PUBG designer Brendan Greene said he is done with battle royales

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds designer Brendan Greene is done with battle royales. 

“The last man standing concept is great, but I’m done with that. I don’t really intend to make PUBG 2,” Greene told Game Industry Biz. 

Based in Amsterdam for the past few months, Greene has instead moved on to PUBG Corp’s new Special Projects division. While no concrete concept has been announced for the team, Greene’s initial announcement said they are “exploring, experimenting, and creating new technologies, tools, pipelines, and gameplay.” 

In other words, Greene is hoping to take what’s in his mind and turn it into “something that may be playable.” 

So far, the Special Projects division is focused on team building, so no game concepts have been announced. Still, Greene admitted PUBG Corp’s next game would “explore online experiences” and hopefully connect people in ways they havne’t already. 

“I think I’ve provided others with a good way of killing each other. But I want to explore some other things,” he said. 

Greene knows the PUBG team was lucky in being a part of PUBG’s initial success. He said it was more successful than any of them thought it ever would be. But now they want to take advantage of this opportunity by taking a few years to come up with a concept just as innovative, instead of “frittering away years doing stupid things.” 

Many people wonder if PUBG Corp was choosing to move away from the battle royal scene because of the success of games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends, which have grown wildly popular in the wake of PUBG’s ascent. But Greene seems hopeful that even more games will take part in the evergreen battle royal genre. He’s even keen on specific games like For Honor to make the jump into the genre.

“It’s wonderful to see this level of creativity around what I thought was a simple idea,” he said. 

Greene is also hoping for battle royales to make an even bigger impact in the eports scene. But he knows that the genre has to stabilize a bit in order for it to reach that goal. 

“I want to see more people making their own battle royales out of pleasure, rather than just trying to make a quick buck,” he said.