Playeruknown's Battleground's use of open world

15 years ago, I watched a TV program about The Elders Scrolls 3: Morrowind. I was completely blown away by the scale and scope of this title, and its huge, detailed world with seemingly endless possibilities. When I got the game, I walked into every house, talked to every person and grabbed every item I could. This excitement lasted for around 10 hours, before a realization hit me - there was no purpose in doing any of this. The tableware I was collecting was worth next to nothing, and no character I talked to had anything interesting to say. At best I would get a quest added to my log, which would just point me in a direction of where fighting awaited. And combat in this game was pretty simple, both mechanically and strategically, relying heavily on your equipment and stats instead.

I never finished Morrowind, but I tried many more open world games over the years. Every time the same thing happened - I would get hyped about getting immersed in a big and complex game world, only to later realise that the illusion breaks as soon as I start proding too heavily into certain aspects, or putting too much thought into the overarching structure. Gamers have long joked about silly conventions such as civilians being ambivalent about strangers entering their homes, or the existence of light-hearted sidequests that player can take as the world is ending. But those are just two examples of many seams that connect the systems governing open-world games, the type of seams that smaller, more linear titles are often better at hiding.

Game design is all about compromise. If you invest a lot of time into creating a huge world, chances are it will not be as polished as a smaller one. If you are writing tons of dialogues and descriptions for branching sidequests, it's hard to mantain the same consistency as in an adventure game or a visual novel. If you want to design multiple activites for the player that are as good as in contemporary linear games that focus only on one, you would need multiple times as many people and as much time. 

Since I've realised this, I've been generally favoring titles that focus on a small number of highly polished mechanics, rather than projects so bloated with features that they're bound to fall apart in some capacity. But I was still in love with big, open worlds, and kept searching for games that would give me a good reason to explore them. And who would've thought that this would bring me to the product of an Arma modder and Korean MMO developers.

Bluehole's "Playerunknown's Battlegrounds" is the premier iteration of the Battle Royale mode conceived by Brendan Greene, aka PlayerUnkown. The concept is simple enough - large amount of players are spread out over a big map, and so are various tools of survival, including weapons, ammunition, bulletproof vests and healing items. There is only one goal - be the last man standing. Whether you do it by finding a car, riding away and hiding in mountains, or by going on a warpath and murdering everyone in your way, is all up to the individual player.

Every match of PUBG is like a miniature open-world game. You start with nothing, and you grow stronger by collecting gear. As you clear out your starting location, you need to start moving - either in search of better equipment, to get away from danger, or to hunt people and take their loot. As time passes, the game area starts shrinking, which makes encounters more likely. Tension rises as the terrain becomes more confined, guaranteeing that whatever happens, it will be a memorable moment.

For me, there are two equally important aspects of open-world design - the freedom of choice, and reasons to act. If the game is just a series of checkpoints you have to pass in set order, then it doesn't matter how large and open the world is - no matter how many detours you take, in the end you will have to travel the same path as every player. On the other hand, plenty of games settle on the sandbox model, giving players the tools and systems to tinker with and make up their own fun. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just not something I'm looking for.

There are three main ways PUBG directs players. The first one is the plane which boards all of the competitors at the start of each round and then flies above the island in a straight line under a random angle. This limits everyone’s starting locations to places they can reach while parachuting. This allows you to estimate where you're more likely to meet opponents once you land and start moving. And even before that, while you're still in the air, you can check whether there are any opponents skydiving around you, and you get the chance to react and either move in their direction to assault them as soon as you touch the ground, or give up your initial destination and move away somewhere less crowded.

The second aspect is weapon and vehicle spawns. Cars are mostly seen by the roadside, while guns and accessories can only be found inside buildings. This means that clusters such as school, military base and towns are places that allow you to collect a large amount of loot in short time, but that makes them popular destinations for many players, almost guaranteeing combat within first minutes of the match. There are countless smaller properties spread around for those who would rather stock-up before engaging in combat, but less houses to check means there's a risk of bad spawns gimping you and having to leave the starting location with no long range weapon, healing items or even a backpack.

And finally, the most important feature of pubg that prevents players from simply camping in bathtubs all over the map - the shrinking circle. As time passes, a barrier starts closing off around smaller and smaller region of the map. Being outside that barrier results in receiving damage, minor at the beginning of the round, but deadly after few phases of enclosing. Simply put, it forces players into converging, until the game area is so small that it's impossible to hide from one another.

Pubg strikes the perfect balance of predetermined rules, elements of chance and player input. Plane trajectory, item spawns and circle location are all unpredictable, but they follow certain principles - more concentrated group of buildings will have more loot, and circles shrink at set intervals down to fixed diameter. This dynamic means the players have to constantly make decisions throughout the game based on new circumstances, but because the map is so big, they always have many choices available. You can run to the center of circle in straight line, stay on the outskirts to reduce number of angles you can be shot at, or take a detour to find a car and completely bypass a dangerous area.

More than anything, this is the type of game where your playstyle is determined by how good you are. Inexperienced players are more likely to be extra careful, mostly focusing on not getting jumped by opponents. But once you get good enough at reading the map and analyzing where competitors are most likely to move, you can start setting up traps in advance and hunting them. Or, if you’re mechanically skilled, you can combine use of vehicles and grenades to get a good angle at an enemy outpost and clear it out with your superior aim.

All of this is possible because of a big open map. Think about a game like Counter-Strike. Every match consists of between 16 and 30 rounds of fighting over two objectives on very concise levels. After just one game you will most likely know every possible cover the defenders can hide behind and every entrance the attackers have to go through. You no longer analyze the map on the fly - the focus is on trying to read your opponents, predicting which cover will they take and how will they react to the flashbang you're about to throw.

Meanwhile in PUBG if you survive the initial stage of the game and have to leave your starting point, you will most likely get forced to move through a patch of terrain you don't know that well. Sure, the more matches you play the more likely you are to recognize your location, but it doesn't change the fact that an opponent might be hiding behind any of the hundreds of trees you pass, in one of the dozens of rooms you search, or even in plain sight, but so far away that they are merely a blimp on the horizon and you don't even register them while running - but that doesn’t mean they can’t see you with their 8-times scope.

This game is designed to force the players to keep thinking on the fly, rather than letting them develop habits and settle into comfort zones. In theory this could also work on a smaller scale with a procedurally generated map, but this would put more weight on randomness. And while there's no doubt that luck can smile on you if you find good equipment in the first house you enter, or if the circle centers on you, the game is still largely drawn by player decisions. It's the players who create danger zones by setting up their outposts, it's the fact that someone already searched the area you were eyeing that you end up underequipped.

Of course big reason why this model works lies in the stakes. After 20 minutes spent hiding in shacks and collecting equipment little by little, no one wants to die by a shot to the back of head. That doesn't mean players never take risks, but rather that there's all the more meaning behind them. Every successful play you make becomes a story to tell, because there are so many different circumstances that apply. The area you're in, your equipment, enemy equipment, whether you have a car, whether you're pressed on time by the circle. Every situation you're in might be a once in a lifetime, which makes every success feel special.

PUBG incites survival instinct in me like no other game before. The despair you feel when the next circle forces you to move through the area you wanted to avoid, the feeling of danger when you start to hear bullets flying by, the rush of adrenaline when you win a firefight, and the satisfaction when you finally start figuring out the game and getting in control of situations. None of this would be possible without this big map you have to actually spend time traversing, reading and understanding.