Battle royale games are played between many individual players, pairs of two players or a number of small squads (typically of 3-5 players). In each match, the goal is to be the last player or team standing by eliminating all other opponents. A match starts by placing the player-characters into a large map space, typically by having all players skydive from a large aircraft within a brief time limit. The map may have random distribution or allow players to have some control of where they start. All players start with minimal equipment, giving no player an implicit advantage at the onset. Equipment, usually used for combat, survival or transport is randomly scattered around the map, often at landmarks on the map, such as within buildings in ghost towns. Players need to search the map for these items while avoid being killed by other players, who cannot be visually marked or distinguishable either on-screen or on the map, requiring the player to solely use their own eyes and ears to deduce their positions. Equipment from eliminated players can usually be looted as well. These games often include some mechanic to push opponents closer together as the game progresses, usually taking the form of a gradually shrinking safe zone, with players outside of the zone eventually being killed. Typically, battle royale contestants are only given one life to play; any players who die are not allowed to respawn. Games with team support may allow players to enter a temporary, near-death state once health is depleted, giving allies the opportunity to revive them before they give out or are finished off by an opponent. The match is over when only one player or team remains, and the game typically provides some type of reward, such as in-game currency used for cosmetic items, to all players based on how long they survived. The random nature of starting point, item placement, and safe area reduction enables the battle royale genre to challenge players to think and react quickly and improve strategies throughout the match as to be the last man/team standing. In addition to standalone games, the battle royale concept may also be present as part of one of many game modes within a larger game, or may be applied as a user-created mod created for another game. There are various modifications that can be implemented atop the fundamentals of the battle royale. For example, Fortnite introduced a temporary mode in an event which is 50-versus-50 player mode in its Fortnite Battle Royale free-to-play game; players are assigned one of the two teams, and work with their teammates to collect resources and weapons towards constructing fortifications as the safe area of the game shrinks down, with the goal to eliminate all the players on the other team. Formulative elements of the battle royale genre had existed prior to the 2010s. Gameplay modes featuring last man standing rules has been a frequent staple of multiplayer online action games, though generally with fewer total players, as early as 1990's Bomberman, which introduced multiplayer game modes with players all starting with the same minimal abilities who collected power ups and fought until the last player was left standing. The elements of scavenging and surviving on a large open-world map were popularized through survival games. The 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, along with Koushun Takami's earlier 1999 novel of the same name and its 2000 manga adaptation, set out the basic rules of the genre, including players being forced to kill each other until there is a single survivor, taking place on a shrinking map, and the need to scavenge for weapons and items. It soon inspired a wave of battle royale themed Japanese manga and anime, such as Gantz (2000), Future Diary (2006), and Btooom! (2009), and then the battle royale formula eventually appeared in The Hunger Games franchise. Fictional battle royale video games were depicted in Btooom!, and in the Phantom Bullet (Gun Gale Online) arc of the light novel series Sword Art Online (2010 in print) as the "Bullet of Bullets" tournament. Initial attempts at adapting the Battle Royale formula into video games came in the form of Japanese visual novel games that focused on storytelling and puzzle-solving, such as Higurashi: When They Cry (2002), Zero Escape (2009) and Danganronpa (2010). However, these visual novel games are distinct from the genre that what would later be known as battle royale games, which emerged when Western developers later adapted the Battle Royale formula into a shooter game format. The rapid growth and success of the battle royale genre has been attributed to several factors, including the way all players start in the same vulnerable state and eliminating any intrinsic advantage for players, and being well-suited for being a spectator eSport. Other factors including specific games' business models, such as Fortnite Battle Royale being free and available across computers, consoles, and mobile devices. A University of Utah professor also considers that battle royale games realize elements of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a scheme to describe human motivation, more-so than video games have in the past. While the lowest tiers of Maslow's hierarchy, physiological and safety, are met by the survival elements of battle royales, the love/belonging and esteem tiers are a result of the battle royale being necessarily a social and competitive game, and the final tier of self-actualization comes from becoming skilled in the game to win frequently. Business Insider projected that battle royale games would bring in over $2 billion during 2018 alone, and would generate a total of $20 billion by the end of 2019. SuperData Research reported that, in 2018, the three top-grossing battle royale games (Fortnite, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4) generated nearly $4 billion in combined digital revenue that year.[80] SuperData Research reported that the top four highest-grossing battle royale games of 2020 (PUBG Mobile, Garena Free Fire, Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite) generated more than $7 billion worldwide in combined digital revenue that year. Sensor Tower reported that 2018's top three most-downloaded mobile battle royale games (PUBG Mobile, Garena Free Fire and Fortnite) received over 500 million downloads combined that year. The most-played battle royale games include PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds with 600 million players, Fortnite Battle Royale with 350 million players, NetEase's mobile game Knives Out with over 250 million players, Rules of Survival with 230 million players, and Garena Free Fire with over 180 million players. Turtle Beach Corporation, a manufacturer of headphones and microphones for gaming, reported an increase of over 200% in net revenues for the second quarter of 2018 over the same quarter in 2017, which they attributed to the popularity of the battle royale genre.