Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene took part in a Reddit AMA this morning, and it was full of honest responses and teases for the future of the game.
Greene was asked if he thought that PUBG’s scale, specifically having to run 80-plus PC’s at a LAN event to get the game up and running, would create difficulties when it comes to competition and esports.
“Simply put, yes!” said Greene. “But, we have a great team here that are working with esport orgs, teams and orgainizers to figure out the best way to move forward with a battle royale esport. Our first event at gamescom taught us a lot, and we plan to keep learning and improving with each successive event.”
PUBG’s gamescom LAN was definitely rough around the edges, with numerous issues having to do with the spectator cameras, scoring system, and certain rules in place. But for a first full-scale LAN, it showed potential.
One of the top questions inquired about the optimization of PUBG’s netcode, which is still sometimes an issue to this day. Lag and desync are quite common, as is the case in many online games.
“I understand your frustrations, and while I can’t speak to specifics about what and how we will optimize the netcode (as it’s beyond my understanding) we will continue to apply optimizations and work to improve all the things you mentioned,” he said. “We are also working to open servers in new regions to ensure all players can play on servers local to them. This just takes time to implement.”
The confirmation of new servers will be a delight to many, as modes like first-person perspective Squads are currently limited to just North America, Europe, and Asia servers.
“I would ask everyone to remember that we are only six months into Early Access and we didn’t expect the level of success we have seen, so we are still playing catch up in a lot of areas,” said Greene. “But as I said before, this is a marathon for us, not a sprint, so improvements will come.”
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Among other topics discussed in the AMA, Greene said that he would love to see a singleplayer campaign added to PUBG down the road, and confirmation that changes are in the works for how the blue “circle of death” works.
“We have been discussing the Blue Zone mechanics internally over the past few weeks and hope to start testing changes soon,” he said. “No ETA as to when this might happen, but we are aware of your feedback in this regard.”
Greene went on to say that he and the team at Bluehole are surprised every day by the numbers that PUBG achieves, like reaching 10 million sales in just five months, or becoming the top game of all-time for concurrent users on Steam. When asked if he’s worried about big-name publishers trying to capitalize on PUBG’s success by making their own battle royale game, Greene reiterated his focus on PUBG.
“Other companies will of course enter the marketplace, but I would just hope they put their own spin on the game-mode and not just make a carbon copy!” he said. “I try not to worry about them, to be honest, and instead just concentrate on completing my vision for a battle royale game.”
