DayZ (mod)

A player character wearing a ghillie suit lies in the prone position while pointing his M14 DMR across the water. The reticle in the HUD may be seen superimposed next to the bush which is to the right of the player.

DayZ attempts to portray a realistic scenario within the gameplay, with the environment having different effects on the player. A character may receive bone fractures from damage to their legs, go into shock from bullet wounds or zombie bites, receive infections from zombies or diseased players, or faint due to low blood pressure. Thirst and hunger must be kept under control by finding sustenance in either cities or the wilderness, with body temperature playing a key part in the character's survival.[1] The game focuses on surviving and the human elements of a zombie apocalypse by forcing the player to acknowledge basic human needs like thirst, hunger and shelter. These mechanics require the player to focus on immediate goals before they can consider long-term strategies.[2]

DayZ is praised for its level of emergent gameplay. BuzzFeed author Russell Brandom suggested that the mod has spawned the first photojournalist in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, creating articles that are not only about a game world but journalism told from within it.[3] Brandom claimed that DayZ is a unique example of the massively multiplayer online game genre in giving players the freedom to harm or murder each other, whilst adding no restrictions on how or why they may do it, quoting a player who described it as "the story of people".[3] The mod has been compared by Kotaku to The Walking Dead and its focus on interactions between the characters when faced with desperate situations. The players in DayZ are forced to deal with dilemmas in similar ways as portrayed in both the comics and TV series for The Walking Dead.[4]

It has been proposed that DayZ provides some insight into people's motivations and behaviors when reacting to real crisis events, mirroring controlled experiments of a similar nature. However, some critics of this theory argue that participants do not react as they would in a real world situation in which their life is truly threatened.[5] Despite the game being biased towards self-interested, hostile competition, many players enter the game with their own perceptions and priorities. These varied approaches and experiences within the game suggest that even in a system that should theoretically promote rational behaviour, people act in unexpected ways. It has been proposed that this dispels the idea that chaos is an objective and defining feature of the system, rather it is what players make of it.[5]

Dean Hall created the concept while he was a soldier in the New Zealand Army, as a suggestion for training soldiers through exposure to situations provoking emotion and relevant thought processes.[6] He has stated he was inspired by experiences during jungle training while on exchange with the Singapore Armed Forces in Brunei, where he was badly injured in a survival skills exercise.[7] Hall has stated that what he had endured then directly affected the development of DayZ, and the creation of immersion through forcing the player to experience emotion and tension as part of gameplay.[8] Hall believed that early rapid success of the mod was largely due to social media and consumers' desire for games that provided significant challenge.[9] Hall has described the mod as something of an "anti-game" as it broke what he felt were generally considered to be basic rules of game design such as balance and not frustrating users.[10]

First requiring manual installation, DayZ can now be downloaded, for free, from Steam. On August 7, 2012, Dean Hall announced on the game's development blog[11] that the mod was going to be made into its own game, with Bohemia Interactive as the developer,[12][13] and himself as the project leader.[14][15][16] On October 29, 2012, development of the mod officially transferred to a largely community driven effort with the release of version 1.7.3.[17]

DayZ acquired a large user base due to its unique gameplay.[8] By August 2012, three months after release, the mod had registered more than one million unique users.[18] IGN called it one of the most popular PC games in the world "right now" four months after release.[19] It was credited for over 300,000 unit sales of ARMA 2 within two months of the mod's release,[1] putting this three-year-old title in the top seller charts on Steam for over seven weeks, much of this time as the top selling game.[9][20]

Marek Španěl, CEO of ARMA 2 developer Bohemia Interactive, said the mod was directly driving sales of the game and applauded it for an addictive and thrilling experience, saying that it could stand as a gaming experience on its own.[21] The mod was also praised by video game developers not involved with the series. Kristoffer Touborg from CCP (EVE-Online) said it was the best game he has played in several months and called it particularly innovative given the first-person shooter genre, which he considered to be one of gaming's least innovative genres.[22] Game designers Erik Wolpaw and Tim Schafer stated at PAX Prime 2012 that they believe that player-driven experiences such as DayZ are the future of gaming, commenting on what the title achieved without having a driving narrative.[23]

The standalone title, also called DayZ, carries over many of the core gameplay mechanisms of the ARMA 2 mod. DayZ has enhanced graphics, enhanced UI, and AI compared to the mod. DayZ launched on 8th generation consoles (PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) in 2019.

• Official website