What does PUBG's popularity say about the foreseeable future of games?

OhhPaigey

A game that's a complete bug fest, nowhere close to being polished, very little content, no real progression, just randomly dropping, looting and killing. And this is the most played game on Steam by an insane amount at all times of the day.

Really, is this not alarming? I personally find this appalling for two reasons. The first reason being that this is obviously what the majority of gamers are actually enjoying nowadays. And the second reason, what does this say about other releases, and why haven't they been able to share the same level success? You know.. actual completed games, that are pretty polished and bug free. How does something unoriginal, unpolished & unfinished blow these other AAA games out of the water?

I don't mean to come off as hating on PUBG, I've enjoyed my time with it, messing around with friends. And I'm somebody who has thousands of hours into previous Call of Duty's, so I understand how progression and variance in gameplay are not always the deciding factors between a success or failure, but the levels of success PUBG is reaching is phenomenal, and in my honest opinion, unwarranted.

What does this say for the future of games in general? Are we really about to head into a half decade or more of battle royale copycat games being at the forefront of the gaming community?

Typical disclaimer for the angsty forum dwellers who have 0.1 second enrage timers: My purpose here is not to roast the game, people who are enjoying it, or the devs. I can understand why a game like this is popular, I just don't understand how it got THIS popular. I'm merely trying to create a discussion to see how other people are viewing PUBG's success. And by no means am I trying to discredit PUBG or the devs for what they've accomplished thus far.

pantaro

Well compared to triple A games that doesnt surprise me lol if you ask me PUBG is the same as most triple A games hot garbage! i think it's just like when triple A was chasing WoW money,big game companies and some smaller ones too always will chase the money or what ever the current trend is.

microtransactions and loot boxes in full priced triple A games is WAY more alarming to me than what ever trend is being chased. at the end of the day i totally blame gamers we show them what to chase.

OhhPaigey

pantaro said:

Well compared to triple A games that doesnt surprise me lol if you ask me PUBG is the same as most triple A games hot garbage! i think it's just like when triple A was chasing WoW money,big game companies and some smaller ones too always will chase the money or what ever the current trend is.

microtransactions and loot boxes in full priced triple A games is WAY more alarming to me than what ever trend is being chased. at the end of the day i totally blame gamers we show them what to chase.

This is why I can't hate on loot boxes either though, if they were not profitable and effective, they wouldn't constantly be put into every single game of recent memory. People, us as a community are why loot boxes and microtransactions are so prevalent in games now, and for as long as we continue to do such things, they will continue being put into our games.

If you can go to work and make $200 a day, or $500, what are you going to choose? 99% Of the population will choose to make $500 a day rather than $200, even if making that $500 goes completely against their moral principles.

So how can we possibly ask companies to not do the same? When they are also, ran by people, with very little concern for others well being in the grand scheme of things, and not an ounce of integrity in their entirety of existence. After all, a company & its employees are there to all accomplish one singular goal, and that's to remain profitable for as long as possible, while also out performing its competitors.

pantaro

OhhPaigey said:

pantaro said:

Well compared to triple A games that doesnt surprise me lol if you ask me PUBG is the same as most triple A games hot garbage! i think it's just like when triple A was chasing WoW money,big game companies and some smaller ones too always will chase the money or what ever the current trend is.

microtransactions and loot boxes in full priced triple A games is WAY more alarming to me than what ever trend is being chased. at the end of the day i totally blame gamers we show them what to chase.

This is why I can't hate on loot boxes either though, if they were not profitable and effective, they wouldn't constantly be put into every single game of recent memory. People, us as a community are why loot boxes and microtransactions are so prevalent in games now, and for as long as we continue to do such things, they will continue being put into games.

If you can go to work and make $200 a day, or $500, what are you going to choose? 99% Of the population will choose to make $500 a day rather than $200, even if making that $500 goes completely against their moral principles.

So how can we possibly ask companies to not do the same? When they are also, ran by people, with very little concern for others well being in the grand scheme of things. After all, a company is there to accomplish one thing, and that's remain profitable for as long as possible, and out perform its competitors.

as much as i hate them to the core with every fiber of my being you are 100% right! it still burns tho lol

pantaro

DMKano said:

It doesn't say anything that publishers don't already know:

1. Masses love short-session based games - the ability to jump in play and a match for 20min and be done, is hugely important

2. Zero learning curve - FPS gameplay everyone gets within minutes - run, collect guns, shoot guns. There's no need to learn "classes", skill rotations, which classes counter what etc...

3. Zero grind - there's no need to play for weeks to get to the "fun part" or "end game" - everyone is instantly at "end game" upon logging in


Now this has little appeal to progression driven players like myself. I mean I played PUBG for like 20 hours and that was way more than enough to get my fill and never feel like I want to play it again

pretty much sums up in a nutshell why it's like crack to such a massive amount of people.

Foncl

One thing it means is that more than half of steams users now communicate in Chinese, largely due to PUBG's success. Asia is an important market for games and will likely continue to grow in importance.

Asian gamers seem to have quite different preferences from Western ones, especially in MMORPGs. Will Western game developers try to cater more to the Asian market in the future? My guess is they will and judging by the games and business models that are popular in Asia, I won't like it  

KnightFalz

Merit is not intrinsic to popularity, which itself often defies explanation. As such, I don't think much of anything can be read from it in a general sense for the future of gaming.

Bananable

Nothing new. This is how it goes for years. Theres no quality, but huge mess. And it doesnt matter b2p p2p or SP game. F2p games are  the same, but, you know, atleast they are free.
Devs/Publisher create someting cheap and hope for the blast. Then they brag how smart they are, but if it fails they blame players or other companies games.
And other Devs/Publisher look how much easy money these clowns got ,so  they start do clones.

Look at Wildstar. They said "Its gonna be WoW killer" ,but not "a new awesome innovative game". Its sad.

Bethesda put f2p features into b2p semi-sub game. Put paid mods in SP games. Released 6 years old game on Switch.They didnt fixed bugs in SE,I doubt they fixed bugs in this one.Fallout 4 requires 1080 for high res textures pack.

SE put denuvo on Nier:Automata, but didnt care about optimization. Some random modder have to fix that.I also heard it was someting wrong with price in Asia (dunno if thats true)(Note DS also had bad port on PC, official response was someting like "we dunno anything about pc ports". And some modder did all their job. Nothing changed 6 years later, even that SE has alot of games on PC.

Early access; remaster; increasing prices on old games; no optimization;weird regional prices...*Sigh* 

AAAMEOW

I remember playing starcraft and warcraft and end up spending most of my time playing custom made maps which give birth to the MOBA today.

People like match based pvp games.  It is more popular than any genre.  The most popular PC game is LoL.  China released a LoL ripoff in China on mobile which reportedly have 55 million people playing daily.  

Wizardry

Esport....$$$$...Esport...$$$ ,it is no longer about making great games but the gimicks behind them ,like Esport and streamers making money because so many see the so called pros making money and going in tournaments.

So the lure is there but not because of the games but the sad reality is that all those millions supporting those games/systems,like about 99% of them will NEVER be pros or making money or in those tournaments,all they are doing is supporting poorly designed games and aiding those pros to making money.

Remember just a few years ago we were trying to justify sub fees and that was for robust games,now these puny little moba's and Arpg's and TCG's are grinding micro transactions out of us.So devs are delivering LESS but asking for more,pretty sad state for us gamer's.

Tiamat64

Well, I know that if I were a videogame developer who spent tons of time, energy, and money crafting a game with a lot of rich PvE content only to see that slapping together people into one giant battleground for the cheap and just letting them duke it out amongst themselves was way more popular, I'd probably be just a little bit annoyed.  Good thing I'm not a videogame developer.

It's not Player Unknown's fault though, of course.  He just put something together because he liked the movie/manga/novel (whatever version he saw) Battle Royale and for some reason no one ever made a Battle Royale game before, and then everyone leapt on it.

But... yea.  Definately probably an eye opener to video game developers that they can get money for the cheap if they just let players generate the content by fighting each other.  But then, honestly, that was semi-obvious with League of Legends and Overwatch, anyways.

And I think most F2P-MMORPG companies already knew that on some level too.  That's why so many P2W F2P games have FORCED PvP elements that encourage people to spend to kill each other while being minimal on the PvE content.

Still, eventually the market will get so saturated that only the originals and the best will survive.  Just like the MOBA market and FPS market (...well, the FPS market pre-everything-is-having-a-battle-royale-mode market, at least)

Theocritus

One of the least important things in a game for me is how popular it is.....In fact, I tend to find the less popular the better.

rojoArcueid

All i can think of is that PUBG's popularity shows that more and more people just like to follow trends, even when that trend stinks.

bcbully

That PvP is where it’s at.

Cryomatrix

Here is my take. 

Right time, right place and what DMKano said. Some things just take off and there's no rhyme or reason about it. 

Also, once I found out tencent the largest chinese company was getting exclusive rights to PUBG, I bought the tencent stock. . 

I have 5% gain from the stock but -20% on another stock with 25x more money than that LMAO. 

Cryomatrix

anxelesaxe

Most games that blew up to become really popular and/or fun have been made by small companies trying new things. AAA games are for the most part just rehashed garbage. 

Quizzical

What I find interesting is that this thread has multiple people saying that they've played it a lot, but it shouldn't be as popular as it is.  The reason it's popular is because you played it--and a lot of other people did, too.

cameltosis

I think all the success of PUBG shows is that the shooter market is popular but has little innovation, so new ideas are jumped upon quickly. 

I also think there is a little bit of nostalgia thrown in too. Recent years have given FPS fans very tightly controlled, small environments in which to play. The CoD series, Overwatch and others are all quite small scale shooters with short matches. PUBG, at least to my eyes, is more of a return to wide open maps. Whenever I see screenshots or videos, it always reminds me of when I used to play Operation Flashpoint. 

AlBQuirky

OhhPaigey said:

Really, is this not alarming? I personally find this appalling for two reasons. The first reason being that this is obviously what the majority of gamers are actually enjoying nowadays. And the second reason, what does this say about other releases, and why haven't they been able to share the same level success? You know.. actual completed games, that are pretty polished and bug free. How does something unoriginal, unpolished & unfinished blow these other AAA games out of the water?

This paragraph caught my eye. I think the answers stem from digital distribution and no more QA (Quality Assurance) teams.

Quality Assurance:
Instead of a small team of paid testers that know what to look for, we now have thousands of "regular players" that pay the companies to test their games and most have no clue what they're supposed to do, just wanting to brag about, "Well, I was in beta (now alpha) testing and...". Most of their reports that flood the devs are about gameplay and mechanics, rather than the "bugs" they are supposed  to be testing for, unless otherwise instructed by the dev team. In other words, there is hardly any "Quality Assurance" anymore even though more people are "testing" the game.

Digital Distribution:
Instead of physical media like floppies or CDs or DVDs, which cost the company money, we now have downloading via the Internet, which costs the company nearly nothing. This causes the comnpanies to have the attitude of "We'll patch it later." in order to hit corporate deadlines (11/11/11 anyone?). And that's what they do, patch... and patch... and patch. Until their next game releases and the cycle starts all over. Remember any of your old NES/SNES/Sega Genesis games needing patches? They did not have Internet access and patching would cost the company money, sending out new cartridges/discs.

"Games of Yore" were not perfect, don't get me wrong, but it seems like their bugs were not:
1) as many/severe ("Pool of Radiance" being a notable exception)
2) as accepted

PUBg is nothing new. It's just the latest in a long line of games that have been less than stellar in quality (bugs-wise) for quite some time, yet sell multiple millions of copies.

Just my two cents, for what it's worth.

Warlyx

i dont see the appeal on pubg , i enjoy shooters but gets boring so fast i guess is popular thanks to asian players , there are tons of western no doubt , but pubg will die sooner than later isnt something new or refreshing , there has been tons of pvp surivival games in the past , that spiked in population and nowadays no1 play anymore.

Kyleran

I've come to accept the fact that I have superior tastes compared to the "masses" in gaming and most everything else in life.

I'm just a better person all around actually.

I know, it's a tough burden to bear, but I'm more than able.

That said,  humility is not one of my long suits.

kitarad

I am of the opinion that the popularity of a game has very little to do with its quality as such but is dependent on being able to tap into something at the right time and having things come together like the perfect storm and popularity often forgives so much more than the a game that is well done but lacks the ability to draw people to it.

Phry

PUBG? is a bit too much yesterdays news, everyone is playing Fortnite now instead

LacedOpium

"Discussion / What does PUBG's popularity say about the foreseeable future of games gamers?

Your ire is misdirected. 

The blame lies in the player, not the game.

Renoaku

Says I just spent $360 USD on Crates, and got around 680+ USD in items?

grimal

It's a very fun PVP game.

It's quick.

Very little learning curve (As pointed out by other users).

Can pick up gear relatively quick so no grind is needed.  You start out the same as everyone else, gear-wise.

It captures both the FPS and survival crowd niches (which is quite a lot of players).  

So I think a better question would be how can other genre's leverage this formula to their success?