After booming in popularity over the last few months, DayZ is set to become a standalone fully-fledged title. Announced today by Dean Hall, creator of the mod, Arma II developer Bohemia Interactive are funding the apocalyptic survival title, whilst giving full creative control to Hall. Not bad!
Hall announced the fantastic news on the official DayZ blog, seemingly as surprised as he was pleased. He said “That’s right, this is actually happening - DayZ will be developed as a standalone game, with me as project lead, by Bohemia Interactive. This is the fairy-tale outcome for a mod that many would have said was impossible four months ago”
Well, four months ago the game was a relative unknown, hiding in the deep dark crevice known as the mod scene. But as the word began to slowly spread online, the Internet did what it does best. Viral exposure caused YouTubers and Live Streamers to jump on the bandwagon, propelling the mod into libraries of gamers around the world.
While this is great news for Hall and the DayZ team, I’d bet not all fans are celebrating. The recent increase in popularity led to server problems, increased hacking and packed gameplay lobbies. Hopefully this will be addressed by Hall when bringing the game to the popular market.
Being a full release title also eliminates the arduous process of mod installation – trying to run DayZ is not an easy process. Not only do you need the correct versions of both the mod and Arma II, but to get the games to run in tandem is a feat in itself. The game will surely attract more attention with an easy and painless install.
While there was no official announcement on platform, it wouldn’t be ridiculous to assume that DayZ might make the leap to consoles. While this is pure speculation, console fans are screaming for a decent survival horror MMO. Maybe this could be their lucky day. If nothing else, let’s just hope they sort out the damn interface and control system. Is that too much to ask?
