Player Unknown's Battlegrounds - taking the e-sports world by storm

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds - taking the e-sports world by storm

  We've seen games like this before. A militarized battle simulator where players are dropped into an arena, gather weapons and fight their way to glory. It's nothing new, so what is it that separates PUBG from the rest and has caused it to become a worldwide sensation?

Similar games like H1Z1 and DayZ, which currently has around 50,000 and 3000 active players in a day, have lost many of their followers to PUBG and for good reason. The games had many faults that left many people frustrated. Performance issues and lack of server updates to name just a couple.

Here is a comparison of the games' active daily players, taken off of Steam charts.

Daily peek of players on PUBG as of Sept. 28, 2017

Daily peek of players on H1Z1 as of Sept. 28, 2017

Daily peek of players on DayZ as of Sept. 28, 2017

 What is so different about PUBG that has distinguished itself from similar games?

Field Effects

The field effects in PUBG, while not game changing, give players a different atmosphere in which to enjoy the game. Field effects can occur at random, however the fog map is significantly rarer than the others.

Sunset field effect in Player Unknown's Battlegrounds

You have the default map, sunset, fog, rain and clear skies, with more field effects expected to be added in the future. 

The fog that coats the map makes players act more cautiously as it is difficult to see far in front of them. The rain can be pretty loud with the odd thunder and lightning strike making it difficult to hear enemy footsteps and the sunset map, well it just looks fantastic.

 Server dedication and updates

 PUBG has been out since March of 2017 and what makes it such a great game is how often it is updated. Small updates for minor bugs, or large updates that bring in new guns and and features are all included in PUBG's weekly patches. This keeps the game from going stale as new updates are always on the horizon. 

  While you will need a good graphics card to run PUBG on ultra or high settings, the medium and low settings of the game still look quite nice on any moderately priced $150-200 card. I run on a GTX 1060 and am able to obtain around 70-90 frames per second.

The game play  

Image displaying the built in sniper bullet drop indicator

Likely the most important reason for PUBG's overwhelming success lies in the game play. Once  you  truly immerse yourself into the beautiful landscape and live those action packed moments,  you will be instantly hooked. 

You can speed around on a motorcycle, cruise along in SUV, or be a lone wolf and navigate your way through the terrain, just be ready, because traversing through the entire map is a near impossibility due to its incredible scale. 

 Once you've grasped the landscape, you can master the guns. This game is by no means your average shoot em' up game and the realistic capabilities each gun possesses offers a near military simulation of what you would expect with those guns. You'll experience heavy recoil, bullet drop and once you master these unique features, be able to take on foes from up to as high as 800 meters with high powered sniper rifles such as the AWM, Kar 98k, M24 and more.  

The massive exposure

Okay so people are talking about PUBG everywhere. YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and more. All are loaded with clips and highlights of epic clips that content creators are sharing on a global scale. Pewdiepie with his massive 57 million YouTube subscriber following has uploaded many videos on the game and has attributed millions of views because of it. You have multiple North American pro esports teams now covering this game and bringing it tons of followers. Views on Twitch.tv usually amass anywhere from 50,000-100,000 viewers at any given time. Simply put, the media coverage to this game has been monumental to say the least and because of it, the game has shattered countless records. I mean seriously, it has over 1.4 million active users in its six month release. That number is only continuing to climb and Player Unknown's Battlegrounds is on pace to becoming the most popular modern video game we've seen.