 Brendan Greene's life was in tatters. He was trapped, divorced, penniless, and alone in a foreign country, with no hope of escape. Bit by bit, he was saving up what little money he could in the hopes of one day making it back to his native island, but this goal still seemed like a long way away. In the meantime, the only thing that kept him busy on his long lonely nights was video gaming, but even this was getting boring. He'd played Call of Duty over and over and over, and was incredibly tired of experiencing the same repetitive online match formula time and time again. Spawn. Run. Shoot. Die. Respawn. There was no variety, no sense of exhilaration, no need for independent thought. If only there was a video game that forced the player to be more inventive, where the matches scenario would change endlessly so that no two games played the same. The kind of game where your life mattered, and you couldn't just instantly throw it away and try again, so that you had to plan strategically without running and gunning your way through encounters with opponents. As he sat there, bored out of his mind, desperate for some kind of escape, Brendan made a decision. If his idea of the perfect game didn't exist yet, then he'd make it. And so, just like that, Brendan invented Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. Brendan Green was an army brat. Born in Ballyshannon in Ireland, Brendan grew up at a military base called the Couricamp. His father would travel the world on assignments for the army, and would often come back with unique presence from his time away. One time, after a trip to Lebanon, Brendan's father brought the family back an Amiga 2600, and Brendan played happily. That said, as much as he enjoyed gaming, it wasn't ever a major part of his life. As the years went on, he played only a few rare games, every so often. He briefly tried the stealthy Metal Gear Solid, but this wasn't really his kind of thing. He preferred games that involved running and gunning, so put in his fair share of hours in Delta Force, Black Hawk Down, and America's Army, but ultimately lost interest in gaming altogether. For a while in university, he even dabbled with cyberpunk role-playing games, but this was always secondary to some of his other, more beloved hobbies. Brendan earned a degree in fine art, with the hopes of becoming a professional artist, but he soon learned that the Irish art market was fairly unforgiving for a newcomer. Instead, Brendan noticed the success that his girlfriend at the time was having in the field of graphic design, so he gave that a try. Freelancing as a photographer and a designer seemed to work pretty well for Brendan, so he kept working in an ad hoc manner for whatever clients he could find. He also had a deep love of music, which led him to set up a music studio with a friend, where he'd be in charge of band art work and videos. Brendan floated between creative projects, taking himself into whatever field seemed to offer promise. It wasn't the most secure way to earn a living, but he didn't really have any other idea what to do. He was just one person, all by himself. Eventually, Brendan fell in love with a woman from Brazil and followed her back to her home country in the hopes of getting married and starting a family. While all was well for a while, eventually their relationship broke down and Brendan found himself divorced and alone, living hand to mouth without much to aspire towards. This time was perhaps the lowest in Brendan's life. He was a nobody, an insignificant speck of a man who'd scraped by without truly living and without anyone nearby caring about him. He began saving money for a plane ticket to take him back to Ireland, but this was a long way off. As a foreigner without traditional employment, he was stuck watching the majority of his earnings disappearing into rent and bills as he wiled away his evenings without much to live for and so bereft of any other things to keep him busy. Brendan started playing video games. He embraced the latest Call of Duty and its quick-fire shooting matches although it never really felt like something that filled the hole that he was looking for. Eventually, a game called Armour 2 came out and this was better, but Brendan was having ideas about building a game of his own. He was inspired by the Japanese movie Battle Royale, as well as the more recent Hunger Games novels, both of which featured a plot where combatants fight the death as blood sport for the amusement of viewers. Brendan couldn't help but think of how much fun this kind of experience would be in a video game if matches went on for over 15 minutes and if players only got a single life. They'd be forced to play cautiously, strategising to avoid a death that would feel increasingly heartbreaking. The longer a player survived in a match, the more tense and exciting the game would become and the more they'd feel desperate to keep going longer without getting killed. In his daydreams, Brendan imagined his game playing out as an esport with a huge arena filled with spectators watching 50 or so players battling it out on rows of computers in the centre of the room. When each player was defeated, they'd have to stand up from their table and slowly make their way out of the room. It would bring the Hunger Games Battle Royale experience to life in the only way that could possibly be considered humane. As he dreamed of the possibilities, Brendan started to consider actually building his game. After all, what was to stop him? Mods existed across the internet that changed the rules of different games, so he could, in theory, build his deathmatch game as a mod for Armour 2. If nothing else, working on this mod gave him something to actually strive for, something he could achieve on his long lonely nights. And so, Brendan set to work, teaching himself modding from scratch. The process was slow, but he had all the time in the world to work on it. Before long, his Armour 2 mod, named Player Unknown's Battle Royale, was complete. Brendan had chosen to slap his online username, Player Unknown, on the front as a way to distinguish the mod as his own creation and in the hopes that it would feel like something of a unique brand name that would stand out from the original Battle Royale movie. Player Unknown's Battle Royale earned a respectable following within the Armour 2 modding community and Brendan had a lot of fun playing with online friends in his homemade creation. Everything at that point was paid for out of Brendan's own pocket, as he and a friend set up a server for fellow gamers to enjoy the game. Brendan would stay up late into the night, keeping the server running so that everyone was able to play and the game would go offline when he went to bed and had to shut down the computer. This setup was less than ideal, not least because Brendan's internet connection wasn't very stable and everyone's game progress would disappear periodically. Eventually, the small community surrounding Battle Royale breathed a sigh of relief as Brendan finally made his way back to Ireland on a one-way trip. Returning to his home country, Brendan was met with concern from his parents. They loved their son and following all the challenges he's suffered through recently, they were really worried about him. Not long after planting his feet on home soil, Brendan signed up for government welfare to keep himself afloat and dove back into running Battle Royale as a more solid experience. His games community was growing and he was passionate about helping to sustain its progress. His parents weren't sure that this was a good use of his time, especially after Brendan explained that there was no money in game mods and that his burgeoning player base weren't actually giving him any financial return for his investment of time and money. They were helpless to stop him, but they couldn't help but worry that if he carried on like this for much longer, Brendan would soon be out on the street, homeless and completely penniless. They needn't have worried. Before long, a big-name game developer was going to take notice of Brendan's progress in a big way and his life was about to change dramatically as Battle Royale got the full AAA gaming treatment. Unbeknownst to Brendan, his little mod was grabbing major attention from some of the higher-ups within the gaming industry. The Battle Royale idea felt so fresh and innovative that a lot of developers were eager to try and copy its premise, which led to employees for Daybreak Game Company, the creators of H1Z1, discussing the mod as part of some game development videos that the studio released online. When Brendan saw this, he was thrilled. These industry professionals were taking inspiration from his game. He sent them a jokie tweet, suggesting that they should throw some money his way to help make their Battle Royale idea into something real for their game. To Brendan's immense surprise, that's exactly what they did. John Smedley, then the president of Daybreak, sent Brendan a private message on Twitter asking to talk further. In no time at all, Brendan was boarding a plane again, this time on a journey to San Diego to start work on creating a Battle Royale mode for H1Z1. Brendan was incredibly grateful to the team at Daybreak for going to the trouble of including him in their design plans. In all fairness, there had been nothing to stop them simply stealing his idea for their own, and he really appreciated that the studio heads were principled enough to give credit where it was due. Finally, Brendan was a legitimate games developer, working for real money on the game that he'd been building and supporting for years. This was only the beginning. After the H1Z1 work was completed, Brendan was contacted by Blue Hole, a Korean games developer that wanted to take his idea and turn it into a fully fleshed out game in its own right. Brendan accepted and was soon on his way to Seoul to make what would eventually be named Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. Brendan decided on the name change as a way of differentiating this from his previous, which had all borne the Battle Royale moniker. Besides, he wanted this game to be distinct enough to avoid litigation, considering how heavily it borrowed from the Battle Royale movie. While the team of developers at Blue Hole were eager to build Brendan's dream game, friction arose very quickly as Brendan started sharing his ideas. Brendan wasn't a traditional developer. As he was entirely self-taught and not much of a gamer to begin with, his ideas often felt a little off-putting and challenging. The developers attempted to explain to Brendan that what he was looking for simply wasn't how game development was done, but nevertheless, they listened to him. After all, the fact that Brendan came from such a unique background was part of the reason why his game work thus far had felt so fresh and original. So estranged it might be to include some of his more unusual ideas, the team at Blue Hole couldn't help but agree that just because something broke the mould of game development, it didn't mean that it was inherently a bad idea. And so, finally, Player Unknown's Battleground was released. In an unfinished and very limited form, to Steam Greenlight. Despite all of the progress that Brendan had seen over the past few years, he was in no way prepared for the incredible success the game experienced in a matter of weeks. Even seasoned industry professionals were shocked. They'd been insisting to Brendan that a really good first year would see a player base of a couple of hundred thousand players. But as Player Unknown's Battlegrounds was downloaded by millions upon millions of gamers, it was clear that the momentum for this project wasn't going to slow down anytime soon. It didn't take long for Player Unknown's Battlegrounds to become the most popular game on Steam. The appeal was phenomenal, as Brendan quickly found himself transforming from a single, insignificant spec in a sea of people to one of the most in-demand stars of the gaming industry. For his part, Brendan enjoyed the new travel opportunities best. He could tour the world, visiting distant cities as part of his work. While there was plenty to do to complete Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, he was eager to take the opportunity to see far-off places and make friends in new locales. He'd done it. Somehow, against all odds, Brendan had risen from a position of complete obscurity, a literal unknown player, all the way to the top of the gaming industry. It had taken some ingenuity, some careful planning and willingness to move around, and an awful lot of luck. But somehow, he'd proven himself a winner. The moral of the story is that great success can come from anywhere. Anyone can achieve their dreams, no matter their origins or personal circumstances. Brendan Green wasn't an experienced, well-trained games developer. He wasn't particularly wealthy or noteworthy. And at one point, he felt like the smallest, least important person in the world. He was wrong. Brendan had a valuable contribution to make, and there were people who cared about what he wanted to say, even if they lived hundreds or thousands of miles away. You were the same. You were important, and you were special. You may not always feel like you matter, and you may never see the same phenomenal fame that Brendan Green has found thrust upon himself. But that doesn't make you any less worthwhile. Don't give up on yourself, and don't downplay your own capacity for greatness. As you work hard and try your best to find your voice, people around you will take notice, and they will appreciate hearing your unique view on the world. You matter, and you can succeed in your goals. Your eventual victory dinner will taste all the more delicious when you finally feel happy with yourself.