Fortnite may have stolen its thunder and become the mot popular game in the world, but there is little denying that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is in fact responsible for the modern battle royale craze. It spent all last year setting and breaking multiple records, and it was its success that inspired Epic to riff on its concept in the first place.
So, how does it feel to be the progenitor, even if indirectly, of the most popular game in the world? According to Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, he feels pressured regarding his best game now, since now that he is a known quantity, it will have expectations that come with it.
“Yeah, I am dreading my next game, because it’s PlayerUnknown’s Next Game,” he told EDGE in an interview. “And there’s going to be eyes on it. No matter what I do, there’s going to be a lot of critics going, “Well, it’s no PUBG.” And I’ve accepted that – I am not going to make a game that’s going to get like, three million concurrent users, and tens of millions of players every month. But I’m not aiming to make that. I want to make a game I want to play, and if other people want to play it, that’s fantastic – but ultimately, if they don’t, I’ll still have a game that I can play. So that’s my outlook: I’m probably going to get shit on, but that’s okay.”
I get the pressure he feels- surely that’s the kind of pressure Rowling, for instance, must have felt as she moved on from Harry Potter (and maybe this is why she hasn’t moved on from Harry Potter). But as a creator, I hope he feels the need to do something new and fresh again- after all, PUBG itself would not have happened if he had continued to iterate on his past successes, now, would it?