Rockstar and Take-Two’s stance on Red Dead Redemption 2 and the approach they’re taking with the game’s development has been pretty admirable up until now. Though they’re obviously hoping for a successful game (which analysts are sure it will be), monetization is not their primary concern. They are, instead, concerned first and foremost with just making a great game.
That same philosophy, in fact, is governing everything they’re doing with Red Dead Redemption 2, including the prospect of having a battle royale mode in the game. In an interview with Game Daily, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that while they certainly aren’t ruling out having a battle royale mode in Red Dead Redemption 2, it’s not something they want to do simply to chase a trend. “No one wants to be a Fortnite clone” seems to be their driving philosophy, and instead they only want to include something in their game if it is “in service of the core entertainment experience”.
“We’ve used battle royale mechanics before,” Zelnick said. “I wouldn’t rule it out, but any mechanic you use would want to be in service of the core entertainment experience and would be consumer-focused. It wouldn’t be driven by revenue focus in our view. And if one is overly derivative of another’s success, you pretty much guarantee you’re not going to have your own success, because no one is looking for a clone of Fortnite. I wish we had Fortnite — we don’t — so wishing we had Fortnite is not going to help me.”
“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t use a mechanic that’s in other games,” he continued. “We’re certainly not averse to using something created by someone else in service of a good experience in our own games. So there are moments when you might choose to be derivative for some small portion of a game, but I think there’s a lot of emphasis on questions that have been posed more pointedly by some which is, ‘Hey, look at Fortnite, shouldn’t everything you do be some example of Fortnite?’ The answer is absolutely not. If we turned an upcoming release into a sad, diluted version of Fortnite, I can assure you it would fail, in addition to being embarrassing [for the brand].”
Red Dead Redemption 2 launches on October 26 for the Xbox One and PS4. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage on the game.