8 ms·

I don't really like Fortnite, but I'm really really happy for Epic's success. PUBG was a flaming dumpster heap that only caught on because the Battle Royale mec

I don't really like Fortnite, but I'm really really happy for Epic's success. PUBG was a flaming dumpster heap that only caught on because the Battle Royale mechanic is naturally fun and people were clamoring for that type of game. But it was an unqualified mess from a subpar developer, and that always annoyed me because gamers deserved better. Now Epic has been rescued from sliding into obscurity and they've got massive coffers to continue working on Unreal 4. Couldn't have worked out better.

moron4hire 8y ago
"Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean?
- yqh 8y ago
  I understood it as "people who like this genre deserve a game that is not crap"
  - moron4hire 8y ago
    It's difficult for me to imagine a game that 50 million people bought and played for several hours as "crap". It has its warts and there are certainly things I don't like about it, but 50 million people don't accidentally buy Shaq Fu or Big Rigs or whatever is the latest Sonic the Hedgehog game.
- axus 8y ago
  Replace Gamers with "Customers", and better with "a competitive marketplace, instead of a monopoly".
- aphextron 8y ago
  > "Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean? It means they deserve better than all the garbage that's been pushed out over the last 5 years or so since Unity and Unreal became free, and Steam relaxed its submission standards. There's been a massive wave of terrible "games" that people are just forced to accept because they don't know any better. I'm not hating on indie game devs in general, there are of course plenty of amazing ones. But the real problem is this trend of a small group of devs forming a "studio", coming up with really ambitious plans for a huge game after learning Unity for a month, and then releasing early access garbage like PUBG and abandoning it when they realize making a triple-A game takes years of effort by a vast team of expert professionals.
  - kevinventullo 8y ago
    There would be no Fortnite if it wasn't for Brendan Greene aka PlayerUnknown, who is basically single-handedly responsible for creating the Battle Royale game genre. I see no problem in him attempting to make some money on his creation before a AAA giant comes in and sucks the air out of the room.
    - bsagdiyev 8y ago
      That's a mighty large statement. He may have made one of the most popular games but he certainly did not come up with the idea in gaming (Minecraft mods based on movies) or in movies (Battle Royale is a Japanese movie from 2000).
    - techopoly 8y ago
      It's been a point of contention recently, the question of who created battle royale. Perhaps Greene is responsible for the modern iteration of it, but the last-man-standing concept has been around in gaming since Bomberman in 1983. And the concept of battle royale in general was popularized with the Hunger Games and of course the film named Battle Royale. And, "battle royale" as a phrase was used by Ralph Ellison in 1952 in his classic novel Invisible Man, describing a free-for-all boxing match that the protagonist must participate in. So Brendan Greene didn't come up with this out of thin air, or at least he wasn't the first. On the other hand, I see no problem with him trying to profit from it either. Edit: I correct myself -- in Invisible Man, the phrase was "battle royal," not "battle royale." It's still clearly similar however.
      - beetwenty 8y ago
        It was in wrestling before any of those, too. Mirriam-Webster dates it to 1671.
      - Viker 8y ago
        You are just nit picking. He is talking about the closing circle game mechanics. Yes simple but yet genius.
ehsankia 8y ago
The issue with Dayz, H1Z1 and PUBG was that they were made by developers that 1. knew very little about engine optimizations and 2. rushed to add features as quickly as possible with no foresight. This lead to all 3 games being laggy, which is quite bad for a shooter. It also lead to the pace of development slowing down to a crawl after a few months, which I assume was due to their spaghetti code being hard to work with. Epic at least has experience with game engines and development, and have managed to keep up the pace and performance.
- saluki 8y ago
  PUBG has gotten a lot better the past month, it still has the best feel and fun factor of any FPS out right now. See you on Vikendi. Bring your snow jacket.
  - vips7L 8y ago
    I've heard that exact sentence for the past year plus. I'm sure it IS better, but I'm also sure it's still a mess.
    - kaoD 8y ago
      > I'm also sure it's still a mess. Definitely not. Bugs are not a common occurrence currently, while they were present in every single gaming session I had, even for the last year. Give it a try, the game is in a great state.
yoz-y 8y ago
I dunno. I really like Epic and the Fortnite general tone, but as a mobile player I very much prefer PUBG. For one, even with all the talks about bad optimisation, PUBG runs (or at least at the time of launching ran) way better than Fortnite. Fortnite was totally unplayable on iPhone 6S whereas PUBG ran smoothly. Another thing is that Fortnite mixes players from various platforms and thus had to add autofire to the game which ruins the gameplay for me.
- fredophile 8y ago
  Comparing the mobile products is a bit unfair. The mobile version of Fortnite is the same game as the console or PC versions. If you try both the mobile and full version of PUBG it is clear that the mobile version is pretty stripped down. The most obvious difference is probably the interiors of buildings. It's been a while since I tried it but I recall the mobile Fortnite having control options that let you turn off autofire. I'm also pretty sure that matchmaking between mobile and other platforms is opt-in [0]. You shouldn't be up against PC players when you're on your phone. [0] https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/23/17146848/cross-platform-crossplay-ps4-xbox-pc-switch-ios-mobile-enable-friends-compatible-matchmaking https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/23/17146848/cross-platform-cr...
lghh 8y ago
While I agree that PUBG is a dumpster heap technically, it really is a legitimately fun game. I enjoy it much more than Fortnite, and if it performed halfway decently it would be one of my favorite games of all time. I think Fortnite's success is great and it is very clear why it is more popular than PUBG could have ever hoped to be, but I will always be partial to the slow, suffocating, horror of feeling alone in that giant world. Not seeing someone for 10 minutes, but always wondering who is around the next corner is thrilling to me and it's something that Fortnite intentionally lacks.
- MattRix 8y ago
  As a big fan of Fortnite I was ready to disagree with you but that's actually spot on. There is a massive difference in the pacing of the two games, and there are audiences for both.
- Reedx 8y ago
  Yeah, a lot of it really comes down to personal preference. PUBG, H1Z1, Fortnite, Blackout, CS:GO... gameplay wise they all have significant differences.
- kaoD 8y ago
  I'd like to add gun mechanics. PUBG has the best gunplay I've ever played. For me PUBG fights are thrilling, like I was there getting shot at, while Fortnite's (or any other game for that matter) are plain old arcadey. I dislike the building mechanic too. I'd genuinely love for a developer to step up and do a better milsim BR but so far PUBG is king in that niche.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    PUBG definitely took a lot of inspiration from Arma's gunplay, although for whatever reason the glitchy jankiness in Arma annoys me less than it does in PUBG. Maybe because the bugs in PUBG tend to have a greater impact on the outcome of fights.
    - merlincorey 8y ago
akhilcacharya 8y ago
That's ironic, because PubG was miles better optimized and looking than DayZ Standalone or the mod.
- bigodbiel 8y ago
  funnier still, Fortnite initially was piggy-backing off DayZ the zombie survival formula ...
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    That's true! I heard it termed as a minecraft-meets-DayZ. I've been a fan of the "battlegrounds" gameplay mode since I played on Arma 2 Battle Royale servers back in 2012. I'm really glad they became mainstream enough for me to start sucking at them.
ecp9 8y ago
I thought pubg was a remarkable technical achievement, especially after years of tolerating bugs and jank in Arma.
ryanSrich 8y ago
PUBG is a technical mess (but getting better). However, it's a marvel of game design, especially if you've spent more than a few hundred hours playing. The design of the new map (Vikendi) is insanely good (save for a few issues with loot spawning) — in size, topography, speed, etc. They've been able to capture the realistic military style sim, but without the massive player overhead required to learn and be good at those games. The gun mechanics are some of, if not the best I've ever played.
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
PUBG has helped me recover from anxiety & panic attacks. Background: I had undergone a major cervical spine fusion surgery to avoid becoming quadriplegic[1] & have been forced to close my startup which I have been running for ~ 5 years. I have been facing anxiety & panic attacks ~ 3 months after surgery. I had decided to try gaming to aid with the recovery from panic attacks & also to monitor the dexterity of my fingers. I looked for multiplayer TPS games with some realism & accurate weapon mechanics. Fortnite was too colourful & lacked realistic maps (IMO); so I chose PUBG. Initial game sessions made my anxiety worse, especially when a sniper takes you out (or) the impending threat of it. After several sessions, I've learnt to be calm & have improved my tactics. I can definitely say that playing PUBG has definitely helped me recover from my anxiety & panic attacks. Of-course, this might have been the case even if I had played other games including Fornite; but as I said PUBG served my needs. [1]: https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadriplegic-68c0371e6f05 https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...
- decebalus1 8y ago
  Pardon the off-topic, but hello, stranger! So glad I found someone else who also got help from games for their anxiety and panic attacks. I've also undergone some crappy health-related stuff this year and the only thing which I believe pulled me out of it and fixed my crippling anxiety while I recovered was Just Cause 3. I think it was the wingsuit flying coupled with the open-world exploration. It was basically the only activity which could bring my heart rate down to the 60s (It's very counter-intuitive, even for me, how a fast-paced game managed to calm me down) . Not even reading had this effect on me. My friends don't play games and I'm not social at all (twitch, xbox, etc..) so I'm very glad I see someone else in a similar situation.
  - Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
    Hello! Sounds great, BTW there was a reddit AMA from a therapist who researches the intersection of video games & mental health[1] the comments section includes several people who share similar experience as us. I'm planning to try out JC3 for it's interesting game mechanics as you pointed out. One thing I noticed after getting hooked to PUBG was, story based gaming doesn't interest me anymore; I used to be an avid gamer before my entrepreneurial commitments, I would definitely finish the games. Not sure if it is 'endless' nature of PUBG or similar games, which doesn't give the content of having finished a game; makes one hooked to them. I had got NieR:Automata for it's philosophical adventure, but I didn't get back to it since I touched PUBG. P.S I wish good health for you in the coming years. [1]:https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9jona3/i_am_a_therapist_who_clinically_specializes_in/?utm_source=reddit-android https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9jona3/i_am_a_therapi...
makewavesnotwar 8y ago
I think you're missing a lot of what contributed to Fortnite's success. Namely their ripping off of pretty much every one of Valve's most lucrative decisions of the past 10 years and in principle - Free to play. Fortnite was pretty much a failure when it first launched. Sure they copied PUBG's last-man-standing game mode, but what really made it take off was that you didn't have to pay for the game. You could get it, play it, and then upgrade or not upgrade your character as you desired. This is what made it so wildly popular with its base audience of 7-15 year olds. They can't drive, they don't have money, they might have hyper controlling parents that won't let them go out and be proper kids, but if they have a desktop and a reliable internet connection, they can be a part of this game. That's a big selling point for kids. Not to mention if they watch Twitch/Youtube, it would appear to be a potential career path for them to sit on their ass consuming content in an interesting way as they see people like Ninja and Muselk getting rich. As for Fortnite's financial success, again I think this comes down to them ripping off Valve - principally Team Fortress 2. When Valve made the game free to play in 2011, they added other monetization mechanisms like premium cosmetics and taunts. This is exactly how Fortnite has become so huge. Instead of having major entrance barriers like having to own a console or forking over $60 - $100 for a game. You can get it for free and maybe pay a few bucks here or there when it suits you. And parents love it because it gives them a passive way to control their kids at little to no cost. (Unless their the absurd type of people who pay for Fortnite tutors) Not that Gabe Newell or Valve need the money, but Epic has ripped off almost everything from other games for Fortnite. With their massive budget they're basically like Facebook in that they can steal any concept to be produced in house and fight legal battles as necessary. And I think their success compared to what they've ripped off is largely a matter of timing with the rise of services like Twitch, Youtube and Discord than anything specific to their IP.
- disposedtrolley 8y ago
  Not even a desktop; a phone, tablet, console, and god knows what else they release it on. I think another major contributor to Fortnite’s success is the scale of cross-platform play that we’ve rarely seen before. Chances are if you have a thing that can connect to the internet, that thing is capable of running Fortnite. They’re like Facebook not just because they have the money to steal any concept and build it in house, but because in some ways they are a social network. It’s as much as a game as a platform to hang out with your friends and chill.
gameswithgo 8y ago
Pubg has a lot of genius to it that people don’t notice because the implementation was buggy. If you play the game a lot you start to appreciate how good the gunplay is, the weapon balance, the layout of the maps. Every building and bush is carefully considered. Ever notice a tree branch often obscures a window you want to peek? No accident!
- flor1s 8y ago
  That's just good production values that most AAA shooters like CoD and Battlefield have. AAA studios can iterate, hire top talent and do a lot of QA testing, so naturally elements like gunplay, weapon balance and map design can be top notch. I think the genius in PUBG can be found more in seeing the opportunity of creating a standalone realistic Battle Royale shooter at the right time.
nnain 8y ago
> PUBG - an unqualified mess from a subpar developer Wow, you're bitter. Are you talking about Brendan Greene or Chang-han Kim? They wanted to get the game out quickly and with a low budget, and they achieved just that! It's strange to be dissing individual creators of a very successful product in comparison to a big company like Epic games.

moron4hire 8y ago

"Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean?

yqh 8y ago
I understood it as "people who like this genre deserve a game that is not crap"
- moron4hire 8y ago
  It's difficult for me to imagine a game that 50 million people bought and played for several hours as "crap". It has its warts and there are certainly things I don't like about it, but 50 million people don't accidentally buy Shaq Fu or Big Rigs or whatever is the latest Sonic the Hedgehog game.
axus 8y ago
Replace Gamers with "Customers", and better with "a competitive marketplace, instead of a monopoly".
aphextron 8y ago
> "Gamers deserve better"? What is that supposed to mean? It means they deserve better than all the garbage that's been pushed out over the last 5 years or so since Unity and Unreal became free, and Steam relaxed its submission standards. There's been a massive wave of terrible "games" that people are just forced to accept because they don't know any better. I'm not hating on indie game devs in general, there are of course plenty of amazing ones. But the real problem is this trend of a small group of devs forming a "studio", coming up with really ambitious plans for a huge game after learning Unity for a month, and then releasing early access garbage like PUBG and abandoning it when they realize making a triple-A game takes years of effort by a vast team of expert professionals.
- kevinventullo 8y ago
  There would be no Fortnite if it wasn't for Brendan Greene aka PlayerUnknown, who is basically single-handedly responsible for creating the Battle Royale game genre. I see no problem in him attempting to make some money on his creation before a AAA giant comes in and sucks the air out of the room.
  - bsagdiyev 8y ago
    That's a mighty large statement. He may have made one of the most popular games but he certainly did not come up with the idea in gaming (Minecraft mods based on movies) or in movies (Battle Royale is a Japanese movie from 2000).
  - techopoly 8y ago
    It's been a point of contention recently, the question of who created battle royale. Perhaps Greene is responsible for the modern iteration of it, but the last-man-standing concept has been around in gaming since Bomberman in 1983. And the concept of battle royale in general was popularized with the Hunger Games and of course the film named Battle Royale. And, "battle royale" as a phrase was used by Ralph Ellison in 1952 in his classic novel Invisible Man, describing a free-for-all boxing match that the protagonist must participate in. So Brendan Greene didn't come up with this out of thin air, or at least he wasn't the first. On the other hand, I see no problem with him trying to profit from it either. Edit: I correct myself -- in Invisible Man, the phrase was "battle royal," not "battle royale." It's still clearly similar however.
    - beetwenty 8y ago
      It was in wrestling before any of those, too. Mirriam-Webster dates it to 1671.
    - Viker 8y ago
      You are just nit picking. He is talking about the closing circle game mechanics. Yes simple but yet genius.

ehsankia 8y ago

The issue with Dayz, H1Z1 and PUBG was that they were made by developers that 1. knew very little about engine optimizations and 2. rushed to add features as quickly as possible with no foresight. This lead to all 3 games being laggy, which is quite bad for a shooter. It also lead to the pace of development slowing down to a crawl after a few months, which I assume was due to their spaghetti code being hard to work with. Epic at least has experience with game engines and development, and have managed to keep up the pace and performance.

saluki 8y ago
PUBG has gotten a lot better the past month, it still has the best feel and fun factor of any FPS out right now. See you on Vikendi. Bring your snow jacket.
- vips7L 8y ago
  I've heard that exact sentence for the past year plus. I'm sure it IS better, but I'm also sure it's still a mess.
  - kaoD 8y ago
    > I'm also sure it's still a mess. Definitely not. Bugs are not a common occurrence currently, while they were present in every single gaming session I had, even for the last year. Give it a try, the game is in a great state.

yoz-y 8y ago

I dunno. I really like Epic and the Fortnite general tone, but as a mobile player I very much prefer PUBG. For one, even with all the talks about bad optimisation, PUBG runs (or at least at the time of launching ran) way better than Fortnite. Fortnite was totally unplayable on iPhone 6S whereas PUBG ran smoothly. Another thing is that Fortnite mixes players from various platforms and thus had to add autofire to the game which ruins the gameplay for me.

fredophile 8y ago
Comparing the mobile products is a bit unfair. The mobile version of Fortnite is the same game as the console or PC versions. If you try both the mobile and full version of PUBG it is clear that the mobile version is pretty stripped down. The most obvious difference is probably the interiors of buildings. It's been a while since I tried it but I recall the mobile Fortnite having control options that let you turn off autofire. I'm also pretty sure that matchmaking between mobile and other platforms is opt-in [0]. You shouldn't be up against PC players when you're on your phone. [0] https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/23/17146848/cross-platform-crossplay-ps4-xbox-pc-switch-ios-mobile-enable-friends-compatible-matchmaking https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/23/17146848/cross-platform-cr...

lghh 8y ago

While I agree that PUBG is a dumpster heap technically, it really is a legitimately fun game. I enjoy it much more than Fortnite, and if it performed halfway decently it would be one of my favorite games of all time. I think Fortnite's success is great and it is very clear why it is more popular than PUBG could have ever hoped to be, but I will always be partial to the slow, suffocating, horror of feeling alone in that giant world. Not seeing someone for 10 minutes, but always wondering who is around the next corner is thrilling to me and it's something that Fortnite intentionally lacks.

MattRix 8y ago
As a big fan of Fortnite I was ready to disagree with you but that's actually spot on. There is a massive difference in the pacing of the two games, and there are audiences for both.
Reedx 8y ago
Yeah, a lot of it really comes down to personal preference. PUBG, H1Z1, Fortnite, Blackout, CS:GO... gameplay wise they all have significant differences.
kaoD 8y ago
I'd like to add gun mechanics. PUBG has the best gunplay I've ever played. For me PUBG fights are thrilling, like I was there getting shot at, while Fortnite's (or any other game for that matter) are plain old arcadey. I dislike the building mechanic too. I'd genuinely love for a developer to step up and do a better milsim BR but so far PUBG is king in that niche.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  PUBG definitely took a lot of inspiration from Arma's gunplay, although for whatever reason the glitchy jankiness in Arma annoys me less than it does in PUBG. Maybe because the bugs in PUBG tend to have a greater impact on the outcome of fights.
  - merlincorey 8y ago

akhilcacharya 8y ago

That's ironic, because PubG was miles better optimized and looking than DayZ Standalone or the mod.

bigodbiel 8y ago
funnier still, Fortnite initially was piggy-backing off DayZ the zombie survival formula ...
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  That's true! I heard it termed as a minecraft-meets-DayZ. I've been a fan of the "battlegrounds" gameplay mode since I played on Arma 2 Battle Royale servers back in 2012. I'm really glad they became mainstream enough for me to start sucking at them.

ecp9 8y ago

I thought pubg was a remarkable technical achievement, especially after years of tolerating bugs and jank in Arma.

ryanSrich 8y ago

PUBG is a technical mess (but getting better). However, it's a marvel of game design, especially if you've spent more than a few hundred hours playing. The design of the new map (Vikendi) is insanely good (save for a few issues with loot spawning) — in size, topography, speed, etc. They've been able to capture the realistic military style sim, but without the massive player overhead required to learn and be good at those games. The gun mechanics are some of, if not the best I've ever played.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

PUBG has helped me recover from anxiety & panic attacks. Background: I had undergone a major cervical spine fusion surgery to avoid becoming quadriplegic[1] & have been forced to close my startup which I have been running for ~ 5 years. I have been facing anxiety & panic attacks ~ 3 months after surgery. I had decided to try gaming to aid with the recovery from panic attacks & also to monitor the dexterity of my fingers. I looked for multiplayer TPS games with some realism & accurate weapon mechanics. Fortnite was too colourful & lacked realistic maps (IMO); so I chose PUBG. Initial game sessions made my anxiety worse, especially when a sniper takes you out (or) the impending threat of it. After several sessions, I've learnt to be calm & have improved my tactics. I can definitely say that playing PUBG has definitely helped me recover from my anxiety & panic attacks. Of-course, this might have been the case even if I had played other games including Fornite; but as I said PUBG served my needs. [1]: https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadriplegic-68c0371e6f05 https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...

decebalus1 8y ago
Pardon the off-topic, but hello, stranger! So glad I found someone else who also got help from games for their anxiety and panic attacks. I've also undergone some crappy health-related stuff this year and the only thing which I believe pulled me out of it and fixed my crippling anxiety while I recovered was Just Cause 3. I think it was the wingsuit flying coupled with the open-world exploration. It was basically the only activity which could bring my heart rate down to the 60s (It's very counter-intuitive, even for me, how a fast-paced game managed to calm me down) . Not even reading had this effect on me. My friends don't play games and I'm not social at all (twitch, xbox, etc..) so I'm very glad I see someone else in a similar situation.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
  Hello! Sounds great, BTW there was a reddit AMA from a therapist who researches the intersection of video games & mental health[1] the comments section includes several people who share similar experience as us. I'm planning to try out JC3 for it's interesting game mechanics as you pointed out. One thing I noticed after getting hooked to PUBG was, story based gaming doesn't interest me anymore; I used to be an avid gamer before my entrepreneurial commitments, I would definitely finish the games. Not sure if it is 'endless' nature of PUBG or similar games, which doesn't give the content of having finished a game; makes one hooked to them. I had got NieR:Automata for it's philosophical adventure, but I didn't get back to it since I touched PUBG. P.S I wish good health for you in the coming years. [1]:https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9jona3/i_am_a_therapist_who_clinically_specializes_in/?utm_source=reddit-android https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9jona3/i_am_a_therapi...

makewavesnotwar 8y ago

I think you're missing a lot of what contributed to Fortnite's success. Namely their ripping off of pretty much every one of Valve's most lucrative decisions of the past 10 years and in principle - Free to play. Fortnite was pretty much a failure when it first launched. Sure they copied PUBG's last-man-standing game mode, but what really made it take off was that you didn't have to pay for the game. You could get it, play it, and then upgrade or not upgrade your character as you desired. This is what made it so wildly popular with its base audience of 7-15 year olds. They can't drive, they don't have money, they might have hyper controlling parents that won't let them go out and be proper kids, but if they have a desktop and a reliable internet connection, they can be a part of this game. That's a big selling point for kids. Not to mention if they watch Twitch/Youtube, it would appear to be a potential career path for them to sit on their ass consuming content in an interesting way as they see people like Ninja and Muselk getting rich. As for Fortnite's financial success, again I think this comes down to them ripping off Valve - principally Team Fortress 2. When Valve made the game free to play in 2011, they added other monetization mechanisms like premium cosmetics and taunts. This is exactly how Fortnite has become so huge. Instead of having major entrance barriers like having to own a console or forking over $60 - $100 for a game. You can get it for free and maybe pay a few bucks here or there when it suits you. And parents love it because it gives them a passive way to control their kids at little to no cost. (Unless their the absurd type of people who pay for Fortnite tutors) Not that Gabe Newell or Valve need the money, but Epic has ripped off almost everything from other games for Fortnite. With their massive budget they're basically like Facebook in that they can steal any concept to be produced in house and fight legal battles as necessary. And I think their success compared to what they've ripped off is largely a matter of timing with the rise of services like Twitch, Youtube and Discord than anything specific to their IP.

disposedtrolley 8y ago
Not even a desktop; a phone, tablet, console, and god knows what else they release it on. I think another major contributor to Fortnite’s success is the scale of cross-platform play that we’ve rarely seen before. Chances are if you have a thing that can connect to the internet, that thing is capable of running Fortnite. They’re like Facebook not just because they have the money to steal any concept and build it in house, but because in some ways they are a social network. It’s as much as a game as a platform to hang out with your friends and chill.

gameswithgo 8y ago

Pubg has a lot of genius to it that people don’t notice because the implementation was buggy. If you play the game a lot you start to appreciate how good the gunplay is, the weapon balance, the layout of the maps. Every building and bush is carefully considered. Ever notice a tree branch often obscures a window you want to peek? No accident!

flor1s 8y ago
That's just good production values that most AAA shooters like CoD and Battlefield have. AAA studios can iterate, hire top talent and do a lot of QA testing, so naturally elements like gunplay, weapon balance and map design can be top notch. I think the genius in PUBG can be found more in seeing the opportunity of creating a standalone realistic Battle Royale shooter at the right time.

nnain 8y ago

> PUBG - an unqualified mess from a subpar developer Wow, you're bitter. Are you talking about Brendan Greene or Chang-han Kim? They wanted to get the game out quickly and with a low budget, and they achieved just that! It's strange to be dissing individual creators of a very successful product in comparison to a big company like Epic games.