Gamescom PUBG Invitational: Can Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds succeed as an esport?

A deadly blue force field forces 13 survivors toward a lonely house atop a grassy hill. Scrambling for sparse cover, five are cut down in a hail of bullets. The seven who remain are just moments away from a chance at $30,000.
The Gamescom Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Invitational tournament is underway in Cologne, Germany. When the event concludes on Saturday, $350,000 in prize money will have been awarded.
More than 80 players made the trip to compete, including teams from Cloud9, Team Liquid, and TSM.
It’s one of the first major tournaments for PUBG. For a game that’s still in early access, I’ve been hearing major buzz about PUBG being the next big esport. It certainly has the viewership — for months it’s rivaled League of Legends as the most popular game on Twitch.
But just like the road through Mylta, PUBG has some major obstacles in its path to mainstream success as an esport.

The most glaring problem is obvious to me as I watch the Gamescom Invitational. More than once the lone spectator has missed out on some major action. At one point, two teams were about to fight it out near a compound.
Before we could see what happened, the camera cut to a different player crouched in a stairwell drinking an energy drink.
There are 100 players in a standard game of PUBG. It would be almost impossible to catch every kill on a single stream. So I can forgive some missed action early on.
But we also missed out on key kills late in matches. In the duos game I described earlier, 13 players were running into one of the final circles. Eight died off screen before the match ended.
Some of that is just bad luck. It’s hard to tell exactly where things are about to go down. But an improved spectator system would go a long way to improve the odds of catching the most important moments on stream.
There’s another area where spectating becomes an issue. During the tournament, I wanted to see how some of my favorite streamers were doing. BreaK, Hayz, Stodeh, Viss. But I couldn’t.
With esports like League of Legends, you’ll never miss a key play by your favorite player. But with the way PUBG tournaments are streamed right now, the players you’re rooting for can easily just die off screen. It’s easy to be a fan of PUBG as an esport, but right now it’s hard to be a fan of a specific player or team.

When TSM loads into a match of League of Legends, it’s usually on a pretty even playing field. The lanes are always in the same place. Minions have a set amount of health. Objectives spawn at specific times.
The most random element of a game is which drakes might spawn, or how often an ADC will land a critical strike. There might be a surprise in picks and bans, but even that is within their power to address.
The same isn’t true for PUBG. The circular playzone spawns on different parts of the map every game. You might have four circles in a row spawn right on top of you, or you might spend 20 minutes running from Primorsk to Stalber.
Loot is also randomized. One player can luck into a level 3 helmet, a Kar98k and an 8x scope in the first house they enter. Another might scavenge through all of Lipovka and find nothing but UMP45s and pistols.
I know that last one is possible because it’s happened to me. More than once.
My point is that PUBG is never an even playing field. Random chance plays a huge role in determining who wins each match. Sure, the play zones being different every game often makes for great variety and exciting finishes. But can you really say the best player(s) wins every game?
Take the same duos match I mentioned earlier. TSM’s Viss and Smak barreled into one of the final circles on a pair of buggies and took cover behind a boulder. On the opposite side of the play zone was a house. Between the two was a wide open field.
If the next circle spawned near the house, Viss and Smak were screwed. They’d have to run right out in the open and pray. But RNG was kind to them. The circle spawned on their side, and the situation was flipped. All they had to do was sit behind their boulder and wait for the win to come to them.
They still had to actually hit their shots on the final player in order to win. But I’m sure they’d be the first to admit they got a bit lucky. Ultimately, an entire match of skillful plays can be undone by one unfortunate circle.
When $350,000 is on the line, should random chance play such a big role in choosing a winner?

Speaking of BreaK and Viss and their boulder (maybe the rock should get some of that prize money), we come to the fourth obstacle: third person.
Anyone who’s played PUBG even once can tell you how the third person camera is abused. BreaK and Viss’ noses were practically rubbing against their boulder at the end of that game, but they could see over it just fine.
The woes of third person are hardly unique to PUBG. But they’re exaggerated in a game where you only get to die once. One of the best ways to win a game is to hide in a building and peek through windows and around corners without exposing yourself. It might be boring, but it sure is effective.
But that’s the thing; it’s boring. Esports can’t be boring. When two player encounter each other, I want to see them fight. Not stand behind the nearest building and wait until either the playzone forces them to move or a different player plants a 7.62mm round in their skull.
Sure, every player has the same ability to peek around terrain on third person mode. That doesn’t make it fun to watch. I’d much rather watch the faster-paced action of a first person match.
If BreaK and Viss pulled up behind that boulder in first person, they’d have to poke their heads out on its edges to see what’s going on in front of them. Their sense of security would be gone. But my sense of excitement would be even stronger.

Now we come to how Bluehole Studio and tournament organizers like ESL can avoid these obstacles and make PUBG succeed as an esport. Because despite its problems, after watching the Gamescom Invitational, I think this game does have potential.
PUBG faces a similar problem as Overwatch, just more extreme. There’s just too much going on at once. Some of that is unavoidable; that’s just how the game works. But it’s not hopeless.
Multiple spectators would go a long way toward addressing any missed action. With some good coordination from the production teams, it would help ease the burden on the lone spectator. It might even make sense to run replays of some kills at earlier stages in a match.
Then there’s the fandom problem. It might be a logistics nightmare, but having separate streams for each player or team’s viewpoint might solve this problem. That way, I could watch my favorite streamer die to a bombing zone rather than have it happen off screen.
As for the RNG element, there’s only so much you can do. The way the playzone works is such a core mechanic of the game that I don’t know how you’d be able to balance it. But Bluehole could work to normalize the loot system so that Lipovka doesn’t spawn nothing but UMP45s every few matches (sorry, I’m still salty).
Third person being unexciting to watch at times is the problem with the easiest solution. Personally, I don’t know why a game like PUBG even has a third person mode. But I’ll admit my bias. There’s a portion of the player base that only plays third person, and you don’t want to alienate them.
I’d suggest at least an even balance between first person and third person tournaments. Let the free market of Twitch viewership determine which is more exciting.
There’s a bigger solution that would help with most of these points. If Bluehole Studio is serious about PUBG being an esport, they could design a smaller map specifically for professional play — for 50 players, say. They could also work to balance the map, as well as the loot system, to better cater to tournaments. It’s the most demanding solution, but it might just be the best one.
If PUBG takes any of these routes, I think it’s much more likely that it succeeds as an esport. Of course, it could do nothing and succeed anyway. It’s less likely, but the game might just be able to make it as an esport in its current state.
In a way, PUBG succeeding as an esport is like a match of the game itself. PUBG can find success by making all the right decisions flanking at just the right time. Or it can drop school and trust that its aim, and a bit of luck, will carry it to victory.
