Winner Winner

We step into the offices, and the upcoming map, of PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS.

- Christopher Livingston

EVERY SINGLE SECOND IN ASIA, A NEW SOLO MATCH OF PLAYER UNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS BEGINS. AT PEAK TIMES, THAT NUMBER RISES TO TEN NEW GAMES PER SECOND. WITH A CONCURRENT PLAYER COUNT THAT HAS RECENTLY SWOLLEN TO OVER 1.5 MILLION, AN UNANTICIPATED PROBLEM HAS ARISEN FOR THE UNANTICIPATED SMASH HIT. PUBG’S CLOUD SERVER SERVICE SIMPLY DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH SERVERS TO ACCOMMODATE THE EARLY ACCESS BATTLE ROYALE SHOOTER’S MASSIVE AND STILL-GROWING PLAYERBASE.

I’m given this information during a visit to the offices of Bluehole, PUBG’s developer, in South Korea. Over the two days I’ve been here, I’ve twice tried to interview platform team lead Seungwoo Shin, who is in charge of PUBG’s servers. Whenever we’ve attempted to talk, he’s been simply (and understandably) too busy. We finally get to speak for about 15 minutes on my second day, and throughout the interview I feel mildly guilty for cornering him in a conference room: while soft-spoken and incredibly polite, Shin has the restless body language of a man who knows that he is desperately needed elsewhere.

Shin tells me through interpreter Sammie Kang (PUBG’s marketing and events manager) that he only came into the office once every few days as a consultant when he began working on PUBG. As Bluehole’s last-person-standing shooter quickly grew to become one of the mostplayed games in the world, Shin’s somewhat casual job became, shall we say, a bit more demanding.