battle royale

plural battles royale · plural battle royales · alternative battle-royal · alternative battle-royale · alternative battle royal

1. alternativeAlternative form of battle royal.

   Who’s going to occupy and fill that? That’s what we’re seeing with this battle royale, whether it’s Megyn Kelly or Ben Shapiro or Mark Levin or Candace Owens or Erika Kirk or whomever.

   2026 March 22, David Smith, “‘Extremely ugly’: Maga media figures squabble among themselves over Trump’s Iran war”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 22 Mar 2026

2. video gamesA video game genre centered around survival, exploration and scavenging, with last-man-standing gameplay.

   Ian Bogost, a game designer, media professor and author of Play Anything, agrees: “There is no question in my mind that the eat-or-be-eaten, winner-take-all mentality of contemporary life is of a piece with the battle-royale genre,” he says.

   2018 July 16, Steven Poole, quoting Ian Bogost, “From Fortnite to Love Island: how the ‘fight to the death’ defines our times”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2023