After fostering zombie-survival title DayZ to monumental success, its creator Dean Hall has announced plans to leave Bohemia Interactive by the end of 2014. Speaking with Eurogamer, the lead developer expressed his desire to establish his own independent studio in New Zealand in the hope of crafting a new and improved multiplayer experience.
Although this invariably signals the end of Hall’s creative output on the project, he assured fans that by year’s end, his contribution to the eccentric, post-apocalyptic title will be all but complete.
“I’m really good at risk-taking and making other people take risks, I’ve always been good at that in my life. But eventually, that’s the bad person to have. 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.”
Initially designed as a mod for 2009’s ARMA 2, DayZ received a groundswell of support from the PC community for its unique mix of brutal survival and emergent gameplay. Since then, Bohemia launched a second, standalone iteration of the game onto Steam’s Early Access back in December, which has sold over one million copies to date.
Despite this success, though, Hall acknowledged the game’s flaws rather candidly,
“I feel like DayZ is a fundamentally flawed concept, and I’ve always recognised that,” Hall said. “It’s not the perfect game; it’s not the multiplayer experience, and it never can be, [with] the absolute spark that I want in it.”
Much like other Early Access titles like Rust and Starbound, DayZ is very much an unfinished product. Currently, the game remains locked in an alpha testing stage, and given that the studio is planning to enter beta by the end of 2014, it’s unlikely that Hall’s Mad Max-esque title will receive a full release until 2015. Until then, it’s back to Chernarus to scavenge for supplies!