PUBG: Battlegrounds celebrated its seventh birthday this year and is still going mighty. The free-to-play battle royale shooter has welcomed millions of players from around the world over the past seven years, and the development team has focused on releasing fresh content and updates to keep this massive community engaged.
“The most important thing I’ve learned over the past seven years is how important fans are,” said Taehyun Kim, production director of PUBG: Battlegrounds. “Our game has been supported globally and played in many countries around the world. So we’re constantly looking for ways to please different countries and different fans.”
Kim has been a member of the PUBG team since early development in 2016. He rose to the position of Production Director, where he is currently responsible for overseeing all aspects of the game’s development. We had the chance to sit down and chat with him in Cologne, Germany, where he and his team were present at gamescom.
Throughout our discussion, Kim emphasized how significant he believes it is for developers to stay connected to their player base, even stepping outside of his comfort zone to publicly engage with fans in fresh ways.
“I had a live broadcast with Korean users and it was really, really hard,” Kim said. “I’m a programmer, not a professional presenter, so I was scared. ‘Oh, what if I make a mistake in front of so many people in real time?’ But I think of course it’s hard, but I have to challenge myself and keep trying.”
That’s one of the reasons he came to Cologne. He attended PUBG: Hot Drop Cologne, a live event that allowed fans to meet the game’s creators, partners, and other special guests. It was one of the first times Kim had direct contact with Western gamers, and it’s something he wants to continue to improve.
“I’m Korean and I’m more comfortable speaking Korean, so I communicated with Korean users through live streaming,” he said. “But that was kind of my preparation for communicating more effectively with Western and English-speaking users. We’re currently looking to the future and finding different ways to communicate more effectively with our users around the world. So starting with this gamescom, we’ll continue these efforts to communicate with our fans.”
Of course, building a community is about more than just connecting developers with players. It’s also about allowing players to connect with each other. August was Clan Month, which added weekly clan challenges and a fresh reward system. It also allowed players to join fan clans of eight popular esports teams. This all leads up to a special tournament at the end of the month, when clan members have the chance to team up with professional players.
“Regarding the clan system, we want to offer our players an environment where they can create a new community and enjoy the game together, can complete missions together, and can earn rewards together,” Kim said. “This way, they can enjoy the game while having more fun with their teammates and clan members.”
Kim and his team also know that in order for the community to stay busy, it needs updates and fresh content. He emphasized that he and the development team have a clear design philosophy and are very careful about what actually gets included in the game.
“Through our communication events in Korea, I learned that it’s more important not to do something big, but to do something consistently,” he said. “Our theme is survival, so we don’t want to undermine that basic gameplay.”
With a player base as enormous and diverse as PUBG, player feedback comes from every corner of the world. Different players want different things, some of which are at odds with each other. That’s why Kim and his team have to keep this design philosophy in mind at all times.
“For us, community feedback is very important, but we get a lot of feedback from many countries and many types of users,” he said. “Sometimes the feedback is very different, even for a single feature. That’s why we think it’s important to take into account feedback that is more relevant to our game, and we also need to set a benchmark that the process of taking it into account shouldn’t undermine our core gameplay.”
As always, PUBG: Battlegrounds has a lot to offer players. A zombie mode is on the way, an update to Unreal Engine 5 has been in the works for a while now, and Kim said he has plans for many other things that he can’t reveal just yet. If you want to get in on the action, you can download PUBG: Battlegrounds for free on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and the mobile version is available on iOS and Android.
