PUBG Designer Brendan Greene Says Goodbye To Battle Royale To Explore Other Game Ideas

April 3, 2019 Marc Marasigan Comments

Battle Royale games have been dominating the market for well over a year now with PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds propelling the genre to new heights when it first came out in 2017. Since then developers and publishers have been trying to emulate PUBG’s success. Epic Games developed a last man standing mode for Fortnite, Activision came up with Blackout for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Electronic Arts Entertainment just released their surprise game Apex Legends.

But, like previous gaming trends, the Battle Royale fever isn’t going to last forever. While developers and publishers are still trying to jump into the Battle Royale bandwagon, PUBG designer Brendan Greene, however, is moving on from the Battle Royale genre and will be working with PUBG Corps’s new Amsterdam-based Special Projects Division.

“It wasn't that I wanted to move onto something different, it was that the team we have... you know, I'm super happy with them. They have the reins of battle royale, they know what PUBG and our battle royale is, they understand what we want from the game and what we want to do to it moving forwards, so I saw it as a good chance for me to announce Special Projects.”

When GamesIndustry.biz asked Greene about the projects he’ll be working on, the designer said he can’t go into the details because he doesn’t have them yet but a PUBG sequel won’t be one of them. “The last man standing concept is great, but I've done that. I don't really intend to make PUBG 2. I've done battle royale, it's time to try something else,” says Greene. “There are ideas about how we connect to people and how we provide the different experiences I have.”

When the next project will come out is also anyone’s guess with Greene being given free rein to explore ideas and hopefully come up with the “Next Big Thing”. “There is no deadline here, this is us with a few years to play. Gaming and the industry has become so hard, this is a very lucky thing to have. We can genuinely explore and be curious for some time.”

Greene may no longer be contributing to PUBG and to battle royale in general but he admits he wants to see how the genre evolves over the years. “I want to see battle royale esports,” Greene says. “I'd also like to see battle royale stabilise, and see more people making their own battle royales out of pleasure rather than just trying to make a quick buck. Apex Legends did an amazing job, they didn't hype anything, they just announced and delivered a great game. It's hard to enter the space right now. I don't envy the developer teams with that task.”