If you were standing over my shoulder this past Friday evening watching me play DayZ, you might have wondered why I was playing a game whose graphics appeared grainy, black and white, and seemed to be pulsing like someone’s blood pressure. You probably would’ve questioned why I would be so intensely enjoying a game were about every 30 seconds I would say, “I passed out,” then laughed hysterically with my friends via Skype. After some reflection, I too was asking myself these same questions, and I’ve come up with an answer.
DayZ was designed to expose players to emotional situations, and plays upon the responses to said emotional circumstances. DayZ is a realistic survival game where the lack of food and water are not the most dangerous elements, but they will kill you just as often as the other inhabitants of Chernarus (the island setting for Dayz). In most PC games the player has the majority of control over the environment, a complete understanding of who is friend and who is foe, and an idea of how to beat the game. In DayZ, none of these predetermined factors, which make up most video games, exist. The player is not the most powerful element in the game and alone, he will not survive.
So what makes not having complete control, or even the majority of control, over the game you are playing, fun? Firstly, you must embrace the fact you are at the whim of your environment. To enjoy DayZ you have to let go of the typical feeling, one usually garners from a video game, of being larger than life, and accept that you are just a small part of it. The fragility of your character in DayZ is a reason why it can be so enjoyable, but to appreciate this Mr. Glass syndrome you have to be able to immerse yourself in the world of DayZ-you have to care about the survival of your character and those of your friends.
Going it alone in DayZ means you will only survive for so long, you will eventually need help. When you’ve lost too much blood, your screen fluxes from white to grainy shades of grey and you pass out every 30 seconds; you’ll need someone other than yourself, to administer a blood transfusion. When your friend is crawling on the ground with a broken leg, from a lucky zombie whack or a bullet from another player, you’ll unselfishly give him your last shot of morphine (or maybe you won’t). It’s during and after surviving (or dying), in DayZ, that you can find humor in your character’s frailty, and entertainment in passing out.
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