"Any story you write will not be as compelling as an unscripted happening between human players," said Dean "Rocket" Hall at this year's Game Developer's Conference. He was speaking about why he believes DayZ works, and why it's taken the gaming community by storm.
The philosophy behind DayZ comes down to trying to design what a player should feel, not what you want them to do. Therefore the focus from the beginning was always less about features, and more about situations that could provoke an emotional response. For instance Hall created tents in the DayZ Mod, which allowed players to store items and set up a base of sorts. This, however, presented players with a new problem: how could they protect their belongings from others?
Feelings are important to the design of DayZ, which is why one of the driving ideas behind the game has always been,"loss provides value." If you can lose something permanently, you'll love it more. Thus DayZ was and is designed around permanent death, and allows your killer to take your items. Hall feels that adding this taps into instinctual parts of the human experience, likening it to someone giving you a bottle of water for a few minutes, versus giving it to you forever.
Hall sees attachment and ownership as a driving force behind why DayZ resonates with players emotionally. Several people who play can attest to the mixed feelings you get when you kill someone in DayZ, and Hall believes this stems from the knowledge that when you kill someone and see all the gear they have you understand that you're taking something that was theirs, something that didn't belong to you.
DayZ also embraces complexity in its design, at least where it makes sense. For instance Hall knows that people understand that getting shot means you bleed, that people who are trying to survive need to worry about thirst and hunger. To him, these are places where you can design a game that goes deeper than people might expect, without having to explain it to people why these features exist. He was quick, however, to address that complexity shouldn't extend to getting your game playable, something DayZ was notoriously bad about when it first launched.
All the various components of DayZ come together to create a game that Hall feels creates player crafted experiences. Players tell their own stories based off interactions with others, and create their own narratives for the bodies they find.
The second half of Hall's presentation involved the lessons he learned while making the standalone. First and foremost? Hall believes you have to make yourself synonymous with the project, otherwise you risk people stealing your idea and making it without you. Once you make a name for youself, Hall suggest you get an agent.
Hall also feels that your game has to be driven by the creative vision of one person. He takes complete responsibility for DayZ, which he admitted has been hard, because success and failures both fall to him.
Engaging the community is also important if you want to have a viral game. To Hall this comes down to being transparent, something he's striven to do throughout the project with developer videos and screenshots that show the game in states many developers would shy away from. Hall sees this as invaluable, though, providing critical feedback and even resulting in hiring members of the community to help develop the upcoming standalone.
More than anything else, Hall said that designers need to create "compelling experiences." While that might sound a bit hollow, Hall was trying to emphasize the idea that if you focus first on making a game with unique concepts, you'll see that everything else becomes secondary to players. DayZ was difficult to install, had gigantic queues that required manual attempts, hackers, bugs and more, and yet it thrived because of its unique gameplay.
Hall is constantly humbled by the online community, and knows that he and Bohemia have a lot to do before DayZ is the game the fans want. For him it ultimately comes down to the idea that, "A great game is not simply a collection of features, but the master of them."
Will DayZ succeed? We'll find out when it eventually releases, "when it's done."
Anthony has spent several hours in Cherno, and is looking forward with trying the new DayZ when it releases. Follow him for the latest PC coverage and random rants on Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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