The thing about live service games being a hangout space is this: when we socialize in real life, we don’t always end up doing the exact same thing. Some games are great at mirroring the improvisational aspect of how we spend time socially.
Battle royales like PUBG aren’t among them. They’re necessarily prescriptive, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be any fun. If you’re not in a certain part of the map, you die. If you don’t pay attention to other players, you die. If you fail to pick up the drippiest of loot items, it’s a slightly more convoluted route to death but nevertheless, death is the inevitable conclusion.
