emirates7 - BRIDGE Summit 2025 – the world’s largest debut media event – heard an impassioned plea from the creator of one of history’s highest grossing video games to reimagine the internet in 3D as he urged the world to build an “open, shared, human-scale layer” that restores trust, creativity and connection online.
Brandan Greene, known globally as “PlayerUnknown” and the mind behind the Battle Royale genre, said the next evolution of the internet must move beyond content and return to what truly matters: people. “Millions – not hundred or thousands – didn’t gather in PUBG just for gameplay,” said the Irishman who began developing the game in 2013 while living in Brazil as an event photographer and freelance website designer. “Strangers became teammates, teammates became communities, and communities became lifelong friends. People want each other.”
Reflecting on PUBG’s impact – one of the top five most played games ever, generating more than $25 billion in revenue till date – the 49-year-old said the numbers matter less than what they revealed: “People don’t just want content. They want each other. They want agency, shared stories, a world big enough for creativity and connection to thrive.”
Greene opened with a provocation: “Maybe the question isn’t, will the internet be 3D? Maybe the real question is, are we willing to rebuild it that way and have the courage to set it free?” For him, the metaverse is simply “the internet, but in 3D” – a connected layer of virtual spaces that extend real life rather than confine it. Existing attempts, he argued, misunderstood how people want to interact. “We’ve seen islands of digital theme parks built to contain and entertain – but they miss a fundamental aspect of human behaviour. We don’t want to be locked inside theme parks… we want spaces that represent the openness and unpredictability of real life.”
This belief, he said, underpins his ambition to help build “a place big enough for everyone’s imagination” – a global, persistent, open 3D layer of the Internet. “It’s the future,” he said, explaining why existing metaverse efforts resemble “isolated theme parks”.
During his talk, he then outlined his team’s three-phase plan at PlayerUnknown Productions – beginning with a system capable of generating entire virtual planets on a single Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), followed by the creation of a new network protocol designed to support millions of simultaneous players. Crucially, Greene stressed that the future “cannot belong to a single company”, calling for shared digital infrastructure built for “humanity, not corporate silos for profit”.
Greene next explained how his current work – “branded in reality, not hype” – is backed by a disparate 65-member team of astrophysicists, ML researchers, engineers and world designers that’s deploying their breakthrough terrain-generation technology in real time, with their first game, go way back, offering early access to the vision. “We are not building another game, but a foundational layer of a connected 3D internet,”
Calling on creators, technologists, policymakers, and institutions, Greene closed with a deliberate appeal to the DNA of the UAE as a place that champions bold ambition. “We are seeking partners who believe the next layer of the Internet must belong to everyone—open, shared, and built for human connection. Today I’m asking you to dream with us, to build something human, something open.”
The session was part of a 300+ session program that reflects BRIDGE Summit’s scale and ambition. Developed under the mandate of BRIDGE Alliance, the debut edition of BRIDGE Summit 2025 takes place from December 8 to 10 at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi.
Brandan Greene, known globally as “PlayerUnknown” and the mind behind the Battle Royale genre, said the next evolution of the internet must move beyond content and return to what truly matters: people. “Millions – not hundred or thousands – didn’t gather in PUBG just for gameplay,” said the Irishman who began developing the game in 2013 while living in Brazil as an event photographer and freelance website designer. “Strangers became teammates, teammates became communities, and communities became lifelong friends. People want each other.”
Reflecting on PUBG’s impact – one of the top five most played games ever, generating more than $25 billion in revenue till date – the 49-year-old said the numbers matter less than what they revealed: “People don’t just want content. They want each other. They want agency, shared stories, a world big enough for creativity and connection to thrive.”
Greene opened with a provocation: “Maybe the question isn’t, will the internet be 3D? Maybe the real question is, are we willing to rebuild it that way and have the courage to set it free?” For him, the metaverse is simply “the internet, but in 3D” – a connected layer of virtual spaces that extend real life rather than confine it. Existing attempts, he argued, misunderstood how people want to interact. “We’ve seen islands of digital theme parks built to contain and entertain – but they miss a fundamental aspect of human behaviour. We don’t want to be locked inside theme parks… we want spaces that represent the openness and unpredictability of real life.”
This belief, he said, underpins his ambition to help build “a place big enough for everyone’s imagination” – a global, persistent, open 3D layer of the Internet. “It’s the future,” he said, explaining why existing metaverse efforts resemble “isolated theme parks”.
During his talk, he then outlined his team’s three-phase plan at PlayerUnknown Productions – beginning with a system capable of generating entire virtual planets on a single Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), followed by the creation of a new network protocol designed to support millions of simultaneous players. Crucially, Greene stressed that the future “cannot belong to a single company”, calling for shared digital infrastructure built for “humanity, not corporate silos for profit”.
Greene next explained how his current work – “branded in reality, not hype” – is backed by a disparate 65-member team of astrophysicists, ML researchers, engineers and world designers that’s deploying their breakthrough terrain-generation technology in real time, with their first game, go way back, offering early access to the vision. “We are not building another game, but a foundational layer of a connected 3D internet,”
Calling on creators, technologists, policymakers, and institutions, Greene closed with a deliberate appeal to the DNA of the UAE as a place that champions bold ambition. “We are seeking partners who believe the next layer of the Internet must belong to everyone—open, shared, and built for human connection. Today I’m asking you to dream with us, to build something human, something open.”
The session was part of a 300+ session program that reflects BRIDGE Summit’s scale and ambition. Developed under the mandate of BRIDGE Alliance, the debut edition of BRIDGE Summit 2025 takes place from December 8 to 10 at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi.