Brendan "Playerunknown" Greene's whirlwind year

Brendan Greene says he feels like the luckiest man in gaming. Just six months after his game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds entered Early Access, it's sold more than 10 million copies.

It's sent Greene, Playerunknown himself, around the world and given him the chance to provide for his loved ones. All this success comes to a man who claims to have been the "black sheep" of his family, saying they expected him to be "sleeping on the streets."

Not bad for the 41-year-old who never expected to be a full-time game designer.

When he talks about Battlegrounds, his excitement is evident, even infectious. Over and over he talks about how lucky he is, how excited he is. He sees this game as a chance to give back to others who came from the modding community like he did; he says he wants to find the next "Playerunknown."

To make sense of it all, I recently spoke to Greene about the past year of his life. I wanted to know how things have changed for him in the last 365 days — especially in the last six months since the game's launch — and where he sees himself 365 days from now.

A lot of hands to shake

Greene says he wants to give back.

A year ago, he was head down in development, having recently moved to Seoul, South Korea to be closer to Battlegrounds' publisher Bluehole. Originally from Ireland, living in Seoul, he says, wasn't that much of a culture shock because he had lived in other countries before. Aside from the difficulties of learning a new alphabet just to understand things, Greene says he'd live anywhere if it meant getting to work on his game — even "a small shed in the middle of nowhere."

The set up for Battlegrounds is simple. 100 or so players drop into a sprawling map with only one objective: survive. The catch is, they start with no supplies, no armor, no weapons, nothing. Players must spend the game scavenging for supplies while hiding, defending themselves or killing other players. If someone dies, that's it. They don't come back into a match; they have to start over. It's called "Battle Royale," inspired, in part, by the 2000 Japanese movie of the same name.

Greene originally created the mode as a mod for games like Arma and H1Z1. After seeing the success of his mods, Bluehole approached him to turn his ideas into their own game. He got an office, a budget and a team to work with.

In late 2016, Greene was busy putting all this together with his new team. Compared to times in his life when he was broke, living in Brazil or barely getting by as a photographer, this made for a relatively steady life, he says. And then came March 2017 when things changed — in some ways.

"My life really hasn't changed much apart from doing a hell of a lot more traveling in the last six months," Greene says. When we speak, he's fresh off a trip to Cologne, Germany for the annual Gamescom event where Battlegrounds had its first offline invitational. He's spending some time in Amsterdam. Just a few hours before, he was hanging out on a boat.

"[Recently] I did the T.I. in Seattle and then I had some meetings in Amsterdam, then Gamescom, back in Amsterdam for a few days after that, then I do PAX West, then it's back to Ireland for my daughter's birthday, then I'm off to Portugal for the D.I.C.E. Summit," he says, before rattling off five or six other events he's flying out to, such as the Tokyo Game Show and Paris Games Week. "So really, you know, I don't know where I am going to be next."

Doing a "hell of a lot more traveling," Greene says, comes down to his desire to meet fans -- of which there's a lot. Greene always thought Battlegrounds would be a success; when he pitched it to publisher Bluehole he said it would sell "a million month one, easy." It only took 16 days to hit that mark. The game entered Early Access on March 23 and by April 10 it was there. For Greene, selling a million copies led to "a lot of vindication."

"A lot of the [internal team], they really couldn't believe it," he says. "There was a few veterans of the game industry that were [saying], like, 'No, no. 200,000 [or] 300,000 the first year.' But then when we hit that first million, there were a lot of smiles around the office."

And then it just didn't stop.

By May, the game sold two million units. It sold four million by June, six million by July and 10 million by September. Not only that, it even topped Valve's own Dota 2 for most concurrent players on Steam, earning over $100 million in revenue, and it has been floating around early 2017 game of the year talks.

"I mean, we're walking around wondering why we've been this successful," Greene says. "You know, I had faith in my own game mode … but [10] million copies and number one on Steam in just under five months I think we're at now? It's just crazy to me."

Needless to say, there's a lot of people playing Battlegrounds, and therefore a lot of hands for Greene to shake. The past six months of his life have been spent trying to do just that. "I try to get to every convention I can, because, you know, the fans love meeting me and I want to give them that chance," he says. "As I said to people that I met [at] Gamescom, I'm just happy that people are enjoying the game."

Greene says he thinks Battlegrounds simply resonates with people. He thinks it's the game people want right now; it captures people's imaginations and Greene just happens to be the creator. He, for one of many times during our interview, says he's lucky to have this success.

When he goes to events, he meets fans who thank him for his game, his work. He says they sometimes tell him it's not just them playing, but their entire family has bought gaming PCs just to share in the fun.

He even gets messages from fans telling him how his game helped improve their lives. One standout he brings up came from a fan with an intestinal disease who found solace from their depression, turning their life around "remarkably" through playing and having fun with Battlegrounds.

"That's all I ever wanted, that people enjoyed playing the game," Greene says.

Spending 2017 flying all over the world, meeting all these people is, to Greene, an opportunity to give back. His team wants to add modding to Battlegrounds; they want it to be a platform for someone else to make a gamemode or mod that people love. "We want to find the next Playerunknown," Greene says.

He calls himself lucky again. And then he says it another time.

"I can't be anything other than positive," Greene says, laughing. "I get to travel the world and talk to people about a game that 800,00 or 900,000 people play at peak. Which, to me, it's insane numbers. I still can't believe it."

Trying to find the next Playerunknown is going to be like catching a shooting star. Finding another game that's as inexplicably popular will be nigh-on-impossible. But Greene wants to do it. He has a platform, millions of fans and one of the most popular games in recent memory. But with that comes a whole other breed of people to shake hands with: the press.

"Everything I say is news"

Go to any major gaming site right now. Chances are somewhere on the front page is something about Battlegrounds. Every day it seems there's news about the game, or a new interview with Greene. Once the game hit Early Access, many wanted to know who Playerunknown was, where he came from and how he came up with this weird, sometimes buggy success.

The irony of this is Greene says he's a relatively private individual. He likes his anonymity. Hell, he goes by "Playerunknown." As of right now, he says he can still walk around event halls without being instantly recognized and mobbed. While he loves meeting fans of his work, outside of someone recognizing his name on his badge, he still has some breathing room.

With the press, however, it's a bit of a different story.

Google his name and dozens of interviews pop up, a lot of them recounting Greene's journey from nearly broke to being thrust into the spotlight. These days, a lot of people are knocking on his door wanting to know details about both his game and his personal life.

Despite his private nature, he says he's happy to oblige. It's part of the job; it's what he has to do. In fact, much to my relief, he says he loves talking to the press. Sure, it's a far cry from his old life of being the anonymous modder Playerunknown, but for Greene, talking to press is another way to communicate with his fans.

It's been a "baptism by fire," as he puts it, though.

"Everything I say is news, which is something that I didn't really have when I was doing a mod. It's something I've had to learn to deal with," Greene says. "Sometimes I say things I probably shouldn't, but you know, that's just me."

Greene is not a public speaker. Which makes it all the more impressive that one of the first crowds he ever spoke in front of was at the 2017 E3 Microsoft press conference, attended by thousands and watched by millions. All of this talking has changed a fundamental part of him: his shyness.

"Before I was quite introverted and at the party I was the guy sitting in the corner not really talking to a lot of people," he says. "It's opened me up a lot more. Especially speaking on stages and being a more public-facing figure. I've had to do so much of it."

He welcomes all this. This is is life now, his job. But it comes at an important compromise for Greene.

"I don't mind [all the interviews], as long as they understand I am a relatively private person. I tweet some images of what I'm doing, but I haven't jumped on the Snapchat or Instagram bandwagon. I have to keep some of my life private," he says. "I do have my public persona, but I have an 11-year-old daughter and I don't want too much information to be shared about her. I really have to be careful about how much of myself I put out there."

Bluehole Studio

Set for life

Again, Greene wants to give back.

In the past, and even when we speak to him, Greene talks about how he was the "black sheep" of his family. He says his parents fully expected him to one day be sleeping in the streets. Those worries, though, are things of the past.

"My parents don't worry about me anymore, he says. "They now know that I have a career, there is a future there for me. That's a lot of stress off their shoulders.

"Especially my father. He's proud as punch now. He tells me this on a daily basis."

With his success, and perhaps in an effort to repay years of stress, Greene now supports his parents, both approaching 70, when he can. If they need something, they need not worry. He makes sure they're taken care of.

"It's little simple things, [like] being able to buy them a new car. Stuff like that," Greene says. "They needed the house painted and I got someone to paint their house. Just little quality of life improvements for them."

His parents aren't the only ones Greene supports now. His daughter, too, gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor for years to come.

"I don't want to spoil her," he says. "But anything she needs going forward regarding school or college or any of that, she has it."

When it comes to himself, Greene is far more modest. The money, the success, the globetrotting, he doesn't speak as if it's gone to his head. In fact, if anything, he sounds increasingly more and more humble every day as his accolades keep accumulating. He hasn't really celebrated his new life or success. Not yet, at least.

"Apart from getting a nice bottle of wine or a nice bottle of champagne occasionally, that's kind of my level of celebration. Even for eight million I didn't do much at all," he says. "I love photography; it's what I did for many years. I'll buy myself a new lens occasionally [to] treat myself. But other than that, I'm quite frugal I guess."

When the game is out or in what he feels is a "complete state," he says, maybe then he'll take the chance to buy a house or take six months to a year off to travel the world with his daughter.

Greene says he's not a religious man, but he feels "blessed." He's had a remarkable year so far, and while he does take time to reflect, he's looking forward.

"This is not just a game we're releasing towards the end of the year. This is a game as a service. This is something we're doing, hopefully, for the next five to 10 years," Greene says. "The more and more I look at the game and the more I think about this long term plan, I keep seeing right where we are now as kind of [our] CS 1.6. This is the early days of something that really can grow. I'm looking at the map now and thinking, 'OK, in two or three years time, this is going to look even more amazing.'"

It's worth stressing, as of writing, Battlegrounds hasn't been fully released; the game is still in Early Access. It's coming to PC and Xbox One later this year, as well as possible other platforms in the future. This, like Greene hopes, could only be the beginning for him and his game's success. Despite an impressive couple of months, this is still the ground floor for Battlegrounds, this is still square one.

"I feel like the luckiest man in gaming," Greene says one last time.