I discovered DayZ by accident, a Steam promo 100 years ago (whenever) and bunged 20 bucks and downloaded it. I spawned on the beach, had no idea what was going to happen or where I was or what the game was
I immediately got shot, I had hardly opened my eyes
It scared me so bad I didn’t play for a while, I didn’t understand it, I couldn’t play it, bad game, stupid game.
After a while I gave it another go, I logged in and didn’t get shot, I started to wander, I had no idea about food or water or clothes or cold
I died
Over the next few months I died a lot
And I tried to problem solve that, why am I dying all the time
I didn’t know anything or anyone
I was hooked as fuck, how could a game fuck me up this much
And it started to be that most of each day I had a little niggle in the back of my head ‘why did I die, I lost, why?’
And I slowly got more okay with the fear and I slowly died less
I was finding more stuff as well, what happens if you do that with that? Does this go in that? How does this work?
And all the time it was emotional
The first time I shot someone I was in pieces for days afterwards, why did I do that, he might have been a nice guy, I should have spoken to him. Would he have killed me? Could that be different?
I played forever on my own, sometimes meeting people and sometimes that went well and sometimes it went not so well
Why did I die there?
One of the things that pushed on was the search for stuff, you couldn’t stay in one place and ‘win’, and that was the best part really, the journey from one place to another without know where anything was. ‘oh look a town’, ‘what’s that burned out church?’, ‘where is this place?’ end to end discovery and wonderment
The DayZ community was growing quickly and people started to fill in ‘how to play DayZ’, it’s a bit of a shame, but it’s probably a good thing, DayZ is hard
But there’s a sense of loss that people aren’t discovering and problem solving for themselves
I made DayZ friends, really good people, we started playing together or hanging together, that made exploring and discovering stuff more fun ‘oh my god, look a pit of dead people! Go down!’
It was the best times
So what about 63?
For years we’ve been looking forward to trying to recapture that feeling of pain and discovery and wonderment, it’s been a thread forever ‘what are you looking forward to most in 63? Oh new stuff, new map (and better netcode and optimisation) kind of thing
Discovering New Stuff
A side effect of a community in the modern world is the feeling of needing to show stuff
Look at this I did a video of the new airfield
I found a goat
Look at this crashed airplane
Some of these things are avoidable in some way, if the video thumbnail isn’t too graphic then you can choose not to watch the video and opt out of the spoiler.
Images are the worst, they don’t ask you if you want to see them, they’re just there, and you can’t unsee them
People getting into .63 as early adopters or HOWEVER THEY DID IT is great and good on them and I hope they have a sense of wonder at finding new stuff and coping with new problems
But don’t be a cunt and take that away from me
I probably won’t be playing ‘standalone’ .63, for me DayZ isn’t just about maps and places and loot and problems it’s about discovering and coping with those things while friends are laughing and people are trying to shoot you
‘oh I nearly made the airfield this time … again’
And then one glorious day, you make it, you creep in the wall, you break out of the tree line and you see something new, and then your friend shoots you in the leg cos it’s funny
That’s kinda my piss poor attempt at saying something I wanted to say but don’t really know what it is
I love DayZ it’s been the most amazing journey and it’s fucked me over every step of the way and I love it