cjmelendez_
When people talk about DayZ there’s two things you might hear said. The first being “why is everyone such an asshole in that game?”. The second being “that game is so buggy; how is it still not finished?”. DayZ released last October on Steam Early Access with a rather large disclaimer telling prospective buyers to consider what they’re getting into before dropping cash. The game was and still is in alpha, yet the DayZ community has shown a lot of concern (and sometimes vitriol) toward developer Bohemia Interactive.
DayZ producer Brian Hicks took to the game’s official forum recently to drop some facts about DayZ‘s development and how those that are bitter about the current state of the game should take a break and wait until it’s further along.
You are not playing DayZ, you are playing development builds. Early development builds.
DayZ is 11 months into principle development, on what should be a 3 year standard development cycle. I can’t force you to be a fan of DayZ, but I can call this out:
Defining or judging what DayZ is by a build so early in its development is much a kin to judging a painting within the first few brush strokes. Hell, even Bob Ross’s paintings didn’t look great for the first few minutes (until you realized what it was he was making).
I can promise you none of your favorite AAA games played, or even resembled the final product that early in their cycles. (Okay, maybe some of the larger titles that push small incremental updates out every 12 months – but we all know those are special snowflakes.)
Take a break, and come back in beta or even the full release. The Early Access period of development will have many peaks and low, low valleys. This is the nature of software development. Yes, it is stressful as heck – for all of us, but you get to be part of shaping the DayZ experience.
Hicks then went onto compare the game’s development timeline to that of other games and say that Bohemia is actually hoping to be faster than the norm. The team is hoping to reach beta phase by the end of 2014.
As someone that has put 300 hours into DayZ, I have experience quite a lot of bugs, and yes I wish some of them would just go away. But that’s the nature of playing an unfinished game. DayZ comes with a disclaimer telling you just what you’re getting into, and impatience is not an excuse to claim that the team is hopeless or that they don’t care about their game anymore. Being so close to the game at this stage will only lead to annoyance – I have reduced my time with the game as to avoid frustration with some bugs.
Also check out Dean Hall’s PAX panel on the game’s development in which he discusses bugs, optimization, and new mechanics (embedded below).
