There are not many online gaming enthusiasts at the moment who don’t know about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or PUBG. The game allows mobile players to play across platforms and is gaining more popular with passing day — which is proved by the fact that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a special mention of PUBG during his interaction with students and parents at the Pariksha Par Charcha 2.0 event in New Delhi on Tuesday. What is PUBG is the question a lot of people have on their lips now.
“Ye PUBG wala hey kya?” PM Modi asked a concerned parent who had sought tips from him to wean her son away from online games. “Technology is good but its use is in our hands. Parents should discuss technology as part of dinner table conversation. We are converging due to technology and are becoming narrow-minded. This should be used for our expansion instead,” Modi further said in his reply.
So, what is the PUBG game that the PM was referring to, and how addictive is it?
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What is PUBG?
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is an online game that can be played on mobile phones (both Android and iOS), personal computers, and also gaming consoles like Xbox.
In a PUBG game, 100 players jump on to a battlefield chosen by them, without arms or weapons, and get on the task of collecting supplies and ammunition that would help them survive.
The game comes with several maps and stages. It’s violent, with players required to kill each other, while staying within the safe zone circle, to stay alive.
The map keeps shrinking, which forces the player to relocate to a new safe zone, and a failure to do this results in death.
The last person standing is declared the winner and is greeted with “chicken dinner”.
PUBG is owned by China’s Tencent Holdings, and has 200 million daily active users worldwide. This is despite the fact that the game claims considerable space on mobile phones — 1.6 GB on Android handsets and 2.1 GB on iOS.
There is no India-specific data on the downloads, but popularity of the online game in the country is reaching alarming proportions. The Gujarat government has banned it in schools. Politicians and students groups in Jammu and Kashmir have also called for a ban on the addictive game.