The Future of Bohemia’s DayZ

So just days after Bohemia Interactive announce that its popular game DayZ has hit over 1.5 million sales since release with little to no advertising, it's lead content developer Dean "Rocket" Hall has announced he will be stepping down from the project by the end of the year. What will this mean for a game I have been playing religiously since the Arma 2 mod days?

Dean Hall who is forever transparent through his blogs and social media has explained that he will step down from DayZ as the head of the project. Dean famously created the zombie survival mod for the tactical shooter Arma 2 in 2011 and the game rose to massive success over the course of the year leading to the standalone version being released two years later. Eurogamer reported earlier that Dean had this to say.

"I have a specific use. I'm really good at risk-taking and making other people take risks, I've always been good at that in my life. Like you say, maybe I've got the gift of the gab, so I can talk, I can explain something, I can talk people up to the ledge and get them to jump off it."

"But eventually, that's the bad person to have," Hall continued, "eventually, you don't want the guy telling you to go over the top and get through. So at some point I'll be a disaster for the project, at least in a leadership role."

It seems that Rocket is already looking to the future and also touches of the feeling of being home sick from his native New Zealand. He goes on to explain.

"I never intended to be here, and it's kind of like cooking in someone else's kitchen: I don't want to be constantly telling Bohemia that this is how I do it and this is the way we do it"

Hall was hand picked by Bohemia on what he anticipated to be a six month stay to develop the mod for DayZ from the Arma 2 engine, which then turned in to a wildly successful standalone project. Dean had a vast amount of combat and army experience after spending many years in the Royal New Zealand army and although the game is still in early "alpha" access has become a record breaking seller on steam with the community pressuring for more content by the day.

The news may come as a shock to fans of the game Dean is still positive with his support of the title and explains he would not Hall "leave the game in a debilitating or crippled state" He said.

I would extend my involvement here as long as Bohemia wanted - needed - me,"

Hall also took to Reddit and Twitter to explain the decision and clear up confusion on the messaging and outlined that the announcement was intended to provide added clarity, and assure fans that he his not abandoning his creation immediately.
"To be fair... the most important element of the story is that I am continuing to work on DayZ for the rest of the year, and more if required," Hall said on a Reddit post related to the Eurogamer article, "it's better that everyone knows my intention now, all the "drama" and panic comments... and then in a week nobody will give a crap and we're back to normal."

DayZ has been a staple part of my gaming diet the past two years and the game has gone leaps and bounds ahead of when it was first released with the alpha of standalone being improved every day with new content. One thing that users have complained about is the lack of vehicles in the game causing players to run everywhere and although also a gripe of mine has not dragged me away from playing the game. Dean obviously has his priorities and at the moment that is getting the game to a finished and stable state before he opens it up to modders like he did with the DayZ mod for Arma 2. This I feel is when DayZ will really come into its own with users being able to modify the servers to create their own chernarus and add the content that they want. Time will tell when will be added to the game in the future but for the moment I'm going to keep travelling my way across DayZ like the million other active players.