In case you’re wondering what PUBG is doing to stay relevant in the Battle Royale frenzy, the answer is something entirely different: make a story-driven game. PUBG Corp has unveiled a new studio named Striking Distance with industry veteran Glen Schofield at the helm. Schofield has a storied portfolio: VP and GM at Visceral Games and later co-founder of Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games. At Visceral in particular, he worked on the Dead Space series.
Schofield introduces his vision for “beyond battle royale” in a video presenting the studio. This studio certainly has a loaded context as Schofield left Activision as recently as February of last year. Sledgehammer’s 2020 Call of Duty game was put on hold in favor of a Treyarch project.
It’s useful to PUBG Corp to have industry veterans if PUBG is to evolve. It’d be difficult to translate the clunky gunplay and overall mechanics of the battle royale into compelling action games, particularly as a narrative-focused and presumably single-player title. Could PUBG involve into something more akin to Call of Duty post Modern Warfare?
