Who's Interested in the Zombie-Filled Virtual World of DayZ?

DayZ is a persistent world multiplayer survivor game I've been reading quite a lot about, primarily on Kotaku, but also from my style writer Iris Ophelia and others too. It puts you and other players in a 135 square mile country after an infection has zombified most the world, where you must stay alive and hopefully trhive (but probably won't). Watch the trailer:

That likely sounds like a lot of other games, but because the game is open-ended and persistent, it has a lot of social emergence. Basically it simulates a Hobbesian state of nature where people can compete or collaborate or both (possibly betraying each other along the way), and in either case, death is final:

"Some of my friends who already play say the game scares the crap out of them," as reader Aemeth Lysette tells me. "If you look at the mod stats on the site, murders are high in number." (Presumably players killing each other for equipment, or sometimes just for fun.) "Also, if your character dies, it dies forever. You have to make a new person to start over--they are banned on all servers." What's more, you start with little or no info about the world (I read), supplies are hard to come by, and the world physics are so realistic, managing to shoot a target is quite an accomplishment. Hence the crap-scaring quality. Via Aemeth, watch this pretty tense and hilarious (and NSFW) gamplay video:

Two thoughts: Once the pathfinding tools are introduced, I bet you could create a pretty cool variation of this gameplay on an SL island. Also, I'm seriously tempted to embed myself in DayZ, and see what brain-slurping stories of social conflict and upheaval obtain. While screaming like a little girl.

How about you, readers? Feel like being in a DayZ?

Tweet

Comments

[Marx Dudek]

I'm kind of interested in SL9B, which is coming soon. The fact that it is 100 percent resident-run is quite a big story. It's also coming up VERY soon and they would definitely like to hear from potential exhibitors and volunteers. Is there a story forthcoming?

[Pathfinder]

This sounds fascinating. Count me in.

Maybe we can all meet up somewhere at a specified day/time?

[Damien Fate]

I purchased Arma 2 simply for this game. It is terrifyingly awesome - a completely different experience from any other survival horror game out there.

Unfortunately D3 came out so I moved on, but I plan to go back later.

[Brookston Holiday]

The game I've been dreaming of my entire life :)

In SL you could implement a system where you barricade doors and windows. Unfortunately the sim would be way too small.... maybe you could have custom tiny avatars people wear while playing the game. 1/10 scale so the sim becomes larger... wonder if the camera could handle it.

[Ehrman Digfoot]

I saw this on Kotaku a while back and planned on checking it out sometime this Summer. We should form an SL based contingent.

[Hamlet Au]

Ehrman, I was wondering about that -- maybe we can all choose the same DayZ server to play in?

[Ehrman Digfoot]

Sounds good. I'm downloading it through steam now. :D

[Damien Fate]

The hardest part about meeting up in DayZ is that you spawn at a random location on a VERY long coastline, it can take hours to meet!

[Boston]

The Media Cows guys were playing this live streaming on YouTube, and its on their channel. After watching the gameplay and the glitches, like zombies stuck in place, I'm going to pass on this. You should check the videos above and others who play it and watch the gameplay cause it can get boring at times where you have no idea where you're going, have to watch your back for trolls.

[Jo Yardley]

Looks like fun, could work in SL but I'd probably just build a small village and let visitors choose to be healthy or a zombie at the entrance.
So you would be a survivor barricaded into a village with several houses and everywhere around you is just fields and forrests.
In stead of exploring and gathering food it would be about trying to survive, starting a community in this post apocalyptic world.
Restoring the homes, building barricades etc.
Other visitors can choose to either be zombie or visitor, and thus help defend or try to convince the group to accept them. Or as a zombie try and destroy the defences, ruin the small crop, try and kill/zombiefy people, etc.

Could be quite interesting and also scary because you never know when zombies will attack, when there will be groups or just one, you don't know if new people can be trusted, you don't know if you will have enough food grown from the small field and you can just pray that when the zombies attack you are not the only one human online...

Different question, does this DayZ thing have female avatars as well?