More than ten years ago, one of the most unpopular Czech video games – DayZ – was released. New Zealand soldier Dean Hall is behind the idea for a horror survival game in which the player’s task is to survive in the zombie-infested Eastern European country of Chernarus. The developer, who has made millions of dollars experimenting with game mods, was inspired by his own near-death experience during a training mission.
When the player turns on the video game DayZ from the Czech studio Bohemia Interactive, he appears in the inhospitable landscape of Eastern Europe. All he has in his pockets is an emergency glow stick, a piece of fruit and some clothes. In addition to persistent hunger and thirst, the survivors must also face enemy zombies, wild animals, and other players. They can attack at any time in an attempt to get supplies from a deceased opponent’s inventory.
Although it is already a decade old, DayZ ranks among the popular titles even today. The proof is also the fact that the record for connecting the highest number of players at the same time was achieved only last year. At one point, 69,449 people were trying to survive on the video game’s servers.
The popular “survival”, a genre in which the player’s task is to survive, was originally created as a modification for the Czech video game ArmA 2. “ArmA has many aspects that are unique compared to other games. That was my big advantage – on an already great I could build the game,” New Zealand developer and founder of RocketWerkz studio Dean Hall explains to Aktuálně.cz, who headed to Prague on the occasion of the Game Developers Session in December. For example, DayZ took over the map from the original game. Černarus, the land where players fight for survival, is inspired by the Czech landscape.
Forty-two-year-old New Zealand developer Dean Hall visited Prague in December. | Photo: Aktuálně.cz
The first version of DayZ took four months to develop. Hall began working on the modification while serving as a liaison officer for troops from Southeast Asia. “I lived alone in a New Zealand training camp in the alpine desert. Everything was covered in snow, like in the tundra. I waited for days to see if anyone needed my help. I actually had a lot of free time,” he recalls.
He was inspired by his own struggle for survival
Hall joined the New Zealand Army twenty-three years ago. He served as an officer in the Royal New Zealand Air Force for five years. Later, for example, he participated in planning the development of regional prisons in New Zealand and also began to gather his first experience in the video game industry in the role of producer in the development studio of the Wellington company Sidhe Interactive. In 2009, however, he returned to service as an army officer and went on an exchange stay in Singapore. During the trip, he completed a training mission, the only goal of which was to survive.
For a period of twenty days, the army provided him with only a two-day supply of food. In less than a month, he lost around twenty-five kilos. “Something dawned on me. I think I’m probably more afraid than a normal person. I’m afraid of heights and I don’t like spiders. “And something in me enjoys overcoming my fears,” he explains. The near-death experience became the first impulse to create a mod for the video game ArmA 2.
The goal of the modification was to authentically bring to the player the feeling experienced by soldiers during risky missions. No clearly given tasks, no second chance when a character dies or starves. In a single second, a player can irreversibly lose everything.
The mod was posted on Bohemia Interactive’s fan forum in April 2012. Initially, the modified game was so difficult that some players criticized it. “I still have trouble adjusting the difficulty to this day, I’m the type who likes to torture myself with games,” he adds. According to Hall, who also faced similar difficulties with the release of the three-year-old title Icarus, the Bohemia Interactive studio is mainly behind the correct difficulty setting.
Although according to Hall, realism is important in video games, he himself focused mainly on authenticity when creating the mod. “Not everything in DayZ feels real. But the emotions that the events in the game lead to are real. It’s weird that when you get shot you just keep going, you can take morphine and you’ll be fine. If you just died , your teammates would just shrug and keep playing. That way, if you get shot or injured, they have to help you. Sacrifice themselves. Or they’ll let you die and take stuff,” explains the developer.
Reality gave way to emotion
The mod started to spread among players very quickly and caused the sales of the original title to increase significantly. The CEO of Bohemia Interactive offered Hall a contract and a small team, with the help of which he was to turn DayZ into an independent game. DayZ became a full-fledged studio project while Hall was a developer working on the upcoming ArmA 3.
A few months after the developer arrived in the Czech Republic, where he lived for several months, DayZ became a hit. “I suddenly had a lot of money and fame. It was very confusing. I felt like I had died and been reborn in someone else’s skin,” he says. At the time, he received around five million dollars for his new title, which translates to about 113 million crowns.
The amount of money that suddenly arrived in the New Zealand foreigner’s account even alerted the Czech police. She came to check the suspicious transaction directly at the bank. “I had to bring a contract from the studio so they wouldn’t garnish my pay,” laughs Hall.
From an officer to the head of a game studio
Hall knew he wanted to be a soldier in high school. However, he found his way to video games a little earlier. He created his first game, simply titled Submarine, when he was around twelve years old. The title, in which the player controlled a submarine and took care of its crew, was never shared with anyone.
Although video games were his passion from an early age, he decided to pursue a career as a soldier after graduating from high school. The Army later offered Hall a scholarship to pay for his studies at the University of Otago. Although he never aspired to higher education, he saw the offer as an opportunity to improve his development skills. “I chose informatics as my major,” he recalls.
Although he graduated, he would not classify himself as a diligent student. “I thought I was smarter than my professors,” he laughs. He only studied computer science for a year before he switched to business and political science. “There, the students had a day off on Friday,” he adds.
Video game mode
Often created by fans, video game mods bring new elements to already released games. It can also go to very small details, such as improving the player’s clothing. However, they can also bring a very extensive change, such as a new environment or different game mechanics.
In Hall’s case, the experience of being a soldier was reflected not only in the development of the game itself and its mechanics, but also in the way he runs his game studio RocketWerkz. He founded it in 2014 after leaving the Czech company Bohemia Interactive. “The military is all about the people. Being a platoon leader is a lot about taking care of the unit and solving all the problems they have. It’s quite similar for a game development studio,” he says.
