Producer Brian Hicks for DayZ over at Bohemia Interactive reveals they’re shy about 100k copies from hitting 3 million sold for the survival sandbox. Its mega success comes with a ”nearly $0 marketing budget.”
At times their Twitch popularity has beaten the cool kids of Dota, League of Legends and StarCraft. In fact Hicks points to Youtube and Twitch as the ”entire force” driving DayZ’s success.
”My personal opinion, since we have nearly $0 marketing budget – our marketing is me and Dean going to shows and interacting with consumers – I’d say Youtube and Twitch are the entire force behind DayZ’s success,” said the producer, referring to DayZ creator Dean Hall, who has since left the project to form his own development studio, RocketWerkz.
The zombie survival game began life as an extensive mod to Arma 2, but has since been fully acquired by Bohemia Interactive and released as a full standalone title.
“It sounds so PR-ish but you can’t design this. You cannot force the kind of emergent gameplay you get when you put 50 people in Chernarus and give them the tools to do whatever the hell they want.”
It’s the mix of accomplishing something, only to have everything you have taken away in a blink.
”Even I hate it when someone catches me off guard and I lose everything, or they kill me, or take all my stuff, or they handcuff me and leave me to die. It sucks. But those horrible experiences create so much value and power for the positive experiences. The impact of running across a real hero in DayZ is so much more powerful because of the existence psycopaths, bandits, and murderers.”
“It makes when you come out on top so much more satisfying.”
DayZ is currently scheduled to enter Beta later this year and leave Early Access the first half of 2016.
