DayZ and the core gameplay loop
Disclaimer: It should be noted that these are my personal musings and reflections, and do not reflect the official stance on design for any project I am associated with, nor the official position of my employer. Over the last week or so I've been re-reading through one of my favorite books on game design (A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster) and thinking over how DayZ as a game looks through the lens of the systems and lessons within it. For a book written well over ten years ago, it still holds up incredibly well when applied to the modern video game industry, a testament to how spot on Raph was with a lot of his musings within. There are several areas of DayZ as a whole I'd like to cover - but initially I'd like to take a look at how the core game loop for DayZ is both brilliant, and in some cases very lazy. (Yes, I said it - but you'll understand why later on) DayZ's core gameplay loop is pretty simple straight out of the box - it is effectively unchanged from the DayZ Mod, or the launch of the Early Access build…continue reading →