Brendan «PlayerUnknown» Greene: “We have a roadmap in works”

The leading game designed of PUBG has told about the upcoming changes, his favorite team and bugs in the game.

First of all, what do you think about PUBG IEM Katowice? Did you watch it?

I didn’t get a chance because of the time zones. I was in Las-Vegas and the time zones really messed with me. I couldn’t watch a lot of that. But from what I saw - it was great. I think all the companies that work on events are really doing their best to produce events the best they can.

For now, we will have four LAN tournaments in Europe: one in Katowice, one in Kiev and two in Bucharest. What are your thoughts on the esports and LAN events?

All the last year and this year, we have been doing essentially invitationals. Because we are not esports ready. Even tho fans think that we are. We really just want to focus this year on working with professionals, organizations and try to create a good system for a Battle Royal esport. No one had ever made a Battle Royal esport before. And games like League of Legends and CS:GO, esports didn’t happen over a couple of months. It took about three years for LoL to be actually considered an esport. So we are the same. We don’t want to rush there in blind. We want to run events like this with StarLadder, PGL or ESL, get feedback from players and see what is the best way to play this. We were running 20 rounds here because it takes there all the variables. You know if you don’t win after 20 rounds, you can’t blame anyone but yourself. You know that it’s your performance. I am really happy with the way the competitive settings are developing. I think we are getting a great feedback from players and event organizers. This year we don’t really want to push hard into the esports. We want to focus on making a great platform for the esport.

Are you making some special things for the esports? Maybe a special map or something like this?

No, no plans yet. I mean we really want to focus on what we have. We think that Erangel and Miramar are great maps, both require very different types of gameplay. We also have various weather settings that we also need to polish off. There is no point in doing special competitive things. We want everyone to be playing the same game.

In your opinion, how is it better to play: eight games like it was in Katowice or twenty games like there?

I guess that’s why we were doing this event. We have to figure out what format and why is the best one. I don’t really have an opinion. It’s going to be the professionals, the events to decide what the best format is. I think that playing twenty games is a pretty good way to do it. Because it gives you coverage for four days and also it allows teams to catch up if they were behind. I think it’s a good system.

Do you have some favorite team?

I can say that I don’t really like to play favorites but I do like Team SoloMid. Maybe because they have been playing Battle Royal way back since Arma 2, Arma 3. They have been with the game for a long time and they are friends as well. You know, I kinda throw my sword behind them not because of the fact that they are TSM. I have just known them for the longest time and they’ve supported me and the Battle Royal game for a long time. I feel it’s only right to support them.

What can you say about the esports in other regions? For example, China, SEA, Oceania. They are not very popular for now, they don’t have that many qualifiers or tournaments.

This year we are really trying to build the foundation for the esports. Right now we have to focus on certain regions because that’s how many resources we have. But as we get a more solid foundation, there will be a way to expand to more regions. We are a global game and we have interest all over the world. We don’t want to leave any region but it’s just going to take us time to build the structures and the support in places. We can’t do this over a night. We can’t just go there with the esports. It takes years of integration and working with organizations to find out the best way to do this.

Do you have any plans for a new map, a new weather, weapons and stuff like that?

As we have said, we want to add a new content to the game. But right now we are focused on polishing off what we have. We have a roadmap in works at the moment and I work with my team to cope with our plan for this year. We want to show it soon.

And what about a lot of bugs? Two days ago pro-players said that there were wall bugs and other small bugs.

There will always be bugs. We will always get rid of them. Look at CS:GO, they are still fixing bugs these days. The emergence of bugs is the nature of development. You fix one thing and release twenty other problems. We want to fix these things. The only people, that are saying that we are esports ready, are apparently players and fans. You know, we have said that we are not there yet. It’s going to take us time to get to the stage that we can say: “Yes, now we are esports ready”. All these events are meant to test the system, show the bugs, what the problems are, so we can fix them. So when we finally do become esports ready or feel that we are esports ready, then the game will be competitive. It’s a video game development, a hard thing to do.

What do you think about the other Battle Royal game, Fortnite? Did you compare it to your game?

I don’t really pay much attention. I am focused on our game. There is going to be other games that come out and try to copy us or to try to do their own version. I think it’s great for the genre that new and interesting last man standing games will come out. But as we have said before, just doing copies isn’t going to help the genre to grow. You can see the MOBA genre, there are League of Legends and Dota 2. They are two very different games but which are based on a very similar concept. And I hope that will happen in our genre. It will grow and grow and grow. I can’t wait to see what comes out in the next two-three years.

After two LANs in Bucharest, will we see some more LANs that you are planning to do?

Look, LANs are a great way to play Battle Royal tournaments. The players love LANs. We only give more and more opportunities to have LANs but we have no firm plans how it will happen this year.

You have mentioned CS:GO for a couple of times. Do you play or watch any other games?

Oh, I love watching CS:GO. I like to watch Majors, I like it as a game and as a model for us to watch. I think we can learn a lot from the game like CS:GO because they have made things work right. But again we are a unique game and we face our own unique challenges. There is a lack of understanding from some fans like they can say: “Look, CS:GO has 128 tick servers, why can’t Battle Royal have such things?” Because we have one hundred players, many vehicles and we have to simulate whole up more than CS:GO that has ten players. Even bullets are simulated. For example, CS:GO sends one byte of data between all players, that’s one hundred bytes of data and with one hundred players it’s already 10 000 bytes of data. That are different types of games but we can learn a lot from them.

Many people have a dream to go into an esports team. How do you think they can do so?

I think that a lot of esports teams that have happened, they are picking people that are working well on the leaderboards, that are consistent and depending on how they play. And I think that’s how any future star players will be found. Teams will look at the leaderboards: “Okay, this guy is really good, he is consistent, he plays a lot, has good KD”. We want to improve the leaderboard even more but I think that’s the way how a lot of people will be found.

What about BlueHole? Can people somehow have a job in there?

We are hiring now in PUBG Corp. but we have quite high-level requirements. We have tried throwing bags of money in the problem but it doesn’t work. We have to find people with a really good education and a good level of experience. And this takes time, we can’t just hire everyone. We go through a long process to make sure that a person really fits the team. PUBG Corp. is a really new company, we are trying to create our own culture and it takes time to get the right people for this.