Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene on PUBG’s success and Game of the Year

With Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene in town for PAX Australia, we decided to talk to him about single-player games and the success he has had with PlayerUnknown’s Battelgrounds this year.

Recently, EA shutdown Visceral Studios’ Star Wars game and put out a blog post talking about how they need to pivot their design in order find a way to have people come back to the linear story-based game they were creating. This started a conversation during the week amongst the gaming community about whether story based games were still relevant. While PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a multiplayer game, Greene has mentioned in the past that single player would be a fun idea to explore. But are single-player games dead?

“People love stories, I love playing single-player campaigns,” Greene said. “Some of them are just so god damn beautiful and really touching. But I said this as a dream of mine, and maybe someday I would love to. “

“I think the setting on Erangel lends itself to a pretty good idea for a co-op campaign. That’s what I’d like to do, but no plans, I’m not doing it, we have not talked about it internally. It’s just something that I would like to do.”

“I don’t think single player games are dying,” Greene said. “Maybe corporate execs are deciding that they are dying. Single player games are never going away, people love their stories.”

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been a huge success this year; even though the game is still in early access due for full release at the end of this year – So what is it like being in the middle of culturally impactful game?

“It is surreal to me,” Greene said as he shook his head. “Really because the numbers have been so big and I get compared to people like Notch [Minecraft] in some interviews. And it’s like, ‘What, no.’ To be compared to someone like that it’s just surreal.

“It’s gone over my head because these numbers have been insane. But as well I’ve worked in music and entertainment for quite some time over my years and I’ve seen these little superstars, or guys who get a little bit of fame and just act like a f*cking prick,” he continued. “And I hope I never get to that stage where I’m not too big for my boots. I’d hope that someone would slap me down at that stage.”

Earlier in the week I’d had the opportunity to speak to Greene casually while around PAX Australia. When I’d mentioned Game of the Year awards season coming up he humbly acknowledge the many other games he thought that were deserving of it. So during my interview I followed up on this conversation, asking about his thoughts on Game of the year and the vibe I got earlier was that he felt his game wasn’t deserving of the recognition.

“I just feel like we made an island with some very simple rules, and a lot of people like to play it,” Greene explained.

“But Horizon: Zero Dawn, that has been in like 6 years development or something, which is deserving of a game of the year award. Same as [The Legend of] Zelda [Breath of the Wild], that is a masterpiece. I feel that if we took that Game of the Year award off them I’d be doing a disservice to their dev team. They’ve worked so far hard.”

“I’m not saying we don’t deserve Game of the Year, but I think especially this year, those two titles really showed how amazing games can be. I really feel that if we won Game of the Year we’d be taking away a lot from the hard work they’ve really put in. I’d just feel bad, I’d still accept it of course,” he said, laughing. “But I’d feel bad doing it. I really hope we don’t win, I want to see Horizon or Zelda get these accolades because they rightly deserve them.”

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available in early access on Windows PC. It launches on Xbox One on 12 December.