PUBG’s production director wants to make the game cuter

Listen, we all love a cute, cozy game. Right? Sometimes it’s nice to just kick back and enjoy some fluffy visuals, soft pinks and cloudy scenery, gentle music, and nothing to stress about. It’s one of the best ways to enjoy video games. On the other end of that spectrum, you can also slay countless foes in a shower of blood and best an entire lobby to emerge victorious from the battlefield. That could well be your version of cute and cozy. But what about if you combined the two? PUBG Mobile might end up doing just that one day.

PUBG Mobile is a frenetic battle royale game, where the aim of the game is to take out as many players as possible with as many heavy-hitting weapons as you can get your hands on. All to bag yourself a winner winner, chicken dinner, and end up as the last player standing. The gameplay can be both fast-paced shooter and tactical stealth and like with most online multiplayers, it’s life or death. So cute doesn’t tend to crop up in your subconscious when thinking of PUBG Mobile, and that’s fair enough. But it’d be interesting if it did.

We’re on the ground at Gamescom 2024 and asked PUBG Mobile’s production director Taehyun Kim if he could add absolutely anything to the game, with no limits, what would it be? The immediate answer was to make PUBG cute, “to make a very cute version of PUBG, which is
adapting between game ability and gameplay. So art and visuals are pretty cute, but the gameplay is hardcore.” The juxtaposition of the hardcore gameplay that PUBG is known for, but mixed with cute art and visuals. Now that we’re thinking about it, we’d love to see it too.

Blending genres is always exciting in any art form, but especially when it comes to video games. There are heaps of genre-bending titles that push the boundaries, and we’d love to see PUBG Mobile become one of them. Who doesn’t want to skip through bountiful fields, with a blushing sunset in the background and lilting, calming music in your ears, while you smack someone in the face with a frying pan? Imagine the normally armored vehicles getting turned into adorable little magic carpets, or even cozy clouds for you to rest your weary bones on for a time, until you float your way into the next battle. Cute and chaotic? We’re already on board.

While we hold out hope for a cute and cuddly LTM sometime in PUBG Mobile’s future, there are plenty of games out there that bend the rules already. Poppy Playtime’s Miss Delight is technically cute, right? We personally think FNAF’s Chica is adorable, and during our Gori: Cuddly Carnage interview, we discussed the joys of slaying waves of enemies and then being able to pet the kitty cat in the main menu to wind down. Who says a battle royale can’t be cute?