At first glance, it’s pretty easy to see that these games ( H1Z1:KOTK / PUBG / LMS .. ) all share a common lineage, right? This all started with a mod for Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead called DayZ. It became a full-fledged phenomenon well before it was a stand-alone game. But interest in that game has faded as the production timeline has drawn out. It’s still not even out of Early Access.
Well, it’s not like DayZ was a small game. A lot of these survival titles took off. But I think PUBG — as it has become known online — does a lot of smart things that make it more attractive to a broader base of players than past games in this genre.

There are no complicated rules. Your two jobs are to loot buildings for guns and gear, and then kill the other players you see. There are no NPCs, and no real story. You just have to survive for as long as possible. The ever-diminishing play area, combined with the tracker at the top right of your screen that shows how many players are left alive, gives each round a sense of urgency and pacing that a lot of other survival games lack.

Really good games make failure fun, and you can have a good time playing PUBG by just scurrying around and hiding while watching the survivor count go down before you master the, shall we say, idiosyncratic gunplay. Learning how to move, collect loot and stay out of people’s way will get you surprisingly far,

but if you want to stay alive past the last 40 survivors or so, you’re going to need to learn how to fight.

To me, the lack of logic or world-building in PUBG is one of the best parts of the game. There are no zombies to worry about, nor does anyone seem to care about whether the structures make any sense outside of the game itself ( not anymore i guess).
PUBG could still use some optimization, and it’s not rare to find bugs.
It’s funny you bring up the airdrops. That plane comes back throughout the game and drops crates of high-end gear. The friends I play with tend to avoid them like the plague.

We like to setup gunfights where we control our placement as much as possible until the endgame brawl, and the Hunger Games-style scramble that happens near airdrops is a good way to get killed by players with much greater mechanical skill.

You can fight early, you can fight late, you can hide, or you can form squads with your friends and go on the attack. The loot system is generous and consistent. The game is constantly feeding you rewards, whether it’s in finding a high-level helmet or backpack or good optics for your weapon, or simply surviving as the player count ticks down and getting points redeemable for cosmetic gear.

1. The game is stable enough that you rarely die because of glitches.
   
2. Learning how to skydive into battle and loot successfully while avoiding other players is fun, even if you’re not actually doing that well.
   
3. The game’s rounds are relatively short, and provide constant feedback about how you’re doing.
   
4. Once you get past the early skills, there is still a lot to learn if you want to finish in the top 10 consistently..