PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has absolutely exploded on the PC this year. With 15 million sales in 6 months, while also destroying Steam’s concurrent player records, the title is still in early access, yet is having a huge impact in the gaming space. We caught up with the ‘PU’ in PUBG, Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene, to talk about a lot of things related to his smash hit.
Last week we saw a patch deployed which changed interactions with the game’s deadly blue zone. I asked Greene about the decision behind this update.
“We saw that people would play the game way outside of the blue zone, and rank up that way basically med kitting themselves inside that area,” he said. “We wanted to make changes to the blue zone anyway, because it’s very basic in its form and we think it can be a lot better.”
“This is the first change to kind of see if this can keep people more in the circles rather than people camping way outside and coming in right at the end. It’s more just to keep people focused out of that blue zone, and combating some broken game elements basically.”
With Greene also travelling a lot having been in the United States, Australia and then Paris in the span of a week, I asked what life was like basically living in hotels while still trying to support a game’s development.
“I’ve laid out the vision,” he replied. “The game design leads, the action and gunplay team, they know what they are doing. I don’t really have to make many gameplay decisions because I can trust them.
“They understand what I want from the game. They understand what the community wants, and I don’t really need to say no that often. I let them run free basically, and that’s the way our development team works. It is very horizontal, there isn’t really someone giving orders. If you think you’ve got a good idea bring it to the team, and if we like it we’ll add it. It’s really a great team to have.”
Stay tuned for more with Greene direct from PAX AUS.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available in early access on Windows PC. It launches on Xbox One on 12 December.
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