PUBG’s New Creative Director Wants To Restore Focus On Larger Maps And Slower Survival Gameplay

Although, PUBG was created and developed under Brendan Greene, often known as PlayerUnknown. This won’t be the case in the future because Brendan has joined Krafton Special Projects Team, and Dave Curd will now step in and take the Creative Director Role. Dave previously worked as Art Director at Raven Software and Shiver Entertainment. He also worked as an art director at PUBG Global from 2018 to August 2020.

In a lengthy interview with gamesindustry.biz, Dave Curd shared his initial thoughts on the job, saying that his particular task is to work on user experience and entire gameplay. He went on to say dozens of core mechanics require enhancements, but his focus is to make PUBG a better game for new players and improve the entire experience.

PUBG originally started with just one map, and now it has six maps. The gameplay in the early days was quite different; only TPP mode was available, Circles were really slow, and the overall game was always very intense. You would casually drop at the corner of the map at Yasnaya Polyana, mostly loot alone, and then travel on foot, or use a vehicle, if you were lucky. Enemies were hard to find; the gameplay was scary, fun, and sometimes dramatic due to Fogg and Rainy weather.

Over the years, the gameplay has become more fast-paced, with people now aiming to get more kills and small maps like Sanhok bringing a new energy level. The loot has also increased significantly, and vehicle spawns are all over the place.

Dave Curd says that PUBG isn’t a deathmatch or looter shooter game. It’s a survival game, and all its mechanics should be related to survival. He plans on transforming the game to larger maps, where gameplay is dramatically slow.

“It’s not a very big deathmatch,” he says. “It’s not a giant looter shooter. It’s survival, and survival means everything from gunplay to exploration to vehicles to tactics to interesting choices.”