It's hard as nails, it's bug-ridden, and it has no tutorial – but
online zombie adventure DayZ has now been downloaded 1m times, barely a
month after its 'alpha' launch on PC gaming service Steam. Its creator,
New Zealand-born game designer, Dean Hall, has become the latest
independent developer to release a new project before it is finished,
allowing gamers to contribute toward its completion. Potential customers
are warned via a series of titles screens that the game is a work in
progress and that bugs and crashes are commonplace. But this hasn't
stopped hundreds of thousands of PC gamers from pouring hours into the taut, exciting multiplayer action.
Originally written by Hall as a "mod" – or unofficial add-on – for
the popular military shooter ArmA II, DayZ places gamers into the midst
of a zombie apocalypse. Surrounded by unfamiliar landscape and with no
tools to survive, they have to ransack houses to find guns and food,
while avoiding the ravenous undead. The important part is that the game
is online and there are up to 40 other players in the world with you –
you'll either have to compete for resources, usually with deadly force,
or team up to form clans of survivors. Brilliantly, the game supports
in-game chat via headsets and microphones, so players are able to
communicate with each other, plotting their fraught hit-and-run missions
on other gangs. But every once in a while, the game glitches out or
crashes altogether. You just have to re-boot and go back in, reporting
your experiences on the game's packed forums. Launch and hope
DayZ is far from alone in this 'release then adapt' approach.
Although indie coders have often launched new projects in unfinished
formats for fans to download and test, it was crossover smash hit
Minecraft that really transformed the concept into a workable business
model. Markus 'Notch' Persson's ingenious construction game was original
launched in an early 'alpha build' state in 2009 but quickly attracted
an enthusiastic community, who feed back on the game's faults and
features. Now available on PC, console and smartphone the title has sold
over 33 million copies. "The benefits [of early release] are that you
don't have to rely on a publisher, and that you can get people
passionate about the game early on," he told Gamasutra last July. "The added pressure of people already having paid for the game can help motivate you to work on it as well."
So
far, the model has worked particularly well for simulation titles, that
can offer up stable gameplay experiences without the need for advanced
visuals or complex narrative sequences. UK developer Introversion was
effectively saved from closure in 2012 when it made its latest title,
the compulsive jail design sim, Prison Architect, available for online
purchase in an early alpha state. The title is yet to receive a full,
complete launch, but has raised over $10m from its community. Speaking
to VG247 last year, the studio's co-founder Mark Morris explained both
the financial and creative advantages: "I liken the process to steering a
oil tanker – we have our own vision for Prison Architect and we know
the path we are heading in, however we keep a close eye on the forums,
Twitter and Facebook accounts, and the thoughts and views of the
community kind of act like tug boats nudging the tanker in one direction
or another."
The approach has become so successful that key digital gaming service
Steam now has an Early Access section, allowing gamers to select and
support unfinished titles. As with the Kickstarter revolution which has
seen hundreds of games funded to completion via crowds of fans, there is
a sense of ownership over the project. Gamers aren't just
'pre-ordering' an interesting new title, they're potentially
contributing toward its growth. In many ways, there's the same appeal as
discovering and supporting a new band from their days gigging in
flea-pit pubs; it's that sense of getting in there first with something
cool and exciting. Fear and freedom
DayZ, which was apparently inspired
by Hall's survival training while in the New Zealand armed forces,
still has over a year of development left. The big test for 'early
access' games like this is whether the creators can maintain development
momentum under the pressure of user expectation. While community
expectations can no doubt provide impetus to a small development team,
there's always the danger is can be creatively stifling – especially if a
large vocal community has a wide range of opinions on where the design
should go.
But
it's a problem most indie studios would be happy to face. The
smartphone app stores are flooded with game content, and Steam houses
something in the region of 3000 titles, so visibility is now the key
challenge facing smaller developers. Building a proactive community is,
then, a vital part of the development process – indeed, to gain a slot
on Steam these days, developers have to go through the Greenlight system
in which gamers vote on which new titles should get into the store.
The interesting thing about DayZ's success is that this is such an
uncompromising experience. It is not a nice welcoming simulation title,
it is a raw, bleak and almost entirely emergent survival horror game.
The community is the experience. And with a million players,
the lesson it appears to be teaching is – provide a compelling universe
and let participants build from there. Is this the future of traditional
game design, or the end of it?
