Games
Just how did an Early Access shooter end up in the running for Game of 2017? We asked Mr Chicken Dinner himself, Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene.
The success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is something that no early access game, with perhaps the exception of Minecraft, which predates Steam’s beta game section, has ever managed to achieve. At one point it was the second most popular title on Steam, only sitting behind the massive eSport Dota 2. Millions of people have joined in the craze in an attempt to win a chicken dinner or two and it shows no sign of slowing down, with sales continuing to roll in every day.
PUBG is not the first game of its kind – a survivalist battle royale with permadeath – and there are others that are much further along in their development cycle, but it is undoubtedly the most popular. One of the main reasons for that is that the titular creator, Irish journeyman developer Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, has worked on almost all of the major competitors to PUBG – and this is him putting together all of that experience into one title. He joined forces with publisher Bluehole last year and hasn’t looked back since.
“We have been working on the game since March 2016, and until we hit Early Access launch, the team size was about 40 persons,” Greene, 41, tells Red Bull Games. “Since launch, we have been expanding, and now number about 100 plus strong.”
With so much attention at launch the team have needed to expand to meet the demands and needs of the players, who have certainly wanted quite a bit from the development team. With peaks of hundreds of thousands of players at the same time all hoping the odds will be ever in their favour, the team has had to work hard to make sure that everything stays stable and works as intended. It hasn't always been smooth sailing, with a few outages, but they have done pretty well in that department.
“The launch was pretty smooth for us,” says Greene. “We had multiple alpha and beta test periods before we hit Early Access on Steam, so we had time to ensure the server platform system was ready for large number of players. That said, given our current levels of success we are working hard to upgrade the platform as it was not designed to handle the CCU we are currently seeing.”
Of course with so many players competing every second, some have managed to devise some interesting strategies. Some like to hide for as long as possible, others try to hunt down other players from the first seconds, using whatever arsenal they find at their drop location. Some of these tactics have been called questionable for some, but are there any that the development team aren't a fan of? Can you cheese your way to a chicken dinner [the prize for the last player standing]?
There is no wrong way, there is only chicken dinner
“Not one! How you chose to win a game is a personal choice,” says Greene when asked if there are any tactics players have come up with that he considers unsporting. “There is no wrong way, there is only chicken dinner. We have a lot of work to do on balance in the game. We have still a few weapons to add, and this will change, again, how the loot is balanced on the map. One of the benefits of using Steam Early Access is that it allows us to better balance the game based on a large amount of “real player” feedback.”
Player feedback has already shaped the game in a noticeable way. The community is not afraid to tell the team when they don’t like something, and at times this has caused friction between the team and the player base. However, one area that has remained almost unchanged since PUBG launched is the sole map in the game. Some have called for it to be tweaked in certain areas – but Greene doesn’t think it needs to be changed just yet.
“I think the art team has done a great job on creating a map with a diverse selection of areas to fight in,” says Greene. “This was our team’s first realistic map, and we have learned a lot from the past years development. On our new maps, you will see this education in practice. We also hope to maybe revisit the current map in the future and give it a refresh.”
Fortunately the early access model PUBG launched with means that players expect there to be a few issues here and there, and know that more and more content will be added in the coming weeks and months. When Bluehole announced that PUBG will be coming to the Xbox One, some wondered how it would work in terms of this early access model, but fortunately the Xbox Preview Program will allow the team to continue with a similar model on console.
“We saw the Xbox Game Preview Program as a great fit for PUBG,” says Greene. “Like Steam Early Access, it will allow us to develop and polish the game for console with the feedback of actual players. We are hoping to have feature parity between the two versions and since we are using Unreal Engine, we mostly need to focus on optimization as the game already runs as is on our internal dev kits. Since we are still in development, it is still too early to confirm anything on that front.”
Currently Xbox One is the only console PUBG is confirmed for, and with Microsoft publishing the game on their platform that may be the case for at least a few years. However there are other consoles out there, and one interesting option is the Nintendo Switch. Chances are PUBG in it’s current state wouldn't run on the Switch, but could we see that happen in a few year’s time?
“[PUBG on Switch] is honestly something I haven’t even thought about! For now, I really just want to focus on getting the game running well on PC and console,” says Greene. “I don’t think that far in the future really, that’s my boss's job. But ever since I first started the battle royale game-mode in Arma 2, I have always wanted a battle royale based eSport. So for me, I want to see a PUBG Major. How long that will take, we’ll see!”
It’s clear that Greene has a lot of plans for his game over the next few months. His team have partnered with ESL to get the ball rolling on the eSports front; he continues to work with Microsoft on the Xbox port and PC development continues at the same rapid pace. It really does look like he and Bluehole are doing everything to make PUBG the biggest game on Steam. But there is one question that has bugged us for a while: why use the name PlayerUnknown?
“The default name in Arma 2 was PLAYER 1, so when I needed to create a new character for a server I was helping on, I changed it to PLAYERUNKNOWN and I have been using it since,” says Greene.
Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? That’s up for debate, but what isn’t are those all important chicken dinners. How many has PlayerUnknown himself, the game’s creator, managed to get in his own game?
“Just a single one on PUBG. But a chicken dinner is a chicken dinner!”
Perhaps there’s hope for all of us Battlegrounds noobs yet.
