Emma Higgins, a senior majoring in game development and interactive design, said she has never heard of a USC Games class that guarantees an internship interview. But come Spring 2026, one School of Cinematic Arts class will promise students an interview with PlayersUnknown’s Battlegrounds mobile, and feedback on their projects from PUBG mobile developers, who will also give guest lectures.

USC Games and PUBG Mobile, a mobile battle royale game, will partner in the Spring 2026 semester. PUBG Mobile’s World of Wonder platform — a platform for user-generated content within PUBG Mobile — will be integrated into the USC Games’ Games as Live Service Operations class, which teaches students how to manage a game that continuously adds new content, promotions or events after release.

Kyle Ackerman, a faculty member in technology and applied computing who co-teaches the class, said that games like Roblox are more like platforms than singular games since users can create their own games. World of Wonder falls under this model, where users create content for the platform.

Jim Huntley, an associate professor of cinematic arts who co-teaches the class, said that the class will give students a new perspective on game development.

“We can get behind the scenes in terms of what [developers’] thought processes are [while] making [live service games] and the inside track on how to optimize projects on the PUBG mobile ecosystem from the people that have made it and manage it themselves,” said Huntley.

In the past, the course primarily utilized Unreal Engine for Fortnite as its development platform. Ackerman said that there is no plan to stop using UEFN, but they will now also teach the World of Wonder platform.

Higgins said she doesn’t like the idea of students developing for UGC platforms like UEFN or World of Wonder, because they would not receive enough in return for their work creating content for PUBG. She also said that a guaranteed interview might not necessarily lead to students having priority for internships.

“[PUBG is] filling out their world space with full student-made levels,” Higgins said. “And that seems like a big benefit to the PUBG Mobile people, and I’m not sure quite as much how big of a benefit that’s going to be to the students.”

PUBG Mobile first released World of Wonder Beta in March 2023. The finished World of Wonder 1.0 was released in Sept. 2025 and has over four million maps. Higgins said that Unreal Engine for Fortnite is a better UGC platform than World of Wonder for students to learn, as Unreal Engine is an industry-standard software.

However, Ackerman said there are advantages for students in developing UGC for PUBG Mobile, including impacting and reaching players in the growing mobile games industry. 

“PUBG Mobile has an enormous audience,” Ackerman said. “When you’re having folks develop content, being able to discover an audience and then maintain that audience is much easier when there are a lot of people on that platform.”

Huntley said that most of the time, students make games in a closed environment with feedback only from a handful of people. He said that developing and publishing content through PUBG Mobile will allow more players to iterate on students’ games with more input from the marketplace.

 “We want [students] to be able to critically evaluate that and then create the kind of content that’s going to gather an audience,” Ackerman said. “Because from a student perspective, being able to get an audience equates to being able to get jobs, or being able to make money, and being able to function in the industry.”

Ackerman said one of the main goals of this partnership is to have a students network, which will improve their chances in the future as professional game developers. Huntley said that he also wants to ensure students are well-rounded in their game development experience.

“Using tools like PUBG Mobile so that they can have those skills in developing for a mobile-first platform — a medium with a huge user base — is only going to help improve their odds of getting a role at PUBG Mobile when they graduate … or another company that’s delivering on a live-operations business model,” Huntley said.