A few weeks ago, we learned that Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown' Greene would be moving away from PUBG development after five years on the project. The game will continue to be supported but in the meantime, PlayerUnknown himself will be heading up a new division called ‘PUBG Special Projects'. This week, Greene spoke a bit about what the special projects team will be working on, and it won't be a sequel to PUBG.
Greene's new special project team is working out of an office in Amsterdam, away from the South Korean offices of the PUBG development squad. Speaking with GI.biz, Greene made it clear that multiplayer gaming is still the focus but battle royale won't play a role this time around: “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. There are ideas about how we connect to people and how we provide the different experiences I have.”
The Special Projects group was announced ahead of GDC, so at the show, the current members of the team got to recruiting. Thanks to the sheer amount of money PUBG brought in, this team will be free to start “exploring, experimenting and creating new technologies” without worrying about turning a profit.
“We're not doing this for profit, eventually someday, we may do, but right now it's just about having time to explore. There is no deadline here, this is us with a few years to play”.
The Special Projects group likely won't be announcing anything for a good long while. Greene turned the multiplayer gaming world on its head once with Battle Royale, it will be interesting to see what the next big multiplayer idea ends up being.
KitGuru Says: Greene began his game development career as an ARMA modder and has managed to turn that into an entire new genre of gaming that most companies currently want a piece of. It'll be a while until we see what comes next. Personally, I'd like to see more time invested in crafting a ‘killer app' for multiplayer VR. What do you guys think the Special Projects group might be working on?