DayZ – Syndication Server

‘It’s like dying’ – DayZ creator on how success was life-altering

Dean Hall explains how DayZ’s surge in popularity was difficult to comprehend initially.

Few people working in the games industry experience overnight success like Dean Hall did when DayZ first entered early access in 2013. Oddly enough, he believes it was like being at death’s door.

During an interview with GLHF at Gamescom 2022, Hall went over how DayZ‘s rise in popularity was immediately life-changing.

“Well, it’s like dying. Honestly, that’s how I think about it. It’s like, you had your whole life before, and it was just completely torpedoed. Every relationship or friendship you had… it changes your whole life trajectory,” Hall said. “I was still in the army at the time, I was just on a leave of absence. Well, that was just over. You know, I remember one day, I think my first royalty check was like $5 million. So it was extremely disorienting.”

Hall acknowledged that there are no big downsides to suffering from success, but creating one of the most popular zombie games ever did shake him up.

“And that’s why I’m, even though maybe I messed up some of the DayZ stuff a bit, I look back, and just I’m proud that I survived it without completely imploding. And I mean, it’s ridiculous to say, oh, boohoo, someone made a lot of money and changed everything. But it is very disorienting,” Hall continues. “And I think of it as very much a before and after. You have to start to decide what are the things that really matter to you. And for me, it’s making games.”

“That’s why one of the games I’ve been showing here is a tiny tycoon game,” Hall explains. “Who knows how many people will really play it, but I’d be making games even if nobody paid for them.”

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Anyone that was playing DayZ during its time in early access undoubtedly remembers how rough things were. After Hall left Bohemia Interactive in 2014, it took the studio four more years to reach version 1.0 of DayZ. Hall harbors some regret about where priorities were during the early days of DayZ‘s development.

“I was very obsessed with hacking. I think we should have followed a Minecraft model where we provided lots of server tools to whitelist and blacklist, throw it out to the community and embrace modding, right from day one. That was my fault,” Hall said. “I just really wanted to solve the hacking thing.”

“That meant that zombies didn’t work for a long time. And we didn’t get good vehicle support. And that was a massive mistake. And it was mine. It wasn’t Bohemia’s, it was mine,” Hall continues. “I would have done that very differently. You can just see how well it worked for Minecraft. It’s very easy to hack Minecraft, but the community is quite capable of managing that themselves,” Hall concludes.”

Hall also spoke with GLHF regarding the reception of Icarus.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.

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‘We did fail’ – DayZ creator expresses regret over his latest game

Dean Hall, former director of DayZ, opens up about the challenges of making survival games.

Anyone that considers themselves a survival game expert is unquestionably familiar with Dean Hall. The New Zealand-born developer made quite an impact with DayZ, a zombie survival title that inadvertently helped popularize battle royale as a genre. Hall’s latest project, Icarus, isn’t fairing all that well.

During an interview with GLHF at Gamescom 2022, Hall spoke openly about the largely negative response to Icarus.

“We tried an avenue with Icarus. So it’s a session-based survival game, and we had a really mixed response — some people loved it, and some people didn’t. So we’re now kind of pivoting the game to have new, more of the traditional, as we call it ‘outpost,’ or more traditional Ark-style,” Hall said. “The customer’s always right when it comes to matters of taste. People want that experience; you give them that experience. I am proud that we tried something. And that’s, to me, how you get experiences like DayZ — you have to try stuff. But trying stuff means you have to be prepared to fail. And I think we did fail a little bit on it.”

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Icarus came out back in November of 2021. It’s currently sitting at a “Mixed” user rating on Steam, and the critic consensus isn’t much better — averaging a Metacritic overall rating of 67. It isn’t the reception that Hall and everyone else at RocketWerkz wanted. However, they’re not giving up on Icarus yet.

“Our aim is to get Icarus to mostly positive [on Steam]. And I think that will be validation that we’ve actually listened to customers, and we’ve got better at community engagement,” Hall explains. “And then I think that’s when we’ll start talking about the next things as well. I certainly think that’s a huge competitive strength over Bethesda or the big companies — we can do an interview with you and go, ‘Well, yeah, we screwed that up. ‘That’s our superpower. That’s how we get better.”

If Final Fantasy 14 and Destiny 2 have taught us anything, it’s that any game can come back from the dead. Heck, even DayZ itself wasn’t in great shape for years!

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.

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DayZ 1.38 patch squashes bugs and fixes lag

After DayZ update 1.17, this patch 1.38 fixes some lingering bugs and gives a few quality of life changes, and we’ve detailed every change.

DayZ recently saw the huge new update 1.17 make its way to PS4, PC, and Xbox One. It brought a few new guns, including the CR-550 Savanna Rifle, along with some weird melee weapons like the Meat Tenderizer. Not to mention a nifty kitchen timer for all your gaming cookbook needs. As is expected though, new items and changes bring bugs, which is what update 1.38 addresses.

Some of these bugs were fairly minor, such as cooking on a gas stove taking too long. However, there were a few major bugs fixed too, like killing infected causing the game to lag. With this update, players on all platforms should see quality of life increase across the board.

DayZ 1.38 patch notes

This patch is out on all platforms, including PS4, PC via Steam, and Xbox One. The full patch notes are as follows:

FIXED

When kindling or fuel items in a fireplace became ruined, it was not possible to add the same item again.
Fixed a game lag when killing infected.
It was not possible to lower the flag from the flag pole.
It was possible to skip the engine starting animation for vehicles.
The camera would zoom briefly when using eye focus during certain actions.
Cooking on the gas stove would take exceptionally long.
Vertical camera settings were not saved after restarting the game.
Player bodies would not leave their equipment after being skinned and quartered.
Buried items would still show option to bury.

CHANGED

Increased the maximum on the controller camera sensitivity settings.

When there’s a lot of loot you want to stash somewhere, burying it is one of the best ways to keep it safe from prying hands, as long as you remember where you’ve buried it in the vast zombie-filled open-world. Unfortunately, if you used a Field Shovel to bury your loot you couldn’t dig it up again, instead showing the button prompt to bury it again. Thankfully, anyone going on the hunt for their buried treasure can now feel safe in the knowledge they’ll always get it back.

The small lag spikes you’d experience when killing and infected are now a thing of the past, so mowing down hoards is smoother than ever before. The rest are relatively minor fixes, making sure that camera options stay as you set them, and a new setting that gives you greater control over your camera’s sensitivity, which is essential for controller users to play at a professional level. Patch notes are courtesy of the official DayZ forums.

Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.

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