PUBG - Social Media Monitoring Project Part One

Introduction

If you are a fan of FPS games, you will be absolutely familiar with the words "winner winner, chicken dinner". As a declaration of victory for the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, it has become a synonym for this game. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) is a multiplayer online battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Korean publisher Bluehole. In the game, up to one hundred players parachute onto an island and scavenge for weapons and equipment to kill others while avoiding getting killed themselves. The available safe area of the game's map decreases in size over time, directing surviving players into tighter areas to force encounters. The last player or team standing wins the round.

PUBG has dominated 2017. In last year, no game has been more popular than PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. In October 11th, the PUBG announced that the game has 2 million online people at the same time in Steam, the result of which kicks Dota 2 out of the top spot on Steam. Lots of game platforms predicted that the game would continue to lead in 2018.

However, with the increasing number of players, the vulnerability of the server quality is more and more obvious. Also, with the emergence of cheaters, the experience of the whole game becomes very poor. In the face of such a bad groundswell, what did PUBG do to calm down the players? And how will it use social media to get the player again?


Platforms
PUBG can play on the Steam, which is one the world's largest integrated digital distribution platforms. Steam also provides a community for players to communicate. 

PUBG data

Dota2 data

Steam's database shows that at present, PUBG can reach 2 million 150 thousand people online per day, far beyond the second Dota2. Online players are growing rapidly every day after the game is released.

PUBG players every day

PUBG is also currently represented on the three major Social Media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and micro-blog. 

Of these social media, I'd like to focus on the Twitter and micro-blog, the main reason is that they have a lot of similar functions. In addition, according to the data, we can see that the number of Chinese players in the PUBG game had reached 42% in 2017, and most of the users of micro-blog are Chinese. So these two social media can respond well to PUBG's communication to most part of players.







PUBG has no interaction with the player on twitter. Its main task is the release of official news, such as the game update time, the promotion of new elements. Because its servers often have problems, there are also some apology information. It is not hard to see lots of negative comments.

In the face of players' complaints, PUBG is constantly improving its own server and adding new activities to give players a new game experience.

What is the result? The answer is positive. According to the data, PUBG's Twitter grows 1600 new fans per day, and has 2000 interactions per day which includes likes, replies and retweets. Moreover, a few days ago, PUBG's sales have reached 30 million.

Thanks to Chinese players' love for the game, the number of fans in micro-blog has reached 900 thousand.Because the Tencent has just acted as an agent for PUBG, so the most important task is that they need to get a good relationship with the players and attract more people to pay attention to the game. The online interaction and the lottery make the whole micro-blog atmosphere very relaxed. So players have expressed their support after seeing the Tencent agent PUBG.

In the commentary, most part of people show confidence in Tencent. It is also noteworthy that the official micro-blog of PUBG often reply to the player, it's really different from twitter.
According to the data statistics of micro-blog, 60% of the people who search for the PUBG on their clients are men, mostly between the ages of 19 and 24. This is very common in all games .

Analytics 

Google Trends

This game has won the player's pursuit because of its changeable game style and exciting game experience. In less than two weeks, sales of the game have reached 1 million, half a year later, sales reached 10 million. So we can see that the Google trend of PUBG is increasing quickly at the beginning. The decline in the period from October to December is largely due to the instability of the server that causes players to give up the game.

But in the middle of December, PUBG made a update. It launched a new map - Miramar, the new game background has successfully attracted a large number of players, which  is shown at the peak in the above graph. In addition, this update added a replay system, which allows players to report cheaters with evidence.











Google trend also lets us see the impact of PUBG on FPS games. We added two contrast terms, CS:GO and H1Z1. CS:GO is another popular FPS game on Steam, and H1Z1 was the most popular multi player online Battle Royale game before PUBG appeared.

As we can see from the picture, the appearance of PUBG almost monopolized the H1Z1 market and took away some of the players from CS:GO.

Let's take a look at Interest by subregion, except in New York and Hawaii, all other regions of the United States are covered by the blue of PUBG. We can come to the conclusion that PUBG, although the game operator has a lot of problems, still can't prevent it from becoming the leader of the FPS game.

Social mention

All screen captures from Social Mention were collected on February 19th & 25th.

Overall, we see very consistent percentages in the Strength and passion. Because PUBG often has maintenance and updates, the result of which lets it be discussed all the time. In the last few days, PUBG's invitational competition was in progress, and all kinds of events and reports made the strength of social mention nearly one hundred percent.

Concluding Thoughts


In my opinion, PUBG is currently facing two problems. The first is the quality of servers was criticized by people all the time. Apology doesn't solve the problem. They may need to find more sponsorship and use more money to maintain their own servers. The second is the emergence of cheaters. FPS games have a high demand for delay, so many ballistic models are calculated locally, which gives many cheaters a chance. It's very difficult to put an end to the cheaters, but we can strengthen the supervision and improve the means of reporting.

PUBG did try to do the game well, but it was far from enough. When you click on the PUBG tweet information, you'll see a lot of bad reviews, which are not common for a very popular game. But it also reflects players' concern about PUBG. As far as I'm concerned, PUBG is still stand on the top of FPS games.

They have some problems energizing the groundswell. Facing so many bad reviews, PUBG is still focusing on making new activities to make money instead of maintaining its own server. I think it's a wrong decision for the future.