TL;DR: Forza Horizon is in the same position now that Battlefield was a couple of months ago. Out of touch with it’s fanbase and primed to get poached by a disruptive new game, just like Battlebit did to Battlefield.
Battlebit Remastered is a new smash indie hit in the same vein as games like Battlefield and Squad. Normally, in order for indie games to be such a smash success, they need to do something new and unique. However, Battlebit is very much just copying the best elements of it’s contemporary competitors, iterating on it, and selling it in a new package.
So why is a game that looks like Roblox having more success than Battlefield and Squad?
Battlefield, at it’s inception, was a highly accessible milsim. Battlefield 2 (A game I played a lot back in the day) was especially an uncompromising experience without being too frustrating to jump into. The franchise saw more success later on, but at the same time it started to compromise more. It’s easy to claim that the compromises are what led to the wider appeal, but they coincided with the game coming to more platforms, greatly increasing the games adoption potential. Video games themselves were also seeing massive growth and adoption rate in that time period. Emboldened by boardroom statistics, Battlefield continued to move away from it’s roots, continuing to compromise the core gameplay for the sake of what it perceived as appealing to the masses. They kept chasing marketing gimmicks over core gameplay elements, focused more on the “E3 trailer experience” than the actual game to draw in the crowd.
Then came Battlebit, a game that does very little new and is clearly inspired by old school Battlefield. What it does do though is make an uncompromising commitment to being about core gameplay first. Once again we have the uncompromising milsim that’s still fairly accessible and easy to jump into and start having fun. It’s taken the best elements that have been added to games like Battlefield (and a lesser extent, Squad) and ignored all of the “streamlining for the sake of mass appeal at the cost of gameplay elements” and “extraneous elements for the sake of the E3 trailer/back of the box sale points”. What you’re left with is an incredible milsim multiplayer sandbox, with obvious love and passion behind it that players respond to. I’m not shocked in the slightest that it’s completely undercut Battlefield in spite of being nowhere close to competitive graphics wise.
Here’s how this relates to Forza Horizon. You can draw a lot of parallels between Battlefield’s path to the present and Forza Horizon’s. Forza Horizon has gotten more popular as time has gone on, but a lot of that can be chalked up to easier and wider adoption rates through things like coming to PC or being on games pass, along with the fact that there really hasn’t been much to compete with it attention wise, racing or otherwise. It’s misguided path towards wider appeal leaves the door wide open for a disruptive game, true to what the franchise once was, to swoop in and steal the core of it’s user base.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that Forza Horizon, unlike Battlefield, still has time to change things before the carpet gets pulled out from under them. On top of that, Forza Horizon has managed to maintain a better foundation than Battlefield did. All that needs to happen is a shift in focus to a gameplay first mentality, and ditching the “streamlining for the sake of mass appeal at the cost of gameplay elements” approach that the franchise has taken over the past two iterations. Open up the gameplay and options to the users. The fanbase will respond positively, and the company will prevent the risk of a disruptive game from stealing the franchise out from under PGG’s feet.
…a few maybe)