In some projects I see an extension of APlayerState used, but I don’t see how that custom player state is associated with the rest of the project.
How is an extended player state class associated with a pawn class?
In your GameMode constructor, you associate them like this:
PlayerControllerClass = AMyPlayerController::StaticClass();
PlayerStateClass = AMyPlayerState::StaticClass();
GameStateClass = AMyGameState::StaticClass();
SpectatorClass = AMySpectatorPawn::StaticClass();
Hope it helps!