SVG Sit-Down: PUBG's Everett Coleman on Producing Esports in a Pandemic, Storytelling for Battle Royale Games

SVG Sit-Down: PUBG's Everett Coleman on Producing Esports in a Pandemic, Storytelling for Battle Royale Games In a normalizing world, plans are to apply lessons learned during COVID By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor

Friday, June 25, 2021 - 10:30 am

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As one of the most popular videogames on the planet, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) has had a growing footprint in esports over the past few years. In addition to tentpole global events like PUBG Global Invitational.S (PGIS) and the PUBG Global Championship (PGC), game developer PUBG is currently in the midst of the PUBG Continental Series 4 (PCS4) with regions competing in the Americas, APAC, Asia, and Europe.

PUBG's Everett Coleman: It's less that the broadcast philosophy and workflows have changed drastically [during the pandemic] and more about efficiency and finding the most streamlined ways to communicate.

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, PUBG pivoted quickly, transitioning from in-person (offline) events to virtual (online) tournaments. The PUBG Global Series was canceled, and the PUBG Continental Series (PGS) online competition was introduced. PCS proved to be highly successful, serving fans' appetite for live esports content during a challenging period. Then, earlier this year, PUBG made its grand return to offline events with 2021 PGI.S in Incheon, Korea.

PUBG Head of Esports, Americas, Everett Coleman oversees all of PUBG's esports operations in North America and Latin America. He sat down with SVG to discuss how PUBG's esports strategy has evolved, lessons learned from producing live events in the pandemic, the launch of a new studio at its Santa Monica offices, the challenges of storytelling for a battle royale game like PUBG, and what's ahead for PUBG in 2021 and beyond.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background in esports.

I call myself a product of the industry because esports is my entire world. I've been in esports for 13-plus years and worked across 30-40 different videogames. I've been able to see the entire spectrum and every angle of esports. I started out as a competitor when I was a teenager, then got into team managing and coaching and, eventually, team owning. A few years back, I joined ESL when they opened their ESL America office in Burbank.

I've been at PUBG for about 2 years. I originally came on as part of a global team that built the esports ecosystem in 2019, including writing the original draft for the global rulebook of PUBG esports. I helped shape the global ecosystem and served as an intersection between all of the regions to help guide league operations, project management, scheduling, and other logistics.

How do you describe your current role as head of esports, Americas, and PUBG's activity in 2021?

Today, my primary focus is to head the Americas division of esports, which is North America and Latin America. This was a big year for us because we made the strategic decision to merge North America and Latin America.

This year, we've had a great mix between first-party online events, third-party online events, and our big global offline events: the PUBG Global Invitational.S (PGI.S) at the beginning of the year and the PUBG Global Championship (PGC) at the end of the year. It's my team's responsibility to fill in the schedule between those two tentpole events, and we've done that with our online first-party event in PUBG Championship Series and our online third-party events in ESL PUBG Masters. Performance across both of those series qualifies teams for PGC at the end of the year.

What did your esports tournament and live-production operations look like prior to the pandemic?

Prior to the pandemic, we were launching a global series of offline events, called the PUBG Global Series. We had several cities around the world picked out to host big offline events like what we produced in 2019. Regional qualifiers would have been executed across several regions, and the top teams would have attended the global events. These events would be the key moments throughout the year and build up the story arc on the way to a massive global championship. Once the pandemic hit, we shifted the focus from those big offline-event moments to big online-event moments.

How did the onset of the pandemic impact your operations?

The biggest change was transitioning from our plans for the PUBG Global Series into creating what became the PUBG Continental Series.

We were very far along in planning for offline events. We had already booked travel and venue, and the event was only a couple weeks away. Some of the other regions had already completed their offline qualifiers, and our NA, LATAM, and OCE teams were going to be some of the last teams to qualify for the event that was going to happen in Berlin.

When the pandemic really hit, we made the decision to postpone the global events as well as the remaining regional events until we could figure everything out. Eventually, the global event was canceled, so there was no reason to do an offline qualifier. We did pay out the prize pool to all the teams that would have qualified for the global event because we wanted to reward those players for all their hard work and make sure they were taken care of, knowing that the impact of the pandemic would be so significant.

At that point, we transitioned into the PUBG Continental Series (PCS), and everything moved online as we started up again.

How did your production/broadcast operations have to adapt once online play began?

We had to rely on cloud-based solutions for all of the broadcasts. It took us only 30-60 days to spin up an entirely new annual plan and broadcast workflow, which is pretty amazing.

At the time, we were in the process of building an in-person production studio, but that had to

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