Game Selling 10.000 copies a day

News & General Discussion
1

I have been following the development of, actually not a game but a free mod, that placed the original game on the top selling list on Steam for weeks.

Im talking about DayZ dayzmod.com a free mod for Arma 2.

The developer of the mod said they registered 10-12k new players connecting daily. (Some of who might have bought the game a long time ago) .

Whats interesting is that I dont think any publisher would go anywhere near the mod.

The most interesting features in my opinion is:

Your character and equipment is persistent on all servers.

If you die you loose it all and will have to start over

Day and night cycle on server that changes with real-time.

You need food and water to survive

player vs player

Start without any weapon, you must scavenge towns/farms on a huge map (225km2)

No global chat. You can chat if you are within 40 or 60 meters. Same with voice chat.

No easy way to refill life. You need to bandage up if your bleeding, and, you might pass out when hurt. Only way to refill health fast is by blood transfusion, and that cant be done by one person alone. Alternative is to hunt, and make camp fire. For that you need to find matches and firewood.

You start without a map or compass. And even when you find a map there is no indicator of where you are. You need to find a land mark or figure out close by towns.

its pretty much the opposite of your regular FPS in terms of concern for helping the player to survive and telling the player how to play.

As said the mod is making Arma 2 best seller for weeks on Steam. But doubt any publisher would have touched the concept. The developer has now moved for to Prague and is cooperating with the Arma 2 developers. Not sure about details of their arrangements.

If you haven’t already I suggest you check out the dayz site, interesting to see the game develop, the try and errors, the massive amount of “so called hackers”.

And +1 for Arma for letting players make mods in the first place. Rare feature these days.

Here is a video from the game:

http://youtu.be/rLh4A9MS5k8 (an older version of the game)

2

Until the day Online PVP can weed out hackers I have zero interest in playing those kinds of games. They are all broke. Single player games, Co-Op and RPGs until then.

3

Those are the key features to its success, imho. The former is taking the Survival genre to a whole new level, and the latter creates a brand new kind of community immersion. Brilliant mod, I’ve seen some videos, and it deserves its success.

What’s fun : these are exactly the kind of gamedesign that regular PC gamestudios would have thought about back in the 80-90’s. But nowadays, they are considered “too much niche”. I hope lessons are taken.

4

This is the first ame I am downloading when I get my mac. Had my eye on it for ages :slight_smile: it’s going to be great I think, fix the animations And the hacking and it will be on its way!

5

Yep, this came up in the rescue from the fire thread. The games that had level editors, construction kits, etc.

Then there are things like CoX/STO from Cryptic(Paragon) - Mission Architect…Foundry. Along those lines, PWE having picked up Cryptic - the inclusion of the Foundry for Neverwinter…

It’s something different than just the grind and something more than just a shooter. The market’s out there - and - for some reason it’s been greatly ignored. There was the Gamasutra artcile about it, no? In talking about ARMA 2 and how they felt it important to include modding tools…

6

Totally agree with you n0mad

As for the cheats, thats one of the things I like to dwell about. And try to learn from if I ever should make a game with multi player features. And there is how to work around exploits, like players disconnecting when shot at. Or switching server to reposition behind the enemy.

Im not a big fan of FPS really, except for Fallout 3. And not played online before. But the tension from sneaking around for the next can of beans, is pretty intense.

7

Selling 10 copies a day? 10 = 10.000

I believe it should be 10,000, but sure, fine.

8

That was not a float. And it depends on where you are in the world.

9

It looks like Arma is PC only.

10

You get someone like pewdiepie (with 1 million subscribers) and its bound to blowup

No wonder look at all the youtubers playing the game.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=day+z&oq=day+z&gs_l=youtube-reduced.3..0l4.185203.185203.0.185494.1.1.0.0.0.0.112.112.0j1.1.0...0.0...1ac.vRJ-c8kewnk

11

Bootcamp

12

he can use boot camp :wink:

13

Cool. Anyone know where I can get a legal copy of Windows 7 for cheap?

14

At the risk of being called a troll and insane because that’s how forums seem to operate I’ll tell you you can get a free copy of Windows 7 and all kinds of other useful Windows software for free by registering as a small business in Microsoft’s WebSpark or BizSpark promotions.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/

http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

My business is registered as an LLC now but they just take your word for it when you do go register. It’s not like Microsoft isn’t aware these offers are mostly used be freelancers trying to afford to stay current on Microsoft technology and do some moonlighting on the side.

15

Thanks goat. I just applied to bizspark.

16

Yea I haven’t played DayZ, but on some of the other forums I frequent they’ve been linking videos for probably a year now.

The videos are pretty epic, which I think draws more people to the game. It’s just a MOD, but probably more successful/interesting to people, than the original game.

Some of the group videos are just hilarious, when they’re all riding a bus, or when a guy jumps out of cover and blindly shoots at the helicopter and kills the pilot, or the video where the guys are so excited about the vehicle they stole that they drive it forever to some secret hiding place while one of the guys is accidentally livesteaming. Or the guy on a bicycle luring zombies to other players lol.

Amazing to see how survival mechanics change a fps into something badass.

17

Yeah DayZ is a wonderful mod. My first noob experience with the game was when i ran into the woods with default supplies. 4 hours later i was lost and without water or food. Luckily i found a barn with few cans of beans in it. I was so so happy. Forget the super loot in other games, this games makes you cheer if you find beans :slight_smile:

15 minutes later my character got stuck into a tree. I did not get eaten by zombies or slaughtered by bandits. I starved to death because i was stuck.
This mod will give you wonderful and frustrating experiences, but you always come back to it :slight_smile:

18

I played it for a bit not long after it was released, I then played it a month or so later to check the changes. I am a huge fan of perma death games but the issue with this game is the amount of time it takes to find items. These days my time is more precious so I can’t play due to how much time the game actually takes to play.

19

troll and insane

20

I think the other threads/threats (locked now) and you have proved my point.