PLAYERUNKNOWN: From Mod Creator to Creative Director of PUBG

Uh hello everyone. Uh this feels very much like I'm back in school. Uh if you want to push up, please do. Uh so today I'm going to talk about my journey from uh uh a moder and a real non-gamer to being creative director on PUBG. This is not a technical track. Uh this is more a kind of my personal story over the last 4 years and and how I how I ended up uh being here and talking to you guys. Um I was quite nervous about doing this uh because as I said, it's not a very technical track. I'm not going to be able to tell you how to scale to 3 million CCU. It's you know, that's way out of my uh field of expertise. We have wizards back in Korea that do that and and hopefully uh they'll be able to come and talk uh someday to you guys. So, oh. So, I started in Brazil. Uh I was there for about 6 years total.

Um living, working mainly as a a photographer, um sometimes as a DJ, uh and I really like photography in general because it captures an experience, it captures a moment, and then it's something I've done most of my life. Um I was also a designer uh doing flyers, uh photography for bands, and and other graphic design work. Uh this really helped me coming into gaming as well because as a moder, I uh had to do a lot of the stuff myself from the art for the game to to uh how it was perceived by the the general public. Most of my photography was uh kind of rock event photography, candid photography. Uh as I said, I loved capturing uh a moment, uh something in time that people can look back at and and talk about, and that's kind of uh uh why I like games like Daisy so much

because they kind of create that water cooler moment. Same with PUBG that I meet fans and they talk about the moment they had with their friends. Um and in photography I I I really like capturing moments like that and then having friends look back at a photo and go, "Oh, I remember this." Um So, speaking about Daisy, uh my gaming history, so to speak, uh is is not huge. As I said, I'm not a massive gamer. I was very much a like I growing up I gamed a little. Um my first experience in multiplayer was on Telnet using mods with a friend in college. Uh after that I played, of course, some of the AAA titles like COD and Assassin's Creed, but my first kind of love on multiplayer gaming and my first experience with sort of large-scale multiplayer gaming was at Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. I love this game. Uh it was

you know, it was a realistic simulation. The single player was good, but really it was multiplayer that that really pulled me in, you know? Uh There were so many different maps created by the community. There were different game modes around those maps and there was such a depth of of gameplay available. And it had realistic ballistics and it it, you know, it it simulated a real world, or so I thought, and and I loved that and I I played so many hours of this game and I really, like looking back now and reflecting when writing talks like this, you know, is is you know, really heavily affected me as to what I like in games. Um Then that the servers kind of died in that and and I found America's Army 2. And again, at this stage I wasn't really gaming a whole lot. I would be working on design or or photography and and coming home at night and maybe a few hours. Um and America's Army 2, it really again looking back at I love that type of game. It was your

you know, your mistakes had consequences. If you did something stupid, you died. And and I liked that. I like when a game punishes you as a player because you know, if you if you're not punished, you won't learn and and you won't become better at the game. Um the the idea that you died at the middle of a round and then you couldn't play and you had to watch your teammates. You know, I really liked that. It was it was punishing me and and making me learn. Um So, Battle Royale, why I'm here today. Uh you know, for I was sort of saving to come home in Brazil at the time. Um and I had sort of discovered the DayZ mod. Um I I think I saw a Reddit thread on it or something and and found it found Arma 2. I started playing the DayZ mod and again talking about these kind of experiences in gaming, I remember very clearly the first time one of our our clan got the helicopter on Skalisty Island and and flew it to us and there was this real tension and nervousness

that some other squad would come and wipe us out before we got in the helicopter. And and kind of those kind of moments, it's I fell in love with that sort of open world game. It drew me back to gaming. A lot of the triple-A titles and especially story-driven ones, they didn't deliver what I wanted from a game, which was kind of freedom. Um DayZ really opened up that sort of idea that here's a world, there's a set of rules, go and survive. You know, there's no rules to it. Um Well, there are rules, but you know what I mean. It's the gameplay is invented by you rather than the game. Um so, this this concept I fell in love with and I ran a a DayZ mod server for about 6 months a year. Um there's a guy called Devil Walker. He uh he offered me he said, "Listen, I'll buy a server if you want to add some scripts in." And and we did and we kind of built up a community and you know, we talked with the community and figured out what they wanted from the Daisy server and and it ended up being very much a PvP game rather than

uh survival game. So, we up the loot rates. We We just experimented with you know, how gameplay happened on the server. Uh as I said, it was centered around PvP and it was my my first kind of experience into game making and and level design. And you can see in the background there, there's some like of the uh locations I kind of put in to increase where people got weapons, increase hotspots around the map, and then try to differentiate our Daisy server from the many others. Uh you know, I created this thing called the arena, uh which was again an attempt at level design, an attempt to create a space that we could put players against each other. It you know, it wasn't hugely popular, but it was me trying to figure out, you know, ways to make every every match unique, every sort of situation, and just pit players against each other. So, out of that came Daisy Battle Royale. Uh this was my first kind of experience in

in trying to be the game master and trying to create this game. I had seen um the Survivor Games, uh an event by Brian Hicks and Jordan Tear. Uh hugely popular and a wonderful like riff on the Hunger Games, but in the Daisy mod. And it was streamer only, and I wanted to play and I wasn't a streamer, so I saw some of the stuff they were doing and I I thought I could do it better. You know, the the ever-decreasing circle instead of having a game master decide where the circle was, you know, these kind of things that you were fighting against the computer uh when it came to the the game mode itself. I liked I liked what they did, but as I said, I thought I could do it a little bit better, and Battle Royale was born out of that. Uh it it was me making a game that I wanted to play with my friends. Um I released it some teaser images, as you can see there, on Reddit. Uh it was kind of it was it was uh received quite well, and and when we launched the servers, we really had uh

uh you know, a crazy influx of players. Um I would see the game chat when we launched Battle Royale, and uh people would be saying, "I was trying to get into these servers for 2 days." Now, at the time we had six servers. You know, there weren't many games, and I had to restart servers all by myself the first two or three days. I didn't really sleep because there was no code there to shut down and restart the server. Eventually, Bohemia did add it to the the core code in Arma, so now you can do that, but at the time I had to you know, beg and borrow people to you know, write systems that would do this cuz I'm not a technical person. I don't know how to do this. Even the code for the original, you know, uh DayZ Battle Royale mod, you know, I spent a month writing a timer, you know, just a timer that would just time everything in the game. And this is like very basic code, but you know, it took me that time to to figure out how to do it and get it to work in the sort of the ecosystem of Arma. So, I believed that, you know, building up uh a lore behind the game would also

help people sort of buy into it. Um these are kind of uh early kind of photographs I'd, you know, publish on via my Twitter or or or post to social. Uh the one up on the top, you see the very one of the very first airdrops, I guess, in Battle Royale was when we were testing and I'm getting these photos. Originally, it was started like The Hunger Games. Uh you have the the round circle of uh where the everyone start, and a cornucopia in the center. You know, this was why in in Battlegrounds the the very first alpha test, we we ran people out of a a building because it was harping back to what we'd done in in Arma 2 uh Battle Royale just to see if it worked. Eventually we chucked people out of a plane uh and it's a much better way of doing things. This was the original map for uh Battlegrounds or for Battle Royale. Uh it was uh you know, you can see all the systems there, the blue zone, red zone, and there's the start position where everyone ran from. Um I was really you know, we did

DayZ Battle Royale for about I'd say about 3 months, 4 months total. Uh the DayZ standalone came out um and kind of tore players away from us. But that really kind of gave us the chance to to move to Arma 3 and and pare down to the Battle Royale game what everyone kind of knows today. Uh DayZ Battle Royale was fun for me though because we had zombies. Um it was DayZ, right? And uh I had so much fun spawning, you know, we were coming up with ideas for hordes of zombies and and really like a PvE Battle Royale as well as PvP. Um if you were outside of the zone in those days, we just spawned zombies around you. So you'd see people running into the zone with a trail of zombies. Uh which was uh great fun. Um but I added way too many um cuz I just, you know, I liked that intensity. It's what I loved about DayZ in those early days was that the PvE was like really hard, you know, that you you it was a challenge and and I liked that in a

game. I like dying in games because you know, you want to go back and beat it. Um So I don't know. It's a double slide, sorry. Uh So Arma 3 Battle Royale. Uh this is again, so people had moved to DayZ uh the standalone and uh I decided Arma had come out of alpha and uh I wanted to pare it down, get rid of the PvE elements, well, apart from the red zone. Um uh really pare down what Battle Royale was as as a game mode. Um Uh Over its life of about It's still going today, you know, but at its peak we were getting uh what about 100 or 1,000 CCU, which for a small mod was was we were happy with, you know, we were getting tens of thousands of players every day and and you know, we really had a very strong community. You know, I I've built a team over the last 3 years that now they handle pretty much everything to do with the mod from adding new maps to adding new content to

making changes and you know, they have the same passion for just making a really super simulated Battle Royale in Arma 3. Uh it's you know, over the years the community and it's something we continued into to PUBG was we really wanted to like involve the community because they're the ones that play your game and and getting feedback from them is is so important. Uh In the the early days when I first came to Arma, you know, if you have never gone into the Arma modding community, I I really strongly suggest you do. Um it's there's such a wealth of content and ideas and scripts and and just people playing with the Arma engine, you know, uh I say to anyone that wants to create a 3D shooter e game or anything with a sort of a realistic world, try your your idea in in Arma. Try your idea as a mod for something because there's a huge player base out there. There's still, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that play Arma on a on a daily basis. So, you know, there's

there's people there to play your idea and it really allows you to iterate quite quickly cuz the content is already there and and trust me, there is such a massive amount of content in Arma. Uh you know, you'll be spoiled for ideas. Uh so, again, going back to to Battle Royale, I was really trying to pair down the idea that this was a a random vice. Um It was designed to uh test a player in a moment rather than by a knowledge of a game. I had moved back to Ireland. I was in my parents' house in kind of an office. This was my battle station at the time, which PC Gamer did a feature on, which embarrassed the [ __ ] out of me. But at this time I was still making the mod. I'd moved back to Ireland. They My parents were asking me what was I doing? I was making a mod on Arma 3. I wasn't making money from it, but I had belief that this could be something great. They didn't understand that. They were like, "Would you not think, you know?"

Cuz I was in my mid-30s, you know, I didn't have a career. I was a photographer and a designer, essentially out of work because as a freelance designer and photographer in your 30s in Ireland, it's tough to enter a market. I'd been out for 6 years. So, I was doing this in the hope that something would happen. There's some things I'm very proud of in the Why is this not playing? Uh There we go. No. Ah. So, this is the the loot system in Arma 3. So, this is showing you like how high and low density loot is is spread around the map over uh the course of many rounds, obviously. You know, guys know this, but uh I'm really happy with how it works. You know, we spent a long time trying to figure it out. It's a very basic system, you know, this high-tier and low-tier loot. Then there's high-tier and low-tier areas. Areas. And it just gives the feeling every time that it's a is a random game. You know, I would watch Twitch Twitch streamers talking about the loot system in Arma 3,

about how we change stuff. And I can tell you in about the 2 years that the Arma 3 mod has been popular, we haven't really changed the loot system all that much, you know? The We might change it maybe once every 6 months, but really it doesn't change. But the way it works, it it delivers that kind of uh uh feeling of newness every game. Oh, no. Praise our own Jesus. You know, this is something I very much espouse is like I'm very careful. I talk with our design team who are great and and sometimes it's uh you know, it's hard for me because I really try to get the idea that you shouldn't design the game. You should just create the system and and let people play it. You know, with new modes, it's like we just adapt the systems we have and make new modes. Uh but let the players come up with the actual gameplay because uh they're so inventive. And and some of the ways they choose to play a game is is nothing you can plan.

And you know, I I'm very careful about designing the game to definitely. Um so, leaving it like I love that emergent gameplay. I know it's a buzzword, but you know, Daisy showed me like, "Listen, any story can be the story you want." You know, that you can tell your story and and designing these open world survival PV P games is it's having these games that generate these water cooler moments. Uh you know, it's something I I love that we're able to do these days. In Arma 3, I I reiterated a lot. I I love our game modes with our event server in PUBG. It's kind of expanding on this idea that, you know, we have many ideas for new game modes and we have a lot of stuff internally. I I have history in Arma 3 that you know, it's it's just a great uh thing to be able to play and and provide new experiences for our players. And we want to do that with with our event server. I did street fight, which was based, you know, Altis. It's 20 km by 20 km. It's a massive map in Arma and

it gave me so many different cities that you could just focus a Battle Royale in that city uh with pistols, you know, so fun and and just a different spin on the Battle Royale game mode. War was uh just uh using and and abusing the arsenal in Arma. They had tanks and rocket launchers and you know, heavy artillery. And why not have a Battle Royale like that, you know, because it wasn't done at the time and I thought, "Okay, let's let's play with it." Uh so, at the time, you know, this was we were still getting, you know, a thousand CCU in Arma at this stage. Uh And I was quite happy, but again, I was kind of, you know, looking for a way to make my own game, but there would there was nothing out there for me at at the time. Um I I tried to look into Unreal. I tried to look at making Battle Royale as as a standalone game. I'd reached out to Bohemia and they were just busy with with DayZ and and Arma that they didn't have time. So, you know, uh at this stage I not I had given up, but I was really kind of

wondering what would happen. Um Then H1 happened. Uh So, I'm really I say I'm the luckiest man in gaming and and this is part of this, you know, uh they had mentioned um in a some of their dev talks that uh they liked what I'd done in Arma 3. Um and I thought that was just great. Thanks for mentioning me. You want to help? Uh and sure enough, John Smedley sent me a DM saying, uh "Hi, I'm John. Um uh let's talk." I didn't sleep that night. Uh next day he rang me and uh he offered let let's come to San Diego, talk about adding and licensing the Battle Royale game mode into H1. And uh rest, you know, kind of is history, right? It sort of helped cement the Battle Royale game mode um as a new subgenre, right? It it it H1 really got it in front of a lot more eyeballs. Uh they did some great things, you know, I I saw the the first

invitational. It really kind of showed off, you know, what Battle Royale esports could be. Um you know, I was there in in TwitchCon and uh there were queues of people every day to try to qualify for the finals and we had I think about 2,000 people in the auditorium and a lot of people online watching and and that for me was the first sign, okay. It's what I always thought when I started this that Battle Royale could be an amazing new eSport and and a spectator sport that that has spectacle, right? And seeing this it was the first kind of sign of that and I was really hopeful, but you know, they they wanted to go a uh a a more kind of uh a simpler route than the Battle Royale I wanted. Um so, you know, I let them do their own thing with with H1 and I I moved back to Arma 3. Um So, again, going on the idea that I wanted to create more and more, you know, spins on Battle Royale because modding allows you to do that very very

easily. Um I teamed up with the Iron Front team and this again, this is this is why I love modding, right? It's it's Iron Front the game, you know, is a is a an oldish game and the Arma 3 engine is a great engine and the two teams kind of synced up and and the the company gave the Arma 3 modding team the assets to use or permission to use the assets so they could spin up Iron Front inside Arma 3 with the, you know, advanced ballistics and then and this kind of stuff. So, you know, I love that about modding of this like this older game is now getting rebirthed in in um Arma 3. Uh so, I teamed up with the Iron Front because who doesn't want a World War 2 Battle Royale? And then I decided, right, let's let's see if we could do it. Um this was the trailer we made uh for

So yes, so that's our in front Battle Royale and and this was all the the video was edited by me. Um we know we set up a server and and to record all this and but you know all the stuff I'd done from graphic design to to I was a video editor for photography. It all kind of you know it was all helping create these mods and create these mods with this kind of produce stuff so it looked like okay, this is this is something serious. So H1Z1 released King of the Killers split the games into King of the Kill and and just survive and I got an email um from CH Kim no. Here we go. Right. Uh So I got an email from CH Kim from Bluehole saying hi. Uh I'm a Korean

producer and I wanted to make a Battle Royale game for about 10 years now. I seen what you've done. I love what H1 have done. Would you be interested in coming and talking to us about making a game with us? I had looked into Bluehole and they were an MMO company so obviously I had reservations but I flew to Korea. I met Mr. Kim or Dr. Kim should I say and and Sammy. It was snowy February and it was wonderful. It was I went to Bluehole and it was like a very big family. You know they all have this passion for making well-made games. From the very start you know we went and we drank with a big black bar. I thought this was a glitch earlier but this is us drinking. Um So you know we went drinking, we went talking about what we wanted to accomplish together and the more I talked with uh

CH the more I discovered that you know what he wanted for a game was very much what I wanted, you know, this this platform for a great Battle Royale game and and more than that, you know, that the idea of of modding, the idea of working with the community and be very open in development. So, I decided very quickly to to work with Bluehole. I I moved out. Um I think about 2 weeks later, the day before my 40th birthday, um and we started working on on Battlegrounds. Uh you know, it was very it was crazy in that sort of early days of development cuz we were pushing hard, you know, we we initially wanted to release in about, you know, I think about 9 months and and there was a lot of effort from the team, you know, there was a lot of long days and it wasn't because we like wanted people to work, it was like we all believed those early kind of play tests. Um Those those early iterations on the idea, it was already generating fun

within the company. I remember seeing um when I went to H1, the first time we got a playable Battle Royale in in the game, you know, you had these old devs, you know, of like, you know, veteran devs that were having fun and shouting and screaming at each other and then just enjoying the game and it was the same when we came to Bluehole, those first iterations that we had, you know, the team they would gather behind each other, you know, they would uh you know, look at, you know, cheer on the one winning. It was just a wonderful and it's still to this day, you know, if we're playing play test internally, whoever is winning, there's a group of people watching them. It's a real kind of family atmosphere in the company and it's something I'm I'm very I feel very lucky to have found them. So, we worked hard that first year. Lots of meetings. The team started quite small, you know, we could fit in one room. Um Now we need a very big room. Uh but if this was my first view really into game development. With H1, uh I was not stand off, but I

got to spend very little time in Santa Monica. Here I was living and breathing with the dev team and figuring out and finding out how how games are made, which most of you guys know, I'm sure, but for me this was all new. You know, it was I didn't realize the complications, you know, that I would suggest stuff that we'd like and sometimes the tech director would look at me quite maddeningly, but other times he just slap me down and go no. And it comes from my like lack of understanding of the engine and lack of understanding of what's actually possible. So we had many many meetings. Um We And again, you know, but it was it was wonderful to see that someone would crack something or someone would do something new and the team would just, you know, celebrate it. It's It was a very kind of horizontal structure and it's a credit to uh the man there, Mr. Kim. He like he really he's built such an amazing team. Like when we started we were about 30 strong and these were, you know, people

he had worked with for years, you know, and people he had you know, built up and great friendships with and they they really kind of that first 6 months there were as I said there were only about 30 of us and we worked hard, you know, it was we really had this kind of very specific vision for what we wanted for a game and there were lots of arguments about, you know, how it could go forward of what we should add and what we should not add and I was very you know, hesitant to change the core game mode because, you know, I thought okay, this has worked for so long in Arma. I don't want to add too many things to it because I don't want to over complicate it. It was one of the questions I got very much from the early days was you know, what makes your Battle Royale different? And I didn't want to be different. I just wanted to be good and the good version of what I I to to to make. So, we had lots of disagreements and lots of arguments, but really it made the team stronger and and we grew very close.

Everyone understood the vision and it really helped me this year because you stick your name on a game, you have to do traveling to promote the game and and I was all over the world at at conventions meeting fans and doing press. So, you know, I don't get a lot of time to spend with the dev team and I'm very much I like being there. I like being in person and talking to people rather than writing long and complicated design documents because well, you know, who who likes writing those? They So, doing a lot of traveling and and having that trust in the team that they could do the vision. You know, they could create the vision and again, it's a credit to to CH for for building that kind of team that just understand what we're doing rather than what I'm doing. Um So, we had a very agile system of development. It works great, especially the way that we set it up with CH is agile not agile. Um it worked really well. We we you know, every day, every month we would have meetings to to talk about

you know, how you know, what new features were added. As I said, it was a horizontal structure. So, we had you know, if people suggested new things, they could take ownership of that and it just you know, the revive system, jumping out of the giving people the choice to jump out of the plane. These were all things that came internally and were sort of approved by the team in general. So, it was it was great to see the the game mode grow with the input of you know, all these developers who who just love making games. Um We also did a lot of uh everything internally. You know, we again, we were a small team. We didn't have you know, AV teams to support us and and you know, we recorded dev blogs and and it's something we did a lot last year of like really being open with the the community and I encourage you all to really try to like I've had it since you know, Arma 3 where if you really connect with the community and you get like almost community ambassadors that will tell you or tell

the community what your plans are. So, you know, someone's kicking up a stink in a forum, you've got someone that will step in and go, "Well, no, they're actually doing this." Or, you know, "It's not as bad as you might think." And we did a lot of that last year, really working closely with the community because they really they're they're your kind of voice to the the larger player base and and it's important to to keep in contact with them. You know, we we kind of the last few months we've had our heads down because we've been trying to cope with the road map, but this year we want to get back to how we were last year, how we were so open and and very transparent about what we were doing. It was also, I remember last year like, you know, we'd have these monthly meetings where you would share what you've done this year or what you've done this month, what you've learned and how you can improve. And And these were great meetings because the whole team learned something and and they got to show off like this was our our new water shader for for terrain. And you know, you this is the first time you'd see this and people were just genuinely excited, you know, cuz it just we're trying to create a realistic

Battle Royale and and you know, Bluehole were used to making, you know, MMO or PG games. So, making a realistic game was a challenge, you know, because it was not something they had experienced doing and and they're really doing it so well. At Tess our our world design lead, he you know, he's such a passion for for creating these worlds. And And you know, we're still learning and still improving, but I mean I you'll see with the the the maps we have coming that we're really trying to upgrade and improve every time we release something. Our team keeps growing. This is us just before launch last year when we were still about 40 people strong. Um we had at this stage kind of decided uh you know, we really needed to look into doing things a bit more seriously for the game with our weapons because it was such a a massive part of a PvP game. Pavel, our action and gunplay lead, you know, he took the lead in coming to to Prague and and doing mocap for us. So, we really got a good

character system where picking a stance that we wanted to sort of emulate across the whole character system was very important. It was great also for the team because a lot of them had no experience doing mocap. It's not a it's not a big industry in in Korea. And actually finally flying to Prague to do it rather than doing it in Korea worked out cheaper. Um, uh, it was a great learning experience for the team because they had never seen it done before. So, seeing how mocap and how hard it is and especially as as the director, you know, you're on the floor and you're working with them the actors showing them exactly what you want because getting that vision across and getting those actually just capture is so important. So, Pavel worked his ass off. But, then we we launched and today's a special day because this time last year on the 23rd we launched into early access. And it was a big deal for us. We had many long nights. Uh, we had many long days also, but you know, we I was

worried about going into early access because as I said before, you know, it just feels that if you do early access you have to answer next questions about, you know, all these things. But, it's again it's a credit to the team that I shared this concern with CH and the team and we we ramped up like testing. So, from a very early stage we got a beta into people's hands like even a prototype and let people test it from that early stage and really you know, work with them and and let them know. And even during the beta like there were times we were there till 7:00 8:00 in the morning just because something on the server decided no, not today, right? And it just I don't know like it's running perfectly smoothly the other night and then today no, no, it just it breaks. And but the team, you know, they they just they didn't give up. There was no kind of like, okay, we'll fix this tomorrow. It was like, okay, we have players waiting to play. Let's get them on. And by the time we launched into early access, we had a relatively stable build, you know, it was working, people were having fun. I was watching people

play and you know, I was I was happy that we were getting into early access with something stable. So, you know, where we're now, you know, last year has been crazy, you know, it's been a year, only a year since since launch. And you know, we've I feel so proud of our team because we've accomplished so much, right? You know, we broke 40 million copies worldwide across platforms, you know, we've the number one played game on Steam and the only game to break 3 million. You know, these when I started this 4 years ago, I never thought I'd be saying things like this, right? I mean, 3 million players CCU is just nuts, right? It's I I you know, I did this, which was bizarre. You know, I was, you know, practicing for 2 or 3 days to make sure that, you know, I had my speech right and it was a a crazy thing to be able to say, okay, my game's now on Xbox, right? But, you know, I'm this year looking back, you know, we've we've now got a much bigger team, you know, um

I like my photography, so when I'm back home in Korea, I float around the office with a camera. Um The these are some photos I took that, you know, really show that the scale of what the team is working on now, you know, um Some of these people are here today. He'll be laughing at this. But, you know, we really we've grown to be, you know, a global company now. We we have offices in Amsterdam, we have offices with PUBG Mad Glory in the in New York, we have offices in Madison, in Santa Monica, and in and other small offices around the world. And and seeing the team grow, it hasn't been hard easy for us because, you know, finding the right people it really takes a lot of time, you know, because we're trying not only to find people but we're trying to create a culture, you know, and trying to create a a company that can grow and be here for, you know, 5 10 years in the future. And and that takes time because, as I said, you want to find the right people but you know, this year it's been amazing for us. You know, we we handed a 100

grand to Gamers Outreach. We've done many more charity events and it's something I'm I'm very proud to be able to say I work with PUBG because they're committed to doing this. Since since Arma days I've always wanted to give back and and wanted to help, you know, those less fortunate and and having a company that go, "Yep, let's do that, too." is is an amazing thing to have. I signed a frying pan for Neymar. Like And I get to look like a gangster boss. So, you know, me traveling around the world it it's tough on on development because I'm not there and but again it's a credit to the team and, you know, there are some of the team here, right? Can you stand up for a second, please? Yeah, don't be shy. Koreans are shy. But this this is our team. Well, some of our team. There are more floating about but it's hard to take a company now that we're

what 300 people strong, you know, everywhere. So, but I I really know I'm honored to work with them, you know, they're and as well like other like we did this at StarLadder, you know, this Well, not we did this. StarLadder did this. But you know, seeing now PUBG in the Battle Royale as an e-sport really starting to grow. We have we've PGL on this weekend and the way that they're using tech to offer you different ways to spectate the game and you know, really seeing this starting to grow, it delights me. It's It's where I've always imagined a Battle Royale as an esport spectacle in esports where you have 100 people and the first person to lose having to get up and walk off in front of a stadium of 25,000 people, you know, it's that kind of stuff really excites me. Um You know, as a game where we're going, you know, as I said, we're really committed to creating these realistic worlds. Um you know, Surge, one of our terrain artists, he just loves terrain and and he loves really trying to make

our terrains more and more realistic with uh our new 8x8 map coming out later this year, he spent a long time working on it and it it really shows. It It's a beautiful kind of upgrade to to our previous maps and you know, we want to go back to previous maps and look at improving those and just continually upgrade, you know, and again, we want to add more, you know, elements to increase that sort of pull realism. I've always imagined Battlegrounds as you're playing a movie, right? Um we want to expand on our custom games because that's where I really feel that, you know, we let our players create games themselves and then really give them We can't promise full modding, you know, because there's security issues. We're trying to be a competitive game, so you know, we have to limit what you can actually do, but with custom games, we really want to give you kind of fine grain control over the game via UI, but still allow you to to mess and play with these Battlegrounds to create your own

game modes. You know, as I said, we've got, you know, lots of new content coming out this year and as I keep saying, we really want to invest in esports and and you know, last year we had to sort of build the game and this year we get to polish off the game, you know, really add the extra out game features we need and and really kind of start to invest in esports and as I said, like you have things like Starladder, PGL, ESL. They all put on these wonderful uh invitationals and it gives us so much knowledge to to try to improve what we do next. So, you know, this year we really want to focus on that. And as I said, we're growing we're growing globally now and you know, it takes time to get these teams in place, but it really will help us sustain the game. So, that's it for me. Um before I go, uh just because it's GDC and I should show you something new, um I want to show you uh a small preview of our new map that we're releasing shortly. Um it's This is going to be a a 4x4 map, much more intense, 100 players and uh I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Uh

so, that's what it looks like. This may start playing. Um There we go. Uh So, yeah, it's a much smaller map, uh much more uniform, um and in a kind of a Southeast Asian feel. Now, this this is very early, right? So, uh forgive. Um But, I'm looking forward to it because it's going to be much more intense, right? Um it's it harks back to my days of creating these other game modes within Arma because, you know, Battle Royale is a fun experience, that that sort of ever-decreasing circle and that random game every time. So, you know, I just want to try lots and lots of more ideas. So, that's it for me. Uh if you've got questions, um please line up. Uh yeah, thank you very much. Hi. Hello. Well, the whole thing off.

Uh just had a question for you. How did you choose balancing uh stuff from sim games like Arma and some of the more arcadey stuff like H1Z1 so like your driving and stuff. Like how Where did you make those decisions of to what to include and what not to? It was more we all we looked at it all was kind of as a split between Arma and and H1. Um, you know, the the body sim is quite simple, you know, we've got pretty simple hit boxes. Um, you know, we're still improving that, but we really want to uh you know, come or somewhere between because I like the real I like the choice of of weapons. I like the choice of attachments in Arma and bringing that into our game was like sort of a you know, obvious to us, but yeah, I don't know. It was just we always kind of went 50/50 between them. It was cuz I like my military, but you know, I like the ease and even in Arma I really stripped back a lot of the the features of Arma like fatigue and stuff because I wanted to be that little bit more arcadey.

Cool. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Hi. Uh when you moved to the Arma mod, uh did you um why did you drop the PVE elements? Was that kind of just because it wasn't easily available to you? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there were no zombie mods and whether were zombie mods in Arma 3, but nothing I would use and I wanted to kind of it to be a fresh start, you know, for the for the game mode that it was this was a differentiator from Daisy Battle Royale. This was PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale. So, again, just focusing on the PVP cuz that's what I loved. Okay. Is that an element you think you might explore again? Well, we now have like our our zombies game mode. Uh so, um you know, a Korean streamer came up with it on his stream and we put it into the game and we have our zombie models and I I swear to God like zombies that aren't AI and are other players are so much more fun. Uh you know, I've seen videos where they're hiding in the grass and suddenly he's off 40 zombies pop up. Uh so, I really want to re we really want to kind of explore that a bit further and kind of increase you know, how that kind of game mode can

be played. Um given what you know now over the past year, would you think about monetizing PUBG any differently than what you ended up doing? No, not really. Like I'm a big fan of the the crate and and skin system, you know, I think in in in CS it it it works, you know, it provides a sustainable economy and I see it every day with, you know, players that meet me going, "Oh, well, thank you, you know, I sold this on I got this skin and I sold it and now I don't need to buy games for the next year, you know, that this kind of idea that it does work. It's somehow it's not fair a lot of the times, but you know, in order to have that economy, you know, it needs to be a certain way and I think it's a great way to sustain the game. Yeah. So, I mean too with going free-to-play instead of doing a box price at the beginning, they're trying to get like a higher Oh, no, I mean we we always wanted to to have a box price. That was the aim here, you know, we didn't think about going free-to-play. It's a different model and and you know, we we we never thought, yeah, we always had a box price in mind.

Hey. Just just shout. Uh so, I guess just like what are your thoughts on Fortnite? How do you think that affects I have many thoughts. Uh No, it's great. Like I mean it's great that you know, the Battle Royale space is expanding and that like you know, Fortnite is getting Battle Royale game mode into hands of a lot more people. So, you know, it it grows the genre, right? I mean and that's it really. I mean I'm just happy that more and more people are getting to see games and and getting to play games and if this year I think we're going to see a big expansion in in in, you know, the amount of people that actually come and and and try games. I know my partner played PUBG Mobile and messaged me like two hours two hours after she had she was was going to bed, you know, saying, "I finally killed someone." You know, that this just she doesn't stop playing now. Um but you know, it's just great to see like I get asked these questions sometimes of

like, you know, what are you doing to combat this? You know, I got it when when we came out, you know, we were killing H1 or you know, when H1 came out it was killing Arma 3. And I never said it to kill other people's games. You know, I I don't understand this m- attitude. Like, you're devs. You get it, you know? Like, we're all relatively friendly here. You know, we don't have a in real life GDC Battle Royale to see whose game comes out, right? So, you know, this we have to kind of I I really tried to combat that perception that I want other people's games to die, you know? It's like it's great that more people are exploring the space and more people are getting to play games. I was curious how you go about testing these large-format game types. You know, 100 players. Do you start with 50? Start with 25? Does the number really matter cuz it's just pockets of combat anyway? Oh, it does matter. I mean, when we started off we did have very limited QA. So, we'd have like 30-player or 20-player Battle Royales. And they're fine to test the loot system, to test, you know? But, you know, for actual large-scale combat, they you know, it

does get tricky. But, we started off very early. You know, we had a our pre-alpha builds where we invited maybe 600 to 1,000 um players of H1, of Arma 3. And not just streamers, but just players who from the community to come and and to help us test. And we ran these these tests on kind of a monthly basis where we we just improve something and and and run it again. So, we involved the community from a very early stage because with the multiplayer game, you have to have a a lot of testing, right? And and and involving your community from that stage, you know, they shouldn't see the game. The game doesn't look anything like what you want it to look like. Um but, for a multiplayer game, I strongly advocate getting that community in and letting them play. Um how did all that work before you had a a large community? So, your earlier months Differently. Uh you know, now like like we had uh the the server infrastructure was designed for like a million CCU because we thought that's double Dota. We're not hitting a million. And then we passed 2

million in 6 months. So, you know, we had to rewrite everything, right? So, going to that scale, you have to be careful about things you roll out, you know, because, you know, one thing or another, some the community may not like it. We rolled out a change to to looting that the community just hated, and we had to roll it back. But, you know, having the community will tell you very quickly if if they don't like your ideas. And that's why this year we want to go back to like getting running an experimental test server, getting community uh content much quicker so they can give us feedback because, you know, it's very easy to release something that you think they want, but then the community will very No, we don't want that. Why Why are you doing this? So, you know, at that scale, we just we really think like iteration and a lot of testing now at this scale uh will really help us get good content out. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Uh what are your thoughts on using like bots and like NPCs basically to populate servers early on in a game's life or to like Astroturf a new player? Is that something you guys do, especially with like the mobile version? Or and do you

think there are pros and cons to that approach? I mean, I I know on the mobile version there's been there's been talk of bots. Um I I don't actually know. Um but uh you know, I I From what I've heard from a lot of people is that it eases them into the game a lot quicker, you know? Like I mean, I think as you play the game more, they they get much much less. But, you know, I think uh it eases you in because it's a tough game, you know? Um Battle Royale is not easy, you know? I think I the odds to win your first game um are 1 in 6,000. So, I think it's like double the chance to get struck by lightning. So, you know, having systems like this like it just helps you ease into the game. So, I don't see it necessarily see them as a a super bad thing. Thanks. I wanted to ask about what are your thoughts about when is a bug okay to go to production? So, as an example, I was driving and Uh No, I mean

Yeah, sorry. I mean for as an example, I was driving in a Jeep and I collided with a grenade which was stuck mid-air and had this huge collision. My friends and I all thought it was hilarious which was part of actually one of the things that we enjoyed which I think is interesting. But I was just curious if there if that was sort of a part of the intent where you know, like we're going to ship this out early, it's intentionally buggy, but you'll run into sort of these fun random things that you will happen or Yeah, I was just curious what your thoughts were. I don't think any game dev wants the game to be a buggy you know, mess when they release. But you know, there were there are bugs in Battle Royale and there's like you know, there's issues because of like what we have to do. So there's like 100 players and 200 vehicles and simulating that amount of stuff especially with server and then client, it can lead to all kinds of physics problems and uh but you know, it game development is inherently buggy. So we you know, we released a map with the blue zone very early in development. So you know, you got to see all the bugs.

You know, the the bugs that maybe triple A companies would go no, you can't see this. But I love it. You know, it creates content. You know, bugs in games are funny. You know, we have the PUBG rocket program. It's you know, it's provided many many hours of entertainment online. Cool. Thanks. Thanks, man. Is that it? Nope. So um I know that you mentioned The Hunger Games, but I was wondering if the the original Battle Royale Japanese film, I think 2000 2001, was that part of the inspiration? 100%. I mean I've never seen anybody mention that like so Oh, yeah, no. So Battle Royale came like so when I first had the idea to make a mod, there was a guy that was that was friends with me. He was a designer and he was saying, "Oh, we should do the the Daisy Hunger Games, right?" And the Survivor Games existed, so I didn't really like that idea. And uh

during that week, he we weren't talking, and I I remember I'd seen something to do with Battle Royale, and I loved that movie, so I kind of looked and went, "Okay, this can be a last man standing. This doesn't have to be teams. It doesn't have to be." And I looked at the Battle Royale movie. It's very loosely connected, you know, to to Battle Royale movie, but I just loved the name, right? And even in the game, you know, we have a frying pan because I thought there's a frying pan in the Battle Royale movie, and it's a nice tribute to add. There is no frying pan in the Battle Royale movie. Uh there's a saucepan lid, um but no frying pan. So, you know, that's a mistake, you know, it's the the frying pan being um bulletproof, again, is a mistake. It's not We were testing it internally. I talked with the design team and went, "Listen, can we try to do this and see if it works?" It worked. Then we forgot to take it out of the build. Build got pushed to live, and now we have bulletproof frying pans. Um so, you know, a lot of this stuff was like beautiful mistakes, but the Battle Royale movie it really didn't inspire me. Like the red zone is because I couldn't do a collar for people. So, I

thought there's a way to, you know, threaten death upon people by, you know, this red zone. Um I couldn't do squares like they have in the movie because I wasn't a good enough coder, and circles are hard. Um so, or no, squares are hard, so I did a circle shrinking, and and that's why that exists. So, a lot of this stuff came from inspired by Battle Royale, but having to do it my way because I didn't know another way to do it. Awesome. Thank you. No, thank you. Yeah? We done? Nice. Um we're done. Thank you, guys.