It’s likely that 2018 will be remembered as the year of battle royale in the gaming industry. But it’s 2019, and game developers need to find the next hit before the popularity of battle royale fades. That’s why developers like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ Brendan Greene has set his sights on something completely different.
“Together with a team of game developers and researchers,” Greene announced via Twitter last month, “we will explore new possibilities of interaction and connection within the game space.” However, it doesn’t end there. For him, that means the end of battle royale.
He was careful not to say that battle royale was “over” in his interview with Gamesindustry.biz, but he did say that rest of the PUBG developers “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 he saw this as an opportunity to move to the next project.
Unfortunately, he won’t say what that next project is going to be because he’s still in the team-building phase, but he did say that he has time to explore. “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.” Essentially, because of the huge success of PUBG, Greene is able to research and develop new ideas and just explore.
According to Greene, battle royale still has room to grow. He used esports as an example of where battle royale could go. But for him, he wants “to have some fun but also see if [he and his new team] can do some good.”
