I’m lying prone on a hill overlooking one of the many ramshackle towns that dot the island map of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Nestled against a nearby tree, one of my squadmates scopes a couple of solitary houses sticking out of the hills to our East. We had heard gunfire recently from that direction and are waiting to see muzzle flashes or enemy movement. Time ticks down and silence blankets the scene. There’s not much to chat about—we’re a few games in so we’ve run through all the regular conversation topics. I glance over at my Twitter feed. A news story pops up about the astronomical increase in civilian deaths at the hands of the American military since Trump’s taken office. I return to the game. I swap out my M416 for my SKS with a 4x scope. I try not to think about it too much, about who exactly I am supposed to be role-playing in this scenario.
PUBG originally started off as a mod for ARMA 2, a popular, highly technical military simulator. It uses similar maps and tools to craft a distinct experience, one a lot more streamlined and approachable than the granular, sometimes overwrought experience of ARMA. In the game, and the mods that precede it, you are dropped on a desolate island and forced to fight 100 other players until only one is left standing. This particular aspect of PUBG’s design is inspired by Battle Royale, a Japanese film from 2000 about a group of high school students trapped by their teachers on a remote island and forced to murder each other.
Playing the game alone certainly lives up to Battle Royale’s premise. It’s a tense, solitary and highly risky form of play. Playing cooperatively, however, begins to encroach on the military simulator territory the game was originally built upon. When playing with a squad, I call out compass directions and estimate distance of enemy fire. My squad and I try our best to play the part of soldiers, dredging up some of the military-sounding vernacular we hear in movies and television. Though PUBG has no narrative context besides being dropped onto an island alongside other players you must fight and kill, many of the emergent mechanical trappings of squad mode add a distinctly militaristic flavor to the experience. …continue reading on Paste