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The history of the battle royale genre isn't a long one. While the nascent parts of the experience have existed ever since players first started killing one another online, it's really only in the past six years that the genre has coalesced into something specific, with distinct parts that define whether a game does or doesn't fit into the specific pigeonhole.

Fortnite and PUBG might be the names connected to the massive online shooters now, but it wasn't always that way. In fact, the genre started out thanks to a number of strange confluences in the pop-culture zeitgeist. And the coming together of those ideas wasn't the preserve of companies and focus groups - a good deal of the battle royale genre stems from its players. It's those ideas, and those players, we need to trace to understand the behemoth that's barreling through the App Store at the moment.

There was a time when the Angry Birds were the face of mobile gaming. Nowadays though, that just isn't the case. You need to scroll a decent way down the top grossing charts to spot an AB title. It's Angry Birds 2. It's in 39th, just underneath Cashman Casino Vegas Slots.

Since the first Angry Birds game came out at the end of 2009, we've seen 19 other titles released either bearing the Angry Birds name or set in the Angry Birds universe. Angry Birds 2 itself is already a couple of years old.

There have been cartoons, there have been crossovers, there was even a Hollywood movie. But now the likes of Candy Crush and Clash of Clans are far more likely to be mentioned in the same breath as the App Store than Rovio's creation. Which begs the question - where did it go wrong?