When was the moment you realised Day Z was taking off?
“Late April 2012, a Russian YouTuber was streaming the Day Z mod and 1000 people were watching the stream. That was the point it started to go crazy.”
Did you have any idea the game would have so many player-generated stories?
“I had an inkling. When I first built the mod and we did a play test with a few people, we found all this crazy stuff was happening and all these awesome stories were emerging. Day Z kicked off because people had these stories and wanted to talk about them.”
Do you have any favourites?
“This guy heard the sound of buzzing flies – the signal for a dead player. He went to investigate an apartment building – two or three stories high – and saw all these dead zombies outside the front door. Inside, there were dead zombies all the way up the stairs to the roof, and on the roof leading to the edge. He looks over the edge and there’s a dead body on the ground of a player. He realised this player had made his last stand on the top of the building, and jumped off to try and survive. He was horrified. That story resonated with me. It’s always the context that makes something terrifying or tragic.”
People have talked about the psychology of Day Z. The sense of distrust and paranoia that would probably happen if society collapsed for real.
“The mod came from a system I was developing for training soldiers. There’s an innate human understanding of several things in the world. One of them is ownership. Having a persistent world, where your character is always there when you log back in, gives you a sense of permanent ownership. People also understand loss. It’s part of the real world. The idea that you have this character and can lose him or her is a powerful hijacking of your psychology. You almost feel like it’s real.”
What changes can we expect from the Day Z standalone version?
“One of the problems with the Day Z mod is you were always walking around with your pistol raised. There’s no way to lower it or demonstrate you are friendly. That’s something we’ve put a lot of effort into. You can do all sorts of gestures. We’ve added new areas to the map. Players can use various places for forts, like abandoned cargo ships. There’s been a lot of work done with the zombie A.I. You’ll be able to enter all the buildings. We’ll have equipment crafting. We’re making it a much more polished experience.”