DayZ, on the other hand, does almost nothing to teach you how the game is played, much less "won."
That's because, with the internet, you can easily look up tons of information on how to play the game as well as getting tips from other players on optimal strategies when you start out. Games are no longer played in nearly as much of a vacuum as they used to be.
If you encounter a group of survivors that is better equipped, you are likely to die.
Unfortunately, the more common response to these situations is for the player to immediately log out and switch to a different server (your character persists across any DayZ servers). You can also do funky things like scope out a player, switch servers to place yourself in a better position to fight them and switch back to the original server.
I'm not really complaining as much as explaining the current situation that people are running into, since the game really is still fairly early in development.
Rust, a Dayz-like game from the makers of Garry's Mod, largely fixes the issue. When a player suddenly logs out, their body collapses to the ground unconscious and can still be killed and looted.
Your job as a survivor is to build a shelter safe enough that your body can 'sleep'
Is Rust the game where most of the players stand around as naked (male) cavemen? It's rare to come across a game that shoots so hard for realism just to land right in the middle of absurdity.
To be honest, it's a fairly good benchmark for whether or not you should be concerned with someone. If they are running across the field with a rock in their hands, chances are is that you don't have to worry about them shooting you in the face.
Supposedly, the reason there are so few successful FOSS games is that no one wants to play a half-finished game, offer feedback (or patches) and come back and play the next revision. Is this changing?
On a different note, I've been intrigued by the idea of an MMORPG with a mechanic that coerces players into acting in-character. I think DayZ just pulled this off. You can be the desprate survivor just trying to hang on, you can be the thug monopolizing precious resources, or you can be the dangerous, unpredictable psycho, and all these possibilities feel perfectly in-character. There's no grinding, leveling up, or amulets of +2 charisma.
I suspect that right there is the real reason for this particular game's success.
I think the problem with FOSS games tends to be that they get started for the wrong reasons. Like, most of them spawn from "it'd be neat to make a game like X" and "I believe in FOSS". That's fine, but when you get into the gritty details of making a game, it's /really fricking hard/. To actually finish something takes an enormous amount of passion and dedication. And people that put in that level of passion and dedication usually don't just want to give away their work for free after that much struggle.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that FOSS people lack passion or anything like that, it's just that for your average non-game FOSS project you usually start by scratching a small itch, and then if it other people like your itch-scratcher, momentum grows. Or if nobody likes it, you abandon it with minimal time lost. A game takes a lot more upfront investment before you have anything to show.
The big reason, in my opinion, for there being few successful FOSS games is that the only thing bringing the team together is a shared vision. This makes it much harder to succeed at a large project unless the project is inspired by/a clone of a nostalgic game, or is in one of the dream-niches that are now being colonized by Kickstarter projects. It's the same reason there are a lot of failed mods: putting a team together is hard, and content production isn't exponentially scalable like code is.
Which is not to say that there aren't lots of open source games: every Ludum Dare Compo game is required to be open source, which is tens of thousands of games right there.
There are a few "big hits" in the FOSS world: Battle for Wesnoth, Vega Strike, FreeCiv, 0 AD, Nethack, Angband, etc. The ones that don't start of clones of commercial games tend to be at the end of a long heritage of open source development: roguelikes, Netrek, and the like. _Playable_ projects with ongoing development often accrue a very dedicated fandom. It's just hard to get to "playable enough".
The real breakout for FOSS and games has been in development tools: open-source engines and libraries have been one of the major reasons that this as become a golden era of indie game development. Even commercial tools like Unity rely on the existence of Mono, for example.
It's rather simple, I think. An unfinished, but still very entertaining game will be better than a beautifully polished boring game. The "finished parts" can out-weigh in entertainment an entire competing game.
Arguably, the unfinished-ness was part of what made World of Warcraft so wildly popular.
There is much more to explore and enjoy in an open and chaotic environment, than in a streamlined and closed world.
Obviously, we move away from it in real life simply because one generally does not wish to die, but in a no-consequences game, that isn't (much of) a factor.
It's not about the game anymore. It's about the online community surrounding it. Games today are social networks. It's not about the game-play anymore. It's about the mods, the chatting, the culture, community, etc.
If you see Minecraft as a game like Sonic is a game you are blind.
Surely Minecraft is as popular as it is today due to its amazing community, but you can't honestly say it "isn't about gameplay anymore," or that Minecraft isn't a game.
Minecraft is a clever and well-built game environment that is both nostalgic and progressive at the same time. It would not have gotten any traction at all if it was not fundamentally fun and interesting to play. Minecraft grew because of modders, let's-play-ers, and socializers, but none of that would have happened if Minecraft, as a game, was not able to capture peoples' sense of wonder and fun as they explore landscapes, caves, and endless seas.
I think a more balanced way to look at things is that perhaps you can get away with half a game or three-quarters of a game, by involving the fans and building a community around the project. Dwarf Fortress is another great example of this.
Everything you said is true but you're missing the point where it really isn't about gameplay anymore. For example, in DayZ there almost isn't even gameplay right now. Thats what everyone has been trying to say. You're just running through a forest for an hour.
the "gameplay" you seem to find lacking is actually the thrill and mental stress players experience when playing. It's mental, not physically manifested as game mechanics. If you observe a player of many other games (such as WoW), you will not find these mental experiences, despite there being more "gameplay".
> You're just running through a forest for an hour
But then in any multiplayer fps you're just running around the scenery. It's much smaller scenery so there are many more encounters with other players.
Possibly it's not about the baked-in gameplay anymore. But both day-z and minecraft have rich metagames (is metagameplay a word?) that have developed as a result of both the restrictions and freedoms given to the players.
That's one of the reasons that some of the commenters here "don't get it". They've looked for gameplay, and found it lacking, whereas what they should have been doing is creating their own games within the worlds provided.
And then there are people like me, who play TF2 to blow off steam. I don't look for my friends on servers, and I only keep a list of "favorite" servers because I know they always have the map I want to play.
The whole networking aspect lets us make our own games. I agree to an extent that the programmed logic of the game falls into the background a bit with these kind of games. There still has to be rules - but it's more like the rules of real-life than an actual "game" that is being played. In real life, nobody can really prevent you from shooting someone else - its just that most people agree that you should be put in jail (or killed) for doing something like that, and therefore there are consequences. People find it interesting that there can be other worlds with similar dynamics (but the stakes are lower, since you can't really die).
I think the ever-increasing computer horsepower and network speed is contributing to us wanting more of a simulation/charicature of real-life than a fixed set of games to play.
I wonder if we'll continue on this trend in the future to the point where it's truly more entertaining to play inside a simulation than live real life (I know you can argue that is already true for some games, but I mean much more common).
That's an interesting point of view. I'm less interested in multiplayer games today than I was in the 90s, but I'm glad to report that single player games seem to be doing rather well. I just finished Arkham Origins, and thus find the statement "it's not about game play" a little tough to believe.
It is worth noting that Arkham Origins is from the completely opposite end of the spectrum to all these indie hit games that were covered in this article.
Making big titles like Arkham Origins requires a lot of money and the big AAA titles are often very conservative.
Contrast this with DayZ, Minecraft, Don't starve, Kerbal Space Program and others mentioned in this article. By comparison to AAA titles, these games are difficult, don't include a story line, have a tightly knit community, were built with a small budget and team, were released with "early access" etc. They are big hits that aren't AAA games, and this kind of phenomenon did not really exist (in such a large scale) in the 1990s. There were indie hits and popular shareware games but none of them were commercial successes.
There will always be AAA games just as there will be Hollywood movies. But the indie megahit phenomenon is a rather new development in the field of gaming. The article wasn't really about the decline of AAA games as it was about the rise of indie games.
Check out the massive communities built around strategy games like Civilization - I think SP games are doing well.
That said, IMO the social and community aspects are just icing on the cake. A game gains no traction unless it's a good game first. The community that grows around it are an accelerant for future growth, but will not exist at all if it weren't for a solid game underneath.
Dark Souls has a similar style of community, where due to the opaque and difficult gameplay lots of community discussion is necessary and live streaming is common.
> […] the game consists of trolling and ganking. Players have very little reason to trust each other, and many reasons to kill each other.
> […]
> […] make your own fun, and that’s often at the expense of the other players, or perhaps due to their actions towards you. It’s a playground for the perverse.
As entertaining as this game very well might be, I think I’ll pass on putting myself through what sounds like a collection of potentially traumatic and dehumanizing experiences. I think I’d be a worse person for playing it.
It depends upon how you approach the game. If you try to navigate the game morally, treating all other players as humans, potential friends who you don't want to kill, you might find your experience frustrating. Personally, I found embracing a sort of wild west, shoot first, ask questions later approach was the most fun way to play, since indeed there is little reason to trust other players. Since DayZ was originally built as a mod for an FPS military simulator, it makes at least as much sense to view it primarily as a first person shooter as it does to view it as a social MMO experience.
OTOH, this article[0] about a player whose primary mission in the game is to act as a heavily armed, on-call doctor helping injured players in the field is what got me interested in the first place, so, different strokes.
Something I noticed recently while briefly playing GTA V online was that people seem to be able to think of infinite ways to unfairly troll other players. I know the game itself is geared up for player versus player battles, but I'm talking about ways that the game isn't even designed.
Some examples I saw in a short space of time:
- Trapping people in shops by parking vehicles next to the door so they have to leave the game, re-enter or quit.
- Going around purposely damaging vehicles (tyres) so that people doing jobs have no getaway.
- Standing outside common spawn areas and just killing folk as soon as they arrive.
Perhaps using GTA as an example isn't great but it did make me wonder for a moment - does anyone actually just want to play the game in the way it was intended?
To answer your question: almost certainly. However, they are outwitted and therefore put-off doing so as it is near impossible due to the unfair proportion of trolls playing the game.
i have observed that certain types of personalities cannot take EVE Online's (or in this case, DayZ's) play style. I personally find EVE and dayz to be refreshingly interesting, amidst all the crap themepark MMO games out there. It's fun because you have real risks when play - a loss means something. The game feels real.
Oh believe me, I was incredibly interested in EVE Online and am equally interested in DayZ. As you said, it "feels real"—that's pretty rare in games and that's why it can be fun. Unfortunately, the consequences of realism can be unfair (what else should we expect?).
Since giving up cable, twitch.tv has more or less become my HGTV -- somewhat enjoyable, minimal attention requirement; decent background noise to help keep me from going insane.
I cannot for the life of me, though, understand the appeal of Day Z. Perhaps I've had the misfortune of only seeing the "slow" parts, but, from what I've seen, it's a lot of running around in large environments and then... hiding out? sometimes? Then there are zombies? I really don't get it. I tend to fall in love with niche market games, but this one doesn't do it for me.
It's like staying in an "actual" haunted hotel versus taking a disney ride of a haunted house. The disney ride is a more consistent and probably enjoyable experience, but the former is more ... interesting. Maybe nothing happens, maybe something happens and you're terrified, but either way the experience feels like it has more substance. You're not just a tourist looking to be entertained, you're exploring something.
I think that video in the middle sort of captures it. I mean on one level it's just.. weird, but on the other hand, how many other games can you describe where you're searching through a house in the dark and all the sudden some psycho player starts slowly chasing you down playing tiny tim music through his microphone?! And not just as a griefer that's going to inconvenience you, but in a "oh god this character I built is dead forever if this crazy person does what I think they're going to do" way. I mean, that's a fundamentally STRANGE experience, but it's also entirely organic in it's own weird way.
Most games nowadays are about moving you through a bunch of set pieces so you can experience the most "content". I think DayZ is interesting because it completely throws that paradigm away and gives a sandbox where things just happen. It's uneven, but playing it, it feels like you're experiencing /something/. Even if it's not always "fun", it's interesting in a way that most games aren't.
So, I had a long response written out, but I decided it didn't really get to heart of the matter. Here's the short response:
Every time you start a new character, it takes a while -- at least a couple hours -- to get to a comfortable level of survivability (by that I mean: food, water, equipment, weapons). Even once well equipped, it's incredibly easy to die. So, when you're scrounging around for some food or poking around a military base for better weapons and you hear a gun shot, the adrenaline rush is like nothing else. The two hours you spent gearing up could literally be wiped out in an instant by sniper that you never even saw on some hill side.
Even better, everyone else is in the same situation as you no matter how long they've been playing, which leads to some really intense/scary/funny encounters in game.
So the question that determines whether someone will enjoy the game overall is: does that intense adrenaline rush outweigh having to go through all that bootstrap grinding again? I strongly suspect that the answer for me is "no", at least on the long run.
Part of the key is that its a mod of a "realistic" army simulation. This is what makes the slow parts still fun. If you were just bunnyhopping around in a quake engine style thing, yeah it would be boring.
The environment is HUGE, and the engine is designed for the maximum draw-distance. When you start, you have no map. When you do get a map, its just a graphic, and your location is not marked on it. All the markings are in russian. Later if you're lucky, you might get a compass, with which you can manually take bearings.
Basically, the engine and the setting is realistic enough that you become invested in the apocalyptic survival thing for it's own sake.
An important fact not mentioned in the article is that you need regular water and food to survive. This forces you to go into towns to raid buildings, which is extremely dangerous and tense, involving a lot of creeping around in the dark. This turns the "hiding out in the woods" part of the game into a blessed relief compared to crawling in the gutter at a snails pace in the pitch black, gently wetting yourself.
I think it's because it has appealing gameplay. It's all about PvP that drives the fun of this really engrossing survival action genre. It helps that the lead developer/creator, Dean Hall, is very obsessive and meticulous about really doing this right. I'd love to hear more thoughts.
What makes minecraft more interesting to me is the building and Redstone aspect. DayZ has similar elements to the survival an PvP parts of minecraft, but spending hours or days by yourself isn't nearly as easy.
I enjoyed this article, but I think one thing I would dispute is that this is a modern phenomenon.
Think back to the 90s real quick. You know what was really the first unbelievably successful unfinished game? Counter Strike.
I think the commonality that all these unfinished games have are this:
1) Inherently multiplayer
2) Players are the "creators" of content. When I say content I don't necessarily mean assets, I mean situations or gameplay experiences.
If you have those two things, releasing early sort of makes sense, because your audience will give you a lot more valuable feedback then if you just dropped it on them as a finished thing, and you can get some buzz going without raising expectations too high.
I have not checked the game, only this Polygon article, but the premise sounds a lot like a (washed down!) Dwarf Fortress. Specially the unfair part. You'll realise how unfair DF's adventurer mode is the day you pick your first mission to kill a scrawny beast only to find yourself brutally killed by a pack of capybarss.
Toady (the developer of DF) is preparing a big update to adventurer mode, by the way.
I feel like there's a big difference between the unfairness inflicted on you by a Random Number Generator, and the unfairness inflicted on you by being hounded through the streets by a gang of other players.
The two games share the same medium but are very different in nature.
DF is not as deeply random as other roguelikes (or roguelike-likes,) in that most creatures follow patterns, goals and "do their own." With the next update there will even be a "background" on everything (wars between villages, gossiping, refugees from distances, spreading of stories, yes I'm looking forward to it)
Of course, the unfairness as you say is different anyway, an AI should not feel unfair... But at some point you realise it actually is. Nothing in DF is specifically there to kill you, but won't bother to let you live if you cross its way.
I have no problem with the difficulty of the game or the realism it tries to provide. However, it seems like these type of games almost always promotes trolling and ganking. The main reason is because there really are no consequence for these actions.
It ends up being almost like a gambling game where you hope you gather a lot of resources and can get the jump on someone else before you die. I am sure there is entertainment value in this type of gameplay, but it's disingenuous to dress it up as some kind of realistic horror survival game.
There actually is a consequence, if you kill a player on sight you ruin a lot of the gear you would hope to steal from them. It's actually better to rob them while they are alive and you never know if they will pull out a revolver and pop a cap in you.
That's because, with the internet, you can easily look up tons of information on how to play the game as well as getting tips from other players on optimal strategies when you start out. Games are no longer played in nearly as much of a vacuum as they used to be.
If you encounter a group of survivors that is better equipped, you are likely to die.
Unfortunately, the more common response to these situations is for the player to immediately log out and switch to a different server (your character persists across any DayZ servers). You can also do funky things like scope out a player, switch servers to place yourself in a better position to fight them and switch back to the original server.
I'm not really complaining as much as explaining the current situation that people are running into, since the game really is still fairly early in development.