A wrangle doesn't have much of a backstory.
It's a vaguely Soviet, post-apocalyptic,
dystopian, abandoned hellhole, full of guns and homes to loot.
And you and 99 strangers are jumping off of a burning plane right into it.
Your parachute will ensure the fall doesn't kill you, but once you're down there. It's you against the island.
99 strangers are on the hunt for you and each other.
Every single one of them wants to be the last one standing.
Every single one of them wants to win.
They loot homes as soon as they land.
Hunting for weapons and armor scrounging the map to find anything that could be of use.
Looking down your sights as you open the door and a guy with a shotgun blasts you in the face.
People have always wanted a Battle Royale video game.
But it never happened.
First came the original team deathmatch island Battle Royale.
The Japanese book and movie told the story of 42 students dropped on a deserted island,
and forced to kill each other until only one was left.
It got people asking, What they would do if they were in that situation?
But the movie was not released in the West for years; leaving it an obscure cult classic.
Then years later, Hunger Games came around, and it re-ignited the fire.
People wanted Battle Royale games.
But no one was making them, but one person wanted it more than anybody else.
Brenden "Player Unknown" Green.
Brendon green was not a game designer.
He was an Irish photographer and web designer who followed the love of his life to Brazil.
Two years later, he was divorced and looking to get his life back on track.
He made it back home to Ireland.
And while living on welfare, Greene discovered the games ARMA and DayZ.
For those who don't know ARMA is a hyper-realistic military shooter.
Known for the scale of its combat, its attention to detail, and graphic fidelity.
Also known for being the foundation for an incredible number of mods.
Many of which were spun off of into their own games.
DayZ is one of the best-known ARMA mods.
Which use the hyper-realistic combat mechanics to simulate a zombie apocalypse.
So yeah, I started off making a mod basically back in ARMA2.
Because I want to make a game I wanted to play.
I saw games like the survivor games which were events for streamers.
I wanted to play that myself so I decided to see if I could actually make one, and ARMA 2: Battle Royale was born.
The Battle Royale mod for ARMA 2 was a departure from the tightly directed experiences offered by Triple A games like Assassin's Creed.
Green was not interested in those types of games.
He wanted something looser, something grittier.
Something that gave you the freedom to show what you would do in a battle to the death.
As DayZ broke free of ARMA and became a standalone game.
Other developers took notice of how popular Green's mods were in the niche ARMA community.
Sony Online Entertainment.
Now known as DayBreak, hired Greene as a consultant on their own Dayz style zombie survival game.
That mode eventually became H1Z1 King of the Kill.
But by February 2016, Green had moved on.
He was headed to Korea where he got an interesting offer.
Chang Han Kim, a Korean game designer working for Blue Hole wanted to make a Battle Royale game.
He was inspired by DayZ, but when he researched the Battle Royale format more and more.
He kept coming cross Green.
And less than one month later, he was Blue Holes creative director.
Development moved fast.
Green and Kim's team had the autonomy to create the game that they wanted.
And they wanted it to be playable within one year.
The game started its development in early 2016.
And the plan was to follow an early access schedule.
Green and Kim wanted to get the game in customers hands fast for a low cost and keep improving it over time.
But the foundation needed to be laid down before anything else.
The team made a small game, one map, one mode, a handful of weapons were added after the launch.
But from the day it was released on early access in March 2017 to today, Battlegrounds has been the same game.
However, when it first came out there wasn't quite anything like it.
Sure Green's mods were still out there.
But mods are never quite as popular as standalone games.
Battlegrounds was a breath of fresh air amidst the high budget lavishly produced shooters on the market.
It was messy.
It was tense.
And it was complicated.
But most importantly it was fun.
The island is the most important part too.
While Green has said that his team is working on more maps.
A wrangle will always be the most iconic thing about Battlegrounds.
It's the game's main character with familiar landmarks, wide open spaces, and bizarre unique topography
It's not realistic.
Swamps, farmland, mountains, and towns all mingle together to make a backdrop that has much of a hand in the action as the players do.
And the players came to battlegrounds fast.
For only $20, they got to live the fantasy of surviving the apocalypse.
The games player base grew every week.
10 million rounds of battlegrounds were played in the game's first four months.
And it made eleven million dollars in three days.
By April it had sold a million copies.
One month later.
It was at 2 million, the next month it hit 4 million.
In August, Battlegrounds became the most played game on Steam in terms of concurrent players.
By September, it had beaten Dota 2's record of 1.29 million concurrent players
By October it had hit 2 million players on Steam.
And became the most popular game in South Korean PC bangs.
Beating long-time king, League of Legends.
When the game cracked 2 million copies sold, Blue Hole held a charity Invitational tournament.
Three months later ESL held the first major battlegrounds tournament cementing a possible eSports future for the game.
Green told gamesindustry. biz that he has always envisioned his mods to be a spectator sport someday.
And his baby was finally taking its first steps.
People still ask if battlegrounds can be an eSport it has the audience and the player base.
The only problem is the logistics.
Gathering 100 people for a LAN tournament is not the easiest thing in the world.
Which might limit it to events like ESL Ones and Dreamhacks.
But eSports is not the only place Battlegrounds is growing.
The game is selling more and more copies by the day and even bigger companies are taking notice.
Tencent made a deal to publish the game in China.
Facebook cut a streaming deal with Blue Hole.
Epic Games who assisted in modifying the Unreal Engine for Battlegrounds.
Made a battlegrounds inspired play mode for their game Fortnite.
And Microsoft touted a timed console exclusive version of battlegrounds for Xbox one at E3 2017.
We can't wait to bring Playerunkown's Battlegrounds exclusively to Xbox One later this year.
With an update for Xbox One X enhancements shipping with the final version.
Battlegrounds future is bright.
There's no sign that the game will stop growing anytime soon.
And with imitators starting to crop up.
That just gives Battlegrounds more chances to innovate and be better than the competition.
Battlegrounds is the beginning of a new video genre and no one saw it coming.
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