The phenomenon of PUBG - future of eSports or just another FPS?
With the recent explosion of Battle Royale type shooters, somehow PUBG gets the top spot in the hearts of gamers. First launched as a pre-alpha back in June 2016, the game quickly and steadily climbed up the ladder of Twitch viewer base and now proudly sits on the top spot with streamers such as the ex-CS:GO superstar Shroud and the “slick daddy” Dr.Disrespectful both amounting more than 20k viewers per stream. The biggest question everyone asks is whether the game is suited for a high level competitive gaming. Lets try to analyze the situation.
With the recent fluke of Quake Champions and underwhelming results of Overwatch and most importantly the great decrease of interest in CS:GO from both the viewer and player base signals everything looks like people are getting tired of the typical fps games. It seems that the good old objective based match is getting a little old. In my personal perspective what also gets a little confusing is the match formats that are used by these games. Maybe these things are the case of the current situation of competitive fps scene.
Now I’d like to see what exactly attracts players and viewers to the PUBG. First thing that comes to mind is the whole concept of Battle Royale. You put 100 players on the same map and only one of them will survive. It is up to the player to decide his play style. Whether he wants to play aggressive, focus on the kills, loot only when the time calls for it, or play i really slow: not taking any risks, looting as much as possible, choosing when to fight and when to avoid the fire. Aside from that there are other numerous possible things to do in the game. Driving vehicles and boats, trying to get that precious air drop with the AWM in it or just plainly running around screaming nonsenses into the microphone. These are just some of the things you will never get in a classic fps games, such as CS:GO. It’s the amount of choices you can make even before the game starts. You are not forced to take down the entire squad of the enemies, you are not forced to disarm the c4 pack planted by the terrorists and you don’t have to capture that damn flag. It gives the sense of reality that a lot of players are so looking for in the games these days.
But all the good things aside, PUBG and others alike have a built-in flaw that could never make the game we play right now into a full-fledged eSport that could be played on LAN tournaments. Once again it’s the concept of the game it self- 100 players on the same server. It’s simply impossible to make a LAN tournament where 100 players would be playing in the same area whether it’s an arena or a stadium to compete for the top place. Online tournaments still exist, but we can easily agree that a game is considered a real eSport only if it can be played in a LAN situation. Possible solutions? Well there are a couple of those such as narrowing the play zone where the players can land so it can accommodate smaller quantities of players without making the map too big and making the game feel very slow. Another way to improve the situation is just by making the play zone get smaller faster. To me all of this basically defeats the whole purpose of the game. You get so much and by implementing these things in a LAN situation you are basically taking a way half of the fun and uniqueness form the game.
To sum this up, I want to say that games like PUBG have a bright future ahead. In the present day pretty much every single game is aimed to be an eSport at some point. Unfortunately for the developers, some of them are just better without it. It is my firm belief that PUBG is one of them. It should stay as casual as it gets. Meanwhile the developers should focus on new genres of eSport games because nobody wants to see products milked to death. I predict that MOBA games might be the next ones to suffer from this stagnation that CS:GO community is facing right now. Maybe I’m just there to be proven wrong.
Cheers all!













