Product lessons we can learn from this best-selling online game

Photo credit: Bluehole Studios

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is currently the world’s hottest first-person shooter (FPS) video game that sold over 20 million copies within nine months after its release. Due to the PUBG effect, there are 36 million active Chinese players on online gaming platform Steam (64.35 percent of all players compared to 8.6 percent a year ago) as of November 2017.

Why is this game so insanely popular?

To exclude or not?

PUBG is described as The Hunger Games minus Jennifer Lawrence. In it, the player is parachuted to a deserted island, where there’s up to 100 actual players, to scavenge for hidden weapons and fight to the death. The last gamer standing is declared the winner.

To gain some insights from a professional gamer’s perspective, I reached out to Robin Tan, founder of Cloudzen, a startup mobile game-streaming platform with offices in Singapore and Shanghai.

Tan noticed one thing in the game: “From a technical perspective, a large world map, [a hundred] players, and Battle Royale have [already] been done by other games.”

But he also said that the game is an “exceptionally well-crafted, competitive FPS package.” According to him, it does two things well:

• Excludes unnecessary gameplay (product) elements (e.g. capturing objectives or rescue missions)
• Focuses on what gives the players an excellent gameplay experience

Please note that Tan emphasized what was excluded before discussing what PUBG was successfully focusing on. Memorable product design often starts with deciding which features to exclude.

To understand how and why PUBG succeeded in capturing gamers’ attention and retaining their loyalty, I looked into the five triggers articulated by Ben Parr (a former Mashable editor) in his book Captivology: The Science of Capturing People’s Attention.

Framing trigger

Every 100-player battle royale starts with you, the player, on a plane with other 99 gamers. This is where anticipation and tension builds. You choose when to exit the plane via a parachute, and that choice is important because the next step is parachuting down to a massive, deserted island.

Automaticity trigger

Disruption trigger

Acknowledgement trigger

Reward trigger

Conclusion