HICK-ARUS

TO THIS DAY, HICKS CAN’T FACE PLAYING PUBG OR ANY OF ITS BATTLE ROYALE PEERS

There was no PUBGwhen Brian Hicks and Jordan Tayer conceived the Survivor GameZ, a last-player-standing tournament for DayZ. But in 2012, The Hunger Games was an international movie phenomenon, and Tayer couldn’t stop talking about its potential.

“He just kept pushing that point,” Hicks recalls. “The more he talked about it, worked, and figure it out, we were going to land flat on our face and everyone at work was going to see it.”