A Love Letter to DayZ

Every run in DayZ starts with scarcity in a hostile world. Like many survival games, your starting gear is limited. For DayZ, this might involve ratted clothing, bandages, and a knife (if you are lucky). In any case, given the hostility of this post-apocalyptic land, any attempt at self-preservation requires scavenging. You might start in an abandoned seaside town, an industrial park, or a idyllic farmhouse. As you scour, your will search for loot and your gear gradually improves. You might find a pistol with an empty magazine, a damaged can of baked beans, the miracle of antibiotics, or any assortment of goods ranging from life-saving to useless. As you advance, you might get settled down with a group of other players and build a base, or alternatively, you might continue to wander through the map as a lonesome nomad.

But there is an omnipresent tension that always alters a player's calculations about navigating DayZ. For starters, there are the classic meters found within many survival games. Meters that can determine whether you are hungry, thirsty, sick, cold, or losing blood. And each of those need to be managed somehow. Additionally, there are zombies meandering around the map at all times. Individually, they are fairly mundane threats, but with a swarm, you might find yourself wounded (or worse). And of course, there are the players themselves. Just like yourself, they are attempting to survive too. An opportunistic player might snipe you from a towering apartment complex - without a single word uttered. They might earn your trust, only to betray you at their own convenience (despicable!). Just as opportunities for cooperation exist, others will turn towards competition. But inevitably, a run will end the same as it always has. The screen will fade to black and the player will be presented with a message in small font: "You are dead."

I am here today to defend DayZ. To do that, I want to clarify my relationship with this legendary (but immensely flawed) survival game. Back in 2018, I purchased DayZ on the PlayStation 4. It was a buggy mess with poor controls and a horrendous user experience (in many ways - it still is). For myself, the moments contemplating uninstalling the game were interrupted by the silliness and stress that I find emblematic of DayZ. Whilst glitches might force me to relog, I adored the random hijinks of running through an Eastern European village with a group of feral strangers. Even if cars were known to transcend gravity, I chased the heart-pounding adrenaline of running across an airfield with a backpack full of valuable loot. In those years of playing it on console, I rarely performed well at the game, but that was not the point. The point was the adventure itself.

Of course, as soon as I replaced my shitty student laptop with a new personal computer in December 2020, amid Manitoba's brutal second-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first game I got was DayZ (interesting choice given the subject matter). The game itself was less buggy and more stable on PC, plus there was a healthier player base (though still toxic at times) and a robust modding community. Since then, I have put over 400+ hours into the game, though many of those hours were merely trying to get mods loaded or waiting in queue for an open slot into a popular server. I have played on V++ deathmatch servers that effectively turn a Chernarus landmark into an arena of chaotic gunfire that I would practice my marksmanship on. I went on hardcore modded survival servers on Namalsk that have players vying for heatpacks to stay warm, scouting out hospitals for medical supplies, and creating impromptu campfires to thaw frozen cans of peaches. I played on more group-oriented servers that required a lot of coordination and patience to organize teammates to build up a post-apocalyptic citadel in an apartment complex. But still, despite the open-ended nature of DayZ, it is still full of technical bugs, weird multiplayer latency issues, boring stretches of walking, and outdated/clunky survival mechanics. So why after hundreds of hours do I still come back to this game?

In fairness to the critics, it is a glorified walking simulator stuffed into a buggy eurojank survival game. But even unpolished video games have their charm and DayZ has a bunch of charm. First and foremost, DayZ lends itself to emergent gameplay. This is defined by the emergence of complex situations within a game that evolve from engagement with simple game mechanics. These game mechanics might be tied to how a player interacts with elements of survival (eating food, drinking water, staying warm) or the openness of communication that is delivered through proximity chat. All of this feeds into a way of allowing organic engagement between the players and the game world - outside of the games mechanics itself. Nothing in the game prompts a player to handcuff another player and take them hostage. Bohemia Interactive makes no suggestion that nails become a de-facto currency for a server's economy. No element of the game establishes a rivalry between two groups over a town. All of these interactions come from the creativity inherent in play itself. Given the absence of DayZ's narrative, this emergent gameplay is vital in providing greater meaning to the players outside of the simple objective of survival (though surviving this post-apocalyptic world still remains paramount).

Secondly, this post-apocalyptic (and fictionalized post-Soviet) open world is worth exploring and getting to know. There is something utterly grand about conducting a digital adventure through abandoned cities, wooded foothills, and countryside farmsteads. This is especially true given the constant feeling of danger keeping you immersed in the game itself. That being said, while my priority might be survival, it is hard for me to not get lost in how vast, beautiful, and realistic the three vanilla maps are. Given how these maps are often inspired by real-world locations, that enchantment makes sense. Whether it is Chernarus, Livonia, or the recently released, Sakhal; each of these maps has its own flow, unique landmarks, and vibes to them. The same could be said about the expanded possibilities the modders bring to the game with their own maps, with Namalsk, Deer Isles, and Takistan being prime examples. Eventually, as a player gets to know a map - they might be able to navigate it as second nature with a crystal clear understanding of routes, opportunities, and risks that only come with attention.

Thirdly, the DayZ community itself is a lot of fun. Of course, you can play solo and kill other players on sight, but personally, the game is more enjoyable with a group of friends (or at least strangers turned into reluctant allies). I find great satisfaction in working with others towards a common shared goal, whether it was raiding a nearby enemy base or securing a working Sarka 120. I have made a lot of connections with other players (now online pals) playing this game and I am grateful for those memories we have playing together. Another element of DayZ's community is the modding community itself, the server administrators and moderators, and content creators. Modders have worked tirelessly to improve the game through quality-of-life updates, new maps (as mentioned earlier), new weapons, varied game modes, and RP potential. All of this is found exclusively within modded servers - which I find to be more stable than official servers. And lastly, there exists a lot of excellent niche DayZ content to enjoy as a fan. Many Twitch streamers and Youtube content creators, who share a love for this game, release regular videos of their digital escapades, which can range from epic adventures (many matching the length of Hollywood blockbusters) to short clips of weird or tense encounters. I would be lying if I said I never binge these videos every once in and awhile, but of course, nothing beats actually playing the game itself. Because ultimately, when put together with the emergent gameplay and the post-apocalyptic world itself, the community finalizes a perfect fusion for me. And so, even if I find myself auto-running through a forest or meticulously looting a village again and again, I have come to feel love and gratitude for the time I have spent immersing myself in DayZ over the past several years. A sandbox is, after all, what you make of it.

Below I have included a few YouTube videos made by content creators who play DayZ. They represent the range of silliness and seriousness that can be found within the game. I posted them to give you a sense of vibes.