PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds may have come out first, but the battle royale craze proper began shortly after the release and subsequent success of Fortnite in the latter half of 2017. The genre has since grown, seeing many other heavy hitters come to the table, such as Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone. Although outliers like Fall Guys exist, the general formula for battle royale shooters hasn't really changed much in its five years of popularity, and more randomization could be just what the genre needs to stay fresh.
PUBG, Fortnite, Apex, and Warzone all deliver roughly the same experience. Some sort of aircraft makes a flyby over the map, then players jump out of said aircraft, collect randomized loot, and battle organically as the playable area shrinks. The excitement of battle royales comes from the multitudes of possible engagements; the perceived randomness - along with frequent, live-service updates to these battle royales - keeps the games fresh. The logical next step for the genre is to fully embrace the idea of players encountering the unknown by utilizing procedural generation.
Procedural generation in gaming refers to parts of a game being created by algorithms on the fly. Minecraft's iconic world seeds and Stardew Valley's mine levels are examples of procedurally generated game spaces. Although learning the intricacies of a battle royale game's map is a major part of the meta, it runs opposite to the very idea of a battle royale.
A True Battle Royale Game Needs To Be As Random As Possible
Even though most of the credit should go to the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale, the battle royale genre's concept exploded in Western pop culture thanks to The Hunger Games franchise. The Hunger Games is a great example of why the unknown is instrumental in the battle royale genre: Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen has no idea what she will encounter once she enters each of the series' titular games. She knows the rules and generally what to expect, thanks to the advice of previous Hunger Games survivors, but all of the drama comes from the participants being woefully unprepared for what they are about to experience.
The excitement of jumping into a battle royale map for the first time could become a common occurrence with randomly created maps. Battle royale games already try to spice up gameplay by making incremental changes to their maps, like when Apex Legends crashed a ship into King's Canyon for Season 8. Even still, players quickly figure out the new locations and learn where all the loot spawns, so the games soon return to normal. A procedurally generated battle royale map wouldn't have to be as extensive as Minecraft, which creates practically infinite worlds, and it would still need some structure in how each map is generated. But even building dozens of map segments and randomizing them onto a grid would be a good first step in moving toward the randomness battle royale games deserve.