The hit zombie-survival game DayZ, which started out as a popular mod for the game ARMA II, has seen great success as a standalone game on Steam currently in early access. Despite this, the mod's creator, Dean Hall, is stepping down from the project and leaving his job at ARMA II developer Bohemia Interactive to start his own studio.
Hall had been given the job as project lead at Bohemia after the mod became a hit to work on the full, stand-alone version of DayZ. He tells Eurogamer that he's not the type of guy who can be in a content this leader role and is leaving for the benefit of both himself and the project.
"I am a grenade," Hall stated. "I have a specific use. I'm really good at risk-taking and making other people take risks, I've always been good at that in my life. Like you say, maybe I've got the gift of the gab, so I can talk, I can explain something, I can talk people up to the ledge and get them to jump off it. That's what I did with DayZ; I've done it twice now [once with the mod, again with the standalone] - two new code teams have separately done it."
He went on to explain why that style doesn't fit this position. "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."
Hall also explains he wasn't even going to do this last year of developing the game, and he stayed on longer than expected. He wanted to only stay a few months, but he didn't want to leave the project early, and felt the community and game required-and deserved-his contributions a while longer. He also says he will "Always be involved," in some way and there's "no way to escape it." But ultimately, leading his own project under a different studio and telling Bohemia what to do felt uncomfortable, like "cooking in someone else's kitchen."
So what next for Hall? He says he wants to go home to New Zealand, where he served in the army and start his own studio (Bohemia Interactive is located in Prague). He admits it's a process that will take years, so people are starting work on it now.
Hall wants to make games in a similar vein to DayZ because he loves survival and multiplayer games. "I feel like DayZ is a fundamentally flawed concept," he went on, "and I've always recognized that. 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."
He has ideas for new games written already, and many will be interested in hearing them when they surface-we just might have to wait a while. DayZ is still in early-access on Steam, where it can be purchased and played through to the full version's release.