DayZ: The Only Successful Open-World Survival Zombie Game

(Intro)

There have a been a lot of attempts at the open world survival genre in video games. It’s easily one of the hardest genres to get right next to something like an MMO. Tons of factors to consider, the entire scale of the game, how to make experiences within it feel natural and organic instead of being spoon-fed moments that don’t come off as genuine. It’s a steep hill to climb, and while many different developers have attempted to get it right, the number of games that have managed to stay alive and hold an audience isn’t that large. Whether that’s because the game, while having a solid idea and foundation, couldn’t get the finer details right, not hitting the number of players needed to stay operational, or just being a complete scam with fraudulent marketing campaigns right up until the very end, it’s extremely easy for an open world survival game to sadly go under and fade away into the history books of just another failed game in this genre of saturated alphas and betas. However, there is one game, through sheer grit, determination, and a dedicated community of passionate players, managed to not only exist, but survive and thrive; being more played and popular than it has ever been before. DayZ is an anomaly; it shouldn’t exist. With how tumultuous the history of this game is, the general disdain for DayZ for quite some time, and then the revival of the game post its official 1.0 launch back in 2018, I wanted to discuss how this game, to me as an outsider with less than 160 hours of gameplay after owning the game for several years, is still the quintessential and arguably most successful open world zombie survival game on the market, even in 2024.

(Humble Beginnings)

DayZ originally started as a mod for AMRA2 back in 2012; which took the internet by storm. I have many fond memories of watching tons of different creators play the crap out of the mod because at the time I had a PC that was the equivalent to a toaster, and this was before I really began to get engrossed in PC gaming. I was still a console player primarily at this time, so watching people online engage with a game that was so open, technical and honestly difficult was incredibly enticing. I would equate it to when you discovered and watched someone play Escape From Tarkov for the first time. You have no idea what’s going on, you don’t understand the mechanics, but just the gameplay alone was enough to grab ahold of your attention and retain it for a long time. And back then, that was when everyone had the same character model, you started with a pistol and a ton of other equipment, versus now where you basically start with nothing. It was bare bones compared to what the game has become today. But there was a certain charm to having only so many items in the game, and your only knowledge of the game is that if you go north there is a military base with the best gear in the game, and so that’s normally the direction you head for your adventure. And depending on which map you play on today, that idea is still somewhat true. But the early stages of DayZ was nothing special. In fact, it was kind of a technical nightmare. It was a glitchy, clunky, laggy mess at best, and it basically didn’t function as a videogame at worst. And to be brutally honest, even DayZ in 2024 still feels like a game made back in 1926. Granted, if you play enough, a lot of the pitfalls that make the game feel so clunky can be avoided with good menu management, better movement, and understanding how to survive properly in the game. But that doesn’t excuse how archaic the game engine feels sometimes. It’s reflected in the fidelity of the graphics too. I’m not one to harp on graphics because any style or level of detail can look good if executed well enough, but in DayZ the character models feel outdated visually. Tons of clipping with clothes, very simple animations that play for tons of different mechanics. Don’t get me wrong, the world is beautiful, and my experience with DayZ isn’t worse because some of the visuals aren’t on par with something like the new Silent Hill 2 Remake. Under the right time of day and weather condition, this game is stunning. It can very much evoke calming emotions and make you feel relaxed just walking down a road by yourself on a sunrise morning with some absolutely incredibly music to go alongside the vistas you will come across on your travels. Seriously, the music in this game is stellar. I find myself listening to the OST while doing other mundane tasks. The composer Filip Míšek outdid himself with all of the songs in this game, which is what you are primarily hearing in the background. They evoke tons of different feelings and emotions depending on what’s happening around you. Loss, solace, calm, melancholy, stress; they music is more so general sounds and long drones of low bass, but even still, they blend perfectly with the gameplay loop of DayZ. It’s almost got this mystical feeling to a lot of the tracks, but either way, the OST is spectacular. Absolutely love it.

(Survival of the Fittest)

In DayZ your main objective is to survive the harsh conditions that you have loaded into. There are zombies and other players out to get you and it’s up to you to collect whatever equipment, supplies, and friends you will need to stay alive as long as possible. There isn’t any traditional winning in DayZ. Not dying and seeing how long a single character can last is essentially how you beat the game. Immediately when you load into the world, you are already set on the backfoot. You start with some bare basic supplies, and your food and water statuses at about half. As you navigate the world, you will need to find, hunt or collect food and water to stay alive. You also need to make sure you are staying warm enough because depending on which you are playing, being cold will slowly kill you, so heat is another major factor to remember. As well as your blood and general health levels. If these get too low, you will begin to walk and hobble around, unable to sprint and move efficiently, which will inevitably kill you also. Zombies in this game do pose quite a threat. By themselves, they can be easily dispatched with melee, or any weapon you so happen to loot and have ammunition for. But in groups, they can easily overwhelm and incapacitate a solo player, which usually ends in a swift restart of the character. But looting isn’t the only way to survive. You can very much live off the land; hunting, farming, fishing. In the early game off a fresh character these might actually be more enticing to survive than just running inland trying to get to the nearest town to start looting. But every element of this game, very much like Tarkov has layers you need to remember and consider. You can hunt for food, but if you can’t start a fire, you can’t eat because you will get sick and that is usually enough to kill you. You also need to make sure your hands are clean and not covered in blood because that can also infect you. Making sure your source of water is clean and either from a well, or cleaned with tablets otherwise you run the risk of getting sick from that too. Also keeping track of the items and tools on you don’t get ruined because while knifes, clothes and other items can be repaired of fixed with the right toolkits, if they get ruined there is no salvaging that item and it must be discarded. I’m sure I am forgetting tons of other mechanics and little details that are imperative to survival, but this game for how Jank it looks and feels is surprisingly complex. You can build entire bases and raid other people’s which just the sound of that in DayZ blows my mind. You can literally create blocks of C4 explosives and go raid stuff with it, it’s ludicrous for this game to have something like that and yet it does. And I think that’s what impresses me the most. How deep the DayZ rabbit hole actually goes. And we haven’t even mentioned modded servers and interacting with other players.

(Community Content is King)

One of the reasons that DayZ has had legs in terms of how long it’s lasted is the dedicated and passionate community of players that have kept this game going. Tons of brand-new content in the form of new maps, mechanics, integrating other game items and systems into DayZ; it’s crazy how people have wanted an open-world Escape From Tarkov experience, and DayZ can actually deliver that through the use of modded servers. There are clearly tons of creative, talented and dedicated players for DayZ. Because of them, and Bohemia Interactive making changes that were popular with the majority of the community, DayZ standalone within the last 30-days broke its all-time peak player count. The modded version back in 2012 had hundreds of thousands of players give it a try. It’s obvious gamers are chomping at the bit for a good open-world survival game. And while we’ve had many other games attempt and show off a potential promising experience, the only one to have more players engaging with it is Rust. I can’t lie I was surprised by these numbers for Rust when I looked them up. I didn’t realize it was so popular. As someone who has never played it or watched anything about it, this was the biggest shocker while writing this. Perhaps this is something worth looking into for the future. But for now, while they are both survival open world games, something about DayZ is more encapsulating to me personally. I would use the comparison that Rust is kind of like the H1Z1 of open world games; more chaotic, fast paced and arcadey when compared to DayZ which would be the PUBG in this example. Not full-on simulation or realistic, but it feels more planted and can still be over the top, but in a much different way. It’s a little more, and I use this term loosely here, “grounded” than something like Rust. It seems so much more about the story of your character and the journey you go on rather than all about the action and how chaotic situations can get. I’m not saying Rust is worse or a bad game, but I think DayZ scratches an itch that Rust simply doesn’t that’s all.

(The Story is... Whatever You Want It to Be)

And that last point I mentioned, the story. It's very adjacent to what makes Tarkov so fun and compelling after all these years. It’s about that story; the adventure you go on. The people you meet; some will befriend you, and others will betray and kill you. It’s about survival and if you are on deaths door and some random person approaches you and they might have food on them, there’s nothing stopping you from killing them and taking their stuff. You might’ve made a rival in the process, but it’s all a part of the journey. The cycle of death and rebirth over and over again. Each life will play out differently. Each interaction you have with another player will be different unless you get lucky and find the same person over the course of multiple lives. You’ll spawn in different locations requiring you to survey the land around and take action accordingly. Do you run inland immediately? Do you try and get some supplies from Mother Nature? The world is your oyster. Who knows, maybe you had a small stash hidden somewhere with a bunch of gear and supplies stored away. Or you have a huge base that you can retreat to for restocking up after a death. DayZ doesn’t care what you do or how you go about it; and that’s its biggest strength. Talking to the other inhabitants of the world and carving your little own mark into the map, before the server restarts, and everyone is ejected out of the game to begin once more.

(Outro)

DayZ is an incredible game once you get over a rather large initial hurdle to figuring it out. There is a very rich but niche community of people who also love the hell out of this game and after playing it a lot this year, it makes sense as to why. I remember not enjoying the game when I first bought it, because there’s no tutorial and things don’t make sense. And also, the day after I bought it the game went on sale, but that’s beside the point. DayZ is an experience like no other. I can’t think of another game in recent memory that has sucked me in once I “got it”. It's a slow burn kind of game; it takes a while to get established and dying a bunch at the start is part of the process. But with each life you learn how to survive better. With each death you learn what not to do and how to avoid having the same thing happen twice. You’ll foster a community of like-minded people who just want to roleplay as a farmer or fisherman and join you on whatever adventure you want to take. There is no ceiling for what DayZ can offer you. And for me, it’s still the best in its class for an incredibly engage, blank page zombie survival open world game. DayZ’s the best; and it’s not even close. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to watch this video. Let me know down in the comment section below your thoughts and favorite experiences have been playing DayZ and be sure to subscribe for more videos about games that feel old as hell because of the engine they were made on that have withstood the test of time. I hope to see you in future ones.