Ark, a game about exploration, player interaction, and good old fashioned dinosaur wrangling. Since it’s early access debut on Steam, Ark has been on the mind of a lot of players of late, creating a fun environment for all sorts of shenanigans to take place. It had the water-cooler conversations that some of the biggest games of all time produced. Players have told me so many stories on their adventures with the prehistoric creatures that I can almost write a chronicle of the tribes of the servers they play on.
Recently announced, Ark is getting a major tournament to be held in Beijing, China during China Joy 2016, which is essentially E3 in China.
Upon learning of this news, I tried to think of all the ways a tournament could possibly be held in Ark. My answer was answered later in the press release. Ark: Survival of the Fittest is a standalone game set in the Ark universe that’s essentially Hunger Games with dinosaurs.
Finally, someone other than the Minecraft community is taking the Battle Royale themes and setting it up in the multiplayer gaming space. Oh, and this Ark spinoff, as it were, is free on Steam and has been since March.
Survival of the Fittest was built with E-Sports in mind, especially with its popularity on the steady rise. As many as 72 players can fight until only one tribe is left. There’s even a lobby of sorts before each match for players to discuss their plans or just smack-talk their opponents. Once the match is ready to start, the players descend from the sky into the arena. Of course, just like in the Hunger Games or that little Minecraft mini-game many of us have lost hours upon hours with, there is a mountain of items in the center of the map, a tantalizing reward for any brave enough. Survival of the Fittest also prevents a longer game type with clever design, by shrinking the boundaries of the map every so often, forcing players to fight instead of hide up a tree somewhere.
Here there be dragons. Apparently. . .
As far as the tournament goes, players can compete in the 6v6 Tournament Mode in May and June with the 14 highest rated teams being invited to a Semi-Final Match on July 1st. The top five international teams will go to Beijing to take on the top Chinese teams during the China Joy expo. The rankings of the best tribes in the game can be seen in real time at the Survive The Ark website.
While I’m sure I lost most of my readers up above at the word “free”, know that I too will be hitting up Steam soon to try this out. The Hunger Games, whether you’re a fan of the books or the films, did inspire some pretty cool game mechanics for this generation. Just like Katniss, I volunteer myself as tribute.
Even though she didn’t have to face a T-Rex, I’m ready for this challenge.
