Gen.G — Part 1

A structured flexible playstyle

While preparing the weekly recap for twire.gg (here), I spent a lot of time focusing on Gen.G.

The Korean team is as close as they can be to a back-to-back victory during the World Championship, an impressive performance considering how stacked the tournament is, and I wondered about the reasons behind it.

I’ve tried to figure out what defines their style and what we can learn about one of the best PUBG teams. This three parts article aims to break down their playstyle and understand the reasons behind their consistency.

The first part will be the opportunity to look at their flexibility. In the second part, we’ll break down their routine. Finally, we’ll use Weekly Finals from week 4 to understand the limits of their gameplay.

I’ve focused on games played under the SUPER rule set to avoid biases created by the WWCD format.

Loot spots

Erangel

On Erangel, the team played seven different spots (in 36 games) from the start of the tournament, with a slight preference for South Georgopol.

Looking at the stats, it’s pretty clear the team has put a lot of effort to prepare every lobby and adjust their spot according to the squads present.

A purely adaptive behavior would display much more dispersed numbers, whereas each phase has a specific spot, which reflects meticulous work.

Trivia: the team has an average of 4,97 points per game on Erangel.

Miramar

On Miramar, the team has shown even more adaptability with no less than ten spots (over 26 games).

Once again, looking at the stats, it sounds like they’ve prepared every lobby independently, and there is a deliberate choice behind every choice.

Trivia: the team has an average of 8,15 points per game on Miramar.

While most teams usually have a primary loot spot and a back-up plan when the plane path decides otherwise, Gen.G has played a different one (and back-up) in almost every lobby, which implies several things:

• Hard work: the main advantage of playing the same spot over and over is your ability to have a clear and well-rounded plan for every circle. You’re familiar with rotation paths and principal scouting positions. You have a clear understanding of your priorities. You know habits from teams playing around you perfectly, which reduce risks. Therefore, you can easily understand how much work it represents to have such knowledge for 5 to 8 additional loot spots on each map,
• Strong fundamentals: Even with a high amount of games, every match is so unique that you can’t rely purely on your knowledge. In the majority of your games, you’ll usually play on another team’s territory, and there are multiple situations where you could lose resources (player or vehicle). Therefore, you have to rely on a routine you can carry on from one game to another. It implies a lot of rigor and team play to get to a point where you could play from any spot with the exact same discipline,
• Flexibility: even if you have a well-prepared plan going into your game, you can still have to deal with unpredictable events. Between other choices, other alternative spots, extreme plane paths, and so on, there are once again a million reasons why you could have to deal with a situation you couldn’t prepare for. On several occasions, and unlike other teams, they managed to find a stable environment despite the events, which shows a lot of maturity and control.

That said, it’s pretty clear that Gen.G performance relies on something not related to circumstances but instead on something more deeply rooted: team spirit. We’ve seen several teams performing during PGI.S, but none of them managed to carry on their dynamic over such a long time.

It leads us to the following question: What is so unique that they succeed where others fail?

We’ll determine how this team spirit characterizes and how it materializes in terms of concrete actions and behaviors in the second article.

Maxime “Znooper” GONY