Real Horrorshow: DayZ

Horror is a genre that across entertainment mediums focuses on one thing: making an audience feel a very specific group of emotions. While this could be said about all genres of fiction across Film, Television, and Literature, the same cannot necessarily be said for videogames. In the videogame landscape, ‘horror’ games tend to be categorized more on their content or setting more so than actually making the player feel fear or discomfort. The following point cannot be stressed enough: simply having monsters or dimly lit hallways does not mean a videogame is a true horror experience. There are many elements that go into making a great piece of horror in videogames, and often the best examples come from games that are not traditionally classified as ‘Survival Horror’. In the Real Horrorshow column, I will be analysing and discussing various videogames that I believe are standout entries in the genre, and what it is that makes them exemplary pieces of horror.

Flesh eating zombies have been part of fiction and folklore for well over a century now, but their specific origins are a topic of much debate. There is little doubt however as to the origin of the “modern zombie” or the concept of the “zombie apocalypse”, both of which started with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead which released in 1968. In the film, and across all of Romero’s zombie films, there is a wealth of social commentary and analysis of human nature to be found. With an overtone often being that the real threat of the zombie apocalypse are the people that are currently living in it, and what they had to do in order to survive. This unfortunately is lost on a lot of people that create zombie fiction, with the audience’s attention being directed more towards the monsters themselves or the explicit violence they produce. When you focus on the gore and leave out the humanity then all you are left with is a feeling of revulsion, and that is not particularly interesting in my opinion. For the most part, the videogame medium has treated horror’s zombie subgenre in a similar fashion. Capcom used zombies as a sort of mascot for their Resident Evil franchise for the longest time, but they were just an enemy type for players to combat with, and this is the case with nearly all videogames to feature zombies. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it is just like the idea of focusing on the gore in that it’s not particularly interesting, and limits the potential of the zombie subgenre. It would seem that a lot of game developers and publishers either don’t understand or don’t care what makes something like Max Brooks’s World War Z novel or Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead graphic novels so special within horror’s zombie subgenre. Well Dean Hall of Bohemia Interactive seems to, as his DayZ modification for Arma 2 is well on its way to being the finest example of how to really use zombies in the videogame medium.

DayZ is an open world game set in the post-apocalyptic, zombie infested, and fictional post-Soviet nation of Chernarus. Most of the world has been wiped out by an unknown infection, and it is the players that assume control of humanity’s survivors. The idea being you must traverse this wasteland Chernarus has become in order to stay alive. While this description may be in the same vain as other videogame titles such as Dead Island, there are a few notable things DayZ does to set itself apart from other titles that feature zombies: Its unforgiving punishment, massive world scale, realistic approach to survival, lack of developer assistance while leaning mechanics, social dilemmas when confronting other players, and it is arguably the first multiplayer game in history to actually make its players feel fear.

When first joining a server in DayZ, you are immediately introduced to the lack of handholding by the developer. There is no tutorial stage or on screen instructions telling you what you need to do or where you need to go, it’s all left in the players hands. This is a pretty rare design philosophy in today’s gaming world, and it is particularly surprising given the scale of Chernarus and the intricacies of DayZ’s survival mechanics. Couple this with the fact that the game randomly drops you on the coast of Chernarus without a map, no weapon, and next to no equipment when you first log on a server, and you have got a game that screams old school design, and that’s an awesome thing in this regard. The game does give the player various visual and audio cues to help understand how certain mechanics work though. There are also several on screen indicators for the player to decipher, each one relating to various character necessities such as: hunger, thirst, blood levels, temperature, and how audible/visible you are to the zombies and other players. All of these necessities must be acknowledged and adhered to or your character will be headed to an early grave. In a lot of instances though, necessities and conditions are only identifiable by visual or audio cues. For example, if you are struck by a zombie and are seeing blood trickle from your character, it means you have an open wound and it needs to be bandaged. Similarly, if your screen becomes increasingly more discolored and washed out, it means your blood levels are low and you need a transfusion from another player with a blood bag. A lot of these visual cues are subtle and you may not notice them at first, but in time you will learn to be wary of them. The game also isn’t afraid to throw somewhat of a red herring at the player in order to confuse them, such as there are certain items like empty cans that have very little use, why aren’t they that useful you ask? Well exactly how useful is an empty can in the zombie apocalypse?! You have to use your common sense to discover what is and isn’t useful in a survival scenario, this is not a case where every in game object you pick up has a meaningful function.

So what we have is a game that forces the player to figure out all of its complicated mechanics and dense survival system through mostly audio/visual cues, trial and error, and player discovery. Oh, and did I mention that if you die you lose that character forever and all the items he was carrying? Respawning after death means starting up an entirely new character from scratch, think Diablo’s hardcore mode but applicable at all times. All of this is part of DayZ’s strong emphasis on realism and it applies to nearly everything in the game. At first you may dislike the red herring items you’ll find, or you may encounter instances where you’re saying things like: “How was I supposed to know that the reason I was crawling was because my leg was broken during that last zombie attack?”. However in time you will come to love the brutal and unforgiving nature of DayZ and its developer’s lack of player empathy, because it’s done well, and makes the experience all the more rewarding.

Arguably the most fascinating aspect of DayZ is the interaction between players. Not the interaction that comes from text or voice chat, but rather the overwhelming tension that comes over you should you encounter another player in a server. The reason for this tension is it can be very difficult to discern a fellow player’s intentions and thoughts at first glance. They might want to team up with you so the both you can start you own little survivalist fellowship, and hope that you can help each other out. They may also however just want that rifle you just picked up, and are willing to whatever needs to be done to get it. All while at the same time, the other player will probably have similar thoughts racing through their minds as well only pertaining to you. Your immediate options to “player situations” are often very limited, and the consequences of your reactions can be dire. It becomes increasingly more difficult to make quick decisions the more you play the game too, as factors like the items you have acquired and past experience tend to have a significant weight on your actions. For example: you may not hesitate shooting someone because you have just acquired an M4A1 rifle and are not willing to part with it. Or maybe you were recently mugged because tried to befriend someone and they decided to hold you up at gunpoint and demand you drop all of your items. Some people might just shrug off the notion that these encounters are intense by simply killing everyone on sight. That practice however does not necessarily make things easier as there is an in game humanity statistic, and you will gradually lose all of it and will be reskinned as a bandit, and most everyone will shoot a bandit on sight themselves as it is an indication that you are someone that kills a lot of people. There is always a sense of “what can I gain and/or lose from this” every time you encounter a fellow survivor.

As you can see, there is no effective way to categorize how players will react to each other, there are far too many factors involved in every encounter to even begin to list. What is universal about these encounters though is that they can be downright terrifying. The tension and pressure can build to a point where you’ll be hard pressed to even find a single player survival horror game that’s as scary as DayZ can be, and what’s truly astonishing is how it instills fear in the hearts of its players, not of the zombies, but of your fellow survivors.

Which leads me to another one of DayZ strengths, and that is the stories you garner from it. It can be actually quite difficult to walk away from a play session and not have some sort of awesome tale of your exploits to share with others. As an example, I am going to share with you a story that happened to me while playing recently.

A couple of friends and I were all coordinating and discussing where we were going to meet up in Chernarus. We finally decided to congregate at some farmhouses atop a hill that were relatively close to Chernogorsk (one of the few cites in the game). I arrived first, followed shortly thereafter by my first compatriot. We had a while to wait still since the remaining member of our party was a good distance away yet, so we started to scavenge amongst the farmhouses. Suddenly we heard the rev of an engine nearby, not taking any chances, we bolted into the forest nearby and hid in wait, scanning the road and hills below for the vehicle that startled us, praying whoever it was didn’t see us before we heard them. Up pulled a small white pickup truck with a driver and one passenger, they parked, got out, and then started scavenging just as we were. My friend and I stayed proned, ready to get into a firefight if need be. However it looked like after about a minute that they had no idea we were there, and if we stayed in the woods there would be no issues. They were both well-equipped and organised enough to repair a truck and get it going again, so chances are they were pretty experienced players that we did not want to mess with. However our 3rd party member was nearly there, and had mistakenly caught the attention some zombies nearby, and was unable to hide effectively without killing the zombies and drawing attention to himself. We then started discussing that it would probably be best that we take these guys out while they can’t see us, just in case they spotted our friend and were a nefarious lot. Both players were right beside their truck again, and we decided this we the best time to strike, my friend beside me pulled out his M107 sniper rifle, took aim and fired twice, killing both players quickly. We then darted out of the bush to see what supplies they had gathered, took the truck, and of course went to go save our friend!

Admittedly I still feel bad for killing those two survivors and taking all of their equipment they had clearly worked hard to get. That’s the world of DayZ though, you’ve got to trust your gut and make quick decisions. Those players could have been bandits that would have gladly done the same to us, or they could have been friendly and left us alone, we will never know. Much like an actual zombie movie it can be hard to trust strangers regardless of their words. Situations like these are common among people that get really into the game, and it often makes people question if their motives and decisions in DayZ reflect how they would be in a real world disaster scenario. It probably was not intentional on behalf of the developers, but there’s almost some pseudo social commentary going on within DayZ itself. Or maybe it’s genuine, considering there is a wealth of it in the history of works featuring zombies, either way it is something interesting to consider.

There is a reason why DayZ catapulted Arma 2 to the top of the Steam sales charts out of nowhere, why a standalone game is being developed, and why it’s being ranked amongst the likes of Counter-Strike and DOTA as one of the most relevant modifications in gaming history. To call it the most significant horror game to come along in years is not enough, it’s a landmark in gaming, because this online multiplayer game makes its players afraid of each other, and it cannot be praised enough for that. More than that though, it is one of the few videogame titles to understand what zombie fiction is really all about: the people. Much like George A. Romero’s films, DayZ uses zombies more as a tool rather than a focus, because when the dead have you and your party trapped somewhere, it is the living you really need to worry about.

(Thanks to my compatriots Zield and Wykillin for venturing into Chernarus with me, and thanks to Techuser for allowing me to use his screenshots)