Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale is a legendary, violent film that created a sub-genre of copycat clones, including The Hunger Games and games like The Culling that followed in its lead. Well, PlayerUnknown mirrored the concept in games like Arma 3 and H1Z1, and it grew enough in popularity that Bluehole Studios decided to step in and help turn it into a standalone game.

PlayerUnknown, Brendan Greene, commented about seeing his project of Battlegrounds get turned into a full fledged game, stating in the press release…

“I’ve always wanted to create a standalone game based on the mod I created for the ARMA series, and working with Bluehole gives me the resources and creative freedom to build the experience I’ve always envisioned,”

 

“We have a great development team in place, and our goal is to create a realistic open world experience with the deep gameplay and strong combat mechanics.”

Battlegrounds will be designed on top of MMO infrastructure to allow for large, open-world gameplay. This is where Bluehole Studios steps into the picture, using their expertise and veteran knowledge of the online gaming space to help shape and craft the foundation on which Battlegrounds will be built.

Chang Han Kim, the production director at Bluehole, explained that the studio will be aiming to bring the original mod to life as a dynamic survival MMO, stating…

“As huge fans of Battle Royale, our Bluehole team shares PLAYERUNKNOWN’s vision of strategic combat driven by player tactics in dynamic battlegrounds,”

 

“For a title that we’ll be publishing across the globe, it made perfect sense to partner with the creator who has a proven track record of making gameplay that fans love, and the collaboration is going great—we’ve already been working hard for months on PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS.”

Usually I’m not too keen on Korean MMO copycat clones, but in this case I think the survival elements, multiplayer elements and the large open-world would greatly benefit from using an MMO-style structure. The only thing I hope they keep is the perma-death and hardcore gaming elements that helped make a lot of these mods popular in the first place. There’s usually a tendency to casualize the experience once some decent production funds get poured into these projects and they instantly lose all the appeal that they had when they were mods.

According to the press release, players will start off and have to scavenge for items and weapons, as well as attempt to get a working vehicle in an effort to become the last man standing. Weapon attachments such as silencers, suppressors, scopes and stocks will be present to help give players an advantage on the battlefield, and wits and strategy will be just as important as an itchy trigger finger.

You can learn more about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds by hitting up the official website.