How PUBG is trying to win back the West

Few multiplayer games have come close to success and longevity that PUBG: Battlegrounds has enjoyed. Milling through the crowds of PUBG's ninth anniversary fan event at Seoul University, excitement for the game in South Korea is palpable. Thousands of fans are treated to developer Q&As, a magic show from a well-known Korean illusionist, and even a performance from K-Pop band AllDay Project – a recent PUBG collaborator.

Despite being staggeringly popular in east Asia, PUBG – the battle royale that started it all – has fallen out of favor with Western players. Neither PUBG: Battlegrounds director Taehyun Kim nor PUBG IP franchise director Taeseok Jang, are afraid to admit it. But, speaking to GamesRadar+, the pair share ambitious plans to meet the new era of games-as-platforms head-on.

Platformer puzzle

Nine years after its viral launch, PUBG: Battlegrounds continues to draw in hundreds of thousands of players each day. It's an extremely impressive feat, but major hurdles lie ahead, including a diminished Western audience, drawing in the next generation of gamers, and an online entertainment landscape shaped by Fortnite, Roblox, and social media platforms. A behemoth like PUBG has little choice but to follow suit if it's to continue serving chicken dinners across the globe.

With that in mind, Krafton's goal is to turn PUBG into both a "content platform capable of delivering a wide range of gameplay and entertainment experiences" and a "long-lasting global cultural icon" as Jang puts it. Kim elaborates that this is effectively a two-pronged approach involving expanding the game with new modes from partner studios and user-generated content (UGC), while also leveraging collaborations to dig into that cultural aspect – he teases that a music collaboration with "a major Western artist" is on the horizon, for example.

Given that the success of Epic Games' battle royale pivot is almost entirely owed to PUBG's viral popularity, it's both ironic and hardly surprising that PUBG Studios is now looking to Epic for growth strategies. What is surprising is that, while Jang understands Fortnite is technically a competitor to PUBG, that's not how he views things.

"I don't really like that term [competitor], so I don't use it often," he says. "It doesn't matter if it's a game company or publisher, if they push a really strong experience to the audience, I have big respect for them, and I feel like we go on that journey together as a partner."

Despite being focused on the future, Kim also admits that PUBG Studios is a bit late to this 'platformization' trend. "We actually wanted to go with [platformization] earlier, but things have been delayed," he says. "But we're working hard to catch up."

Mira-marred

The starting gun for this catch-up effort is a PvE mode called Xeno Point – a co-op shooter that sees a team work their way through an alien-infested version of the Miramar map, with some rogue-lite mechanics thrown in for good measure. Looting gear ripped from PUBG's sandbox is how you'll slay and survive in Xeno Point, but you'll lose it all on death, save for permanently unlocked skills and Supers.

I got to play a preview of this mode while visiting PUBG Studios and, unfortunately, wasn't exactly thrilled by it. That might have been because I was given a souped-up account with almost all the Super abilities and Blue Chip Skills unlocked and upgraded, but I can't say the enemy or objective design helped either. Fighting waves of exploding spiders and aggressive humanoid aliens in a specific area while a progress bar filled didn't feel particularly fresh, with access to the best gear making objectives trivial, even on a tougher Tier 3 run.

My team then faced a bit of friction fighting the end-of-sector boss but were able to melt it in a hail of bullets once we understood the mechanics. This was much unlike the Tier 4 boss which comprised shooting glowing weak spots while avoiding area-of-effect attacks. The chances of getting revived if knocked down were next to nil thanks to the boss's near-constant barrages that made standing still for even a few seconds fatal, resulting in a sort of death spiral that eventually ended our run for good.

PUBG's core makes Xeno Point easy to pick up, and a good way to warm up or cool down between battle royale chicken dinner attempts. But Kim says that the hope for Xeno Point is for it to be "a natural entry point for players who are not previously familiar with PUBG." I agree that it's a low-stakes way to show a player the ropes of PUBG: Battlegrounds before diving into battle royale, but I don't see Xeno Point being exciting enough on its own to draw new players in.

Beyond Xeno Point, PUBG will be getting a Payday mode in May, made in collaboration with Swedish series developer Starbreeze Studios. I didn't get to preview this, but Kim offered that it's the "same [Payday] gameplay implemented into PUBG", revolving around high-tension heisting. Again, I'm sure PUBG's core can mix well here, but since it sounds like more of the same Payday action, I'm wondering why it exists outside of a bit of PUBG and Payday brand cross-pollination.

Looking further ahead, Krafton's platformization plans extend to the official release of the UGC hub in August, as well as plenty of improvements and new features to the core battle royale mode and console experience. With PC platforms more popular than PlayStation and Xbox in South Korea, meaningfully getting into the more console-oriented Western market seems like a crucial goal for the PUBG team. In the past, Kim admits, Krafton has been unable to capture "what Western users want".

But if you're after a return to the PUBG of old when it was a bit slower-paced, the team isn't looking back. "We don't want to revert it back to the early PUBG days. That's not the plan," says Kim. "But we don't think that's necessarily bad because we're still keeping the core gameplay elements."

Embattled Royale

As well as pressing on with the evolution of PUBG: Battlegrounds, PUBG Studios is working on a slate of separate games set within the same universe, with a shift towards rapid prototyping and validation using early access. We've already seen this in action with PUBG: Blindspot, which was released into early access and closed within two months.

It comes across as cutthroat to kill a game after such a short time, but Jang says Blindspot's development helped them see the value in experimentation and remaining agile. "It also reinforced how important it is to rapidly prototype in small teams and incorporate player feedback into the development process", he says.

With numerous PUBG projects on the horizon, including the extraction shooter spin-off PUBG: Black Budget, there also seems to be a risk of cannibalization, but Jang isn't worried. "Rather than competing with one another," he says, "we aim to share capabilities and experiences to create new gameplay experiences that players can enjoy."

This year will be pivotal for PUBG: Battlegrounds. The next six months will usher in huge expansions and changes for the game that I'm still uncertain of, based on what I've seen so far. Looking longer term, I also have to wonder if following in Fortnite's footsteps is even sustainable after recent layoff woes.

However, Kim remains optimistic and open-minded, saying that there are "many opportunities ahead". "There are a lot of ideas in the back of my head right now," he says. "This is the first time we are attempting UGC, so I think we're going to have to see how it goes."

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