Video produced and edited by Justin Wolfson and Sean Dacanay. Click here for transcript.

LOS ANGELES—Though you may have only heard of Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene in the past year thanks to the stratospheric success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), gamers have known his work for far longer. His work on the "battle royale" genre goes back to mods he developed for the shooters ARMA III and H1Z1—a fact that's often lost on fans who don't realize Greene worked on those older games, as well.
We offered Greene an opportunity to clear up that historical confusion during a chance encounter at last month's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). The result is the above illuminating interview. It includes a few revealing nuggets, many of which go all the way back to his work on the military shooter ARMA III—and how he modded it to better resemble the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.
Circle, circle, square, square

Greene is particularly frank about his games' biggest difference from those films: the way the battle-filled islands shrink down over time to ratchet up tension. The films do this by crossing out squares on a map's grid, but Greene opted to use a constantly shrinking circle for two reasons: to simplify gameplay, and to compensate for his own admitted lack of coding talent.

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