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Hi, my favourite game on earth is DayZ. I want to do a little explainer of how I became obsessed with it. DayZ is relatively well known, with it's earliest iteration (the DayZ mod for Arma II) being a viral hit back in 2012-2013. It is a sandbox zombie survival game with large maps and 50-60 player servers.

I find it kind of difficult to explain why DayZ is so good. The gameplay mechanics aren't really what makes it interesting, and they often get altered with mods in community servers anyway. I think the open ended sandbox nature of DayZ, it's simulation elements (health system, realistic one shot deaths, manual loading of weapons), the constant threat from zombies/wild animals/other players, proximity voice chat, and diversity of loot/equipment (including a large array of civilian gear) all combine to create an immersive experience with A LOT of emergent gameplay. This makes every time you play completely different from the next, but also super engaging. No other game has engaged my fight or flight response like the average DayZ encounter does, outside of jumpscares.

The only way to really understand this feeling is to experience it yourself, but I will provide a few of my earliest memorable stories in an attempt to illustrate it.

My First Encounter

I saw the game pop up as recommended back in early 2020, I had just got an Xbox One and it came with several months of game pass which made DayZ free. I had never heard of it before then and it looked kind of insteresting so I installed it and gave it a go. There is very little guidance on what to do, what servers to join, or the more complex controls once in game (even less back then as it had lower player population). I gave it a go by myself for a few sessions, trying to work out where to go and what to loot (town names are in Cyrillic). I had seen two other players on separate occasions and tried to communicate with voice chat, but they didn't speak with me (having no mic is somewhat common). I honestly thought there was some bug or that my voice wasn't working but I continued.

Gathering warm civilian clothes and canned food, I worked out that I need to combine a knife with the can to open it. Eventually I found a double barrel shotgun in a barn, and had a bit of a go aiming to get used to the controls. Shortly after that I discovered I needed to manually move shells to the gun in my hand for my character to load them which I thought was pretty cool! I also accidentally found the button combination to put something in your quickslot wheel. I was finally getting the hang of things.

This was a pretty good life, so I started heading inland and eventually came across another player, better yet he was talking in voice chat and made it clear he could hear me. He was very polite, and I started chatting about how I was new to the game and just working out the controls. He then pulled out a knife and started slashing at me mid-sentence. I freaked out and in the space of about a few seconds remembered the quickslot thing, pulled out my shotgun and shot him dead. MY FUCKING HEART was beating so hard for the next few minutes after that, HANDS SHAKING but I survived. This was the first time I needed to use a bandage for bleeds, the guy cut me a few times and thats when I discovered that the game loses colour as you lose blood. This single encounter was so impactful, I immediately became a lifelong fan and ran to tell friends about it.

Unpredictable Newbie

My good friend Autumn and I have been regular players since back then, both obsessed with the immersion and emergence elements. We had been trying to convince another friend (Sammy) to join us and one weekend he finally agreed and installed DayZ. We went through the usual new player stuff; where the fuck am I? how do I find you? what language is this sign in? I'm dead to zombies. Eventually we all managed to get close spawns and meet up with each other around Solnichny on the east coast of the Chernarus map. First problem we were running in to was gathering enough food for out group of three. Autumn and I had been playing for a few weeks at that point and knew the basics, but were still not amazing at the survival stuff. We actually managed to find a loaded pistol, which we gave to Sammy so he would be safe. We were all getting by, but constantly in need of food as the sun set over town.

Near the centre of the village along one of it's main roads, we ran into another player. Autumn and I were chatting with this guy while telling Sammy how to use voice chat in game (coming from a party chat). The stranger explained that he had just spawned recently and was in a bad way with regards to food as well. Autumn and I scrounged up a single food item for this guy, thinking about our recent experiences struggling to get by in the game. He thanked us and crouched down to collect it, Sammy then pulled the pistol we gave him earlier and shot this dude point blank in the head. We were blowing up like "Why did you do that man?" and Sammy responds with "We've been struggling for food too, why the hell should we give it away to a random?"

Bad Blood

A few weeks after the last story, Sammy had become a fan of the game along with Autumn and I. Sammy and I were playing one day while in a party chat trying to find each other. My character already had a bit of gear and I was somewhere around Chernogrosk, I managed to work out Sammy was nearby and we met up. We were slowly making our way through the city looking for decent supplies, and we managed to gather a bit of medical equipment from a hospital. I used a blood test kit we found, and explained to Sammy how it corresponds to real life, certain blood types can only accept blood from other certain types. I decided to take my own blood as a reserve while I was healthy in case I needed it later (post bleed/gunfight). The test kit revealed I was O+, so my blood was able to be given to 50% of other types/players.

We kept looting and heading west as there is generally some better gear out that way. We came across a petrol station on the way out of Chernogorsk and were scavenging around when another guy popped out of nowhere. He was visually a recent spawn (still in spawn clothes) and could hear us speaking in game but did not seem to have a mic. We did the usual, attempt to troubleshoot mic problems, but he communicate with nods and head shakes that he had no mic at all. The guy then collapsed unconcious, which I recognized as a symptom of blood loss in the game. When your blood is VERY low, along with losing colour of the screen you also collapse unconcious every minute or so. This continues for at times over 15 minutes straight, leaving you highly vulnerable.

We felt for this guy, so I explained that I had a bag of my blood that I could administer to him, but that I was O+ so it would be a 50/50 chance of surviving or near instant death. I repeated myself to make sure he understood the risk and clearly remember this guy not using the head nodding emote, but just looking up and down nodding with his whole torso and head. We crouched down together on the ground of this petrol station in the pitch black night while Sammy kept a look out next to us. I administered my blood bag to this guy, and he was still crouching there after it was complete, a success! Sammy was commenting "eyyy nice one" and the guy was moving around standing and crouching in an attempt to communicate gratitude. He then suddenly fell dead on his back about 30 seconds after the transfusion. So it turns out he was not compatible.

Conclusion

There have been a lot of ups and downs during my experience with DayZ, especially with bugs in the early days. But it has remained a constant favourite of mine, even during months long breaks after a series of rough lives. I'll probably write on it again, I am often engaging in spotaneous roleplays in game, like acting as a farmer in a spawn town, a cannibal cult, and our most recent run we are calling ourselves 'The Freaks' while wearing mime masks and bright armbands, and taking codeine before gunfights to be stronger.

Thanks for indulging me by reading this, bye!