dune buggy in the garage. Every few minutes the playable area of the island shrinks towards a random location, drawing players into ever deadlier proximity until, finally, only the sole victor is left standing. It’s tense, exhilarating and, as with all success in art and entertainment, destined to be closely copied.
Last week, PUBG’s battle spilled into reality with the arrival of one such copycat. Fortnite closely follows PUBG’s template, even aping the 100-player limit, albeit with the multimillion-dollar backing of Epic Games, one of North America’s most celebrated studios. Following Fortnite’s announcement, PUBG’s producer Chang-han Kim stated that his studio was “concerned” about Fortnite’s similarities to PUBG, and that the team would explore legal action.
As developers of iPhone games who in the past few years have seen their ideas closely replicated by rivals are aware, there is no legal recourse here. Protection in cases of game plagiarism (often known as “cloning”) covers only the game’s original source code and the specific art used in a game. It is not possible to copyright a game’s mechanics or its functionality. This may frustrate the PUBG team, who must watch dismayed as the shape and mood of their runaway success is imitated ad nauseam. But this is surely nothing compared with that felt by Koushun Takami, from whose 1999 novel Battle Royale so many titans of the 21st-century entertainment landscape have risen.
