The War Z was to DayZ as League of Legends is to Dota, says producer

The War Z, now known as Infestation: Survivor Stories, was originally intended as a sort of loving tribute and follow up to DayZ, according to producer Sergey Titov.

The War Z was widely criticised for its buggy, feature-poor launch - but also for seemingly copying the heck out of DayZ - among other controversies.

In a post-mortem on Gamasutra, Titov said the wholesale emulation of DayZ's gameplay wasn't done cynically.

"When we set out to create The War Z, we saw a hardcore, fun mod in DayZ, and found ourselves inspired to create a game in that genre that we felt could be open to a wider audience," he said.

"In some ways, our process was similar to Riot Games and how they opened up the DOTA mod to the world with League of Legends. Obviously we are nowhere near as big as Riot and neither is our game as big as LoL, but in terms of the genesis of The War Z, our aim was similar.

"Our intentions were good, though we definitely made some poor decisions that made them look otherwise."

Some of these decisions include not listening to complaints about the game's title, arrogantly dismissing criticism out of hand, diverting development resources to cater to unexpected player demand and erroneously posting a misleading game description.

The full post-mortem is worth a read and comes across much more humbly than Hammerpoint's early communications on the topic. It's certainly interesting to see that the survival MMO is going so well despite its early, vocally negative reception - and to hear that a brand new version of the game is on the way.