Bohemia "feared" how fans would react to standalone DayZ
The recent announcement of a DayZ experience away from ARMA II wasn't taken lightly by the team. The free mod has receiving stunning support since its April release, ensuring the decision to charge for future iterations was a difficult one.
"We feared how they may react," Bohemia CEO Marek Spanel told MCV.
"Because they might feel it was not fair because they had to pay money for something that was initially free if they owned ARMA II. But we have been really surprised because they have been really positive and really supportive."
Unsurprisingly, Spanel says the only way to support DayZ is by creating a standalone edition. The backing of Bohemia Interactive looks set to help the game safely evolve.
"To support DayZ properly, making it a standalone game was the only way ahead. As a mod, we can only really take it as far as we have now. That doesn't mean we are abandoning the mod or that we won't try to support it further, there will be quite a few updates for the mod as well to keep it alive. But there are many limits that we cannot just overcome with it being just a mod. So a standalone game is the only way ahead for us to make a game better."
Spanel suggests DayZ would become too complicated if it was to progress incoherence with ARMA II.
"As a mod, you have to think about all the other mods as well and ARMA II itself it can become a nightmare. If you change something just to serve DayZ, and then you break another mod. Or you break the campaigns. In ARMA II you have five or six major campaigns now. So this is difficult. We just need a standalone DayZ so we can work on it. That's the reality. And we are really happy that users understand it."
For DayZ to continue its excellent rate of growth, Spanel is well aware the community will play a huge part. As development on the standalone title begins, he vows to place the input of users at the top of the team's priority list.
"We want to do an alpha the sooner the better, and then fast iterations and build. And we want our users to be part of development. That is how we have been doing it on ARMA II for years. The users are in the middle. We really need them. ARMA II would not be what it is if it weren't for them."