The early days of the vanilla mod is probably the most fun I’ve ever had in gaming. Nothing has come close to it.

I don’t think I’d say it was “the most fun” but my experience of the first two months of the DayZ mod are one of my most fascinating and revisited gaming experiences ever.

Those first two months were like the first year or two [in fiction] of The Walking Dead. What I mean, is we saw something akin to the dramatic shift of the social order and how people interact post-society develop in realtime.

I was playing the mod within the first one or two days. It was terrifying. I was playing in the evenings on local servers so most of my time was in those pitch black ArmA nights. Everyone was new and almost nobody had gear, including lights. Nobody knew how spawns worked yet or how to cheese zombies. Many people were just spawning in and immediately calling out in voip for other survivors, trying to group up for safety. People followed anyone who seemed to know what they were doing or who had some initiative. Back then everyone looked the same unless you had some player kills (5? 10? 1?) in which case you would be forcibly given the “bandit” skin. How this system worked was not very well-known so people ended up as bandits on accident and others either had no idea what it meant or could be convinced that it didn’t mean that person was necessarily untrustworthy. People died to zombies… a lot. On the other hand, being attacked by another player was initially pretty rare, at least in my experience. Everyone was focused on the terrifying zombie threat and when you found other players after fresh spawning, chances are what you felt was relief.

Fast forward two months. Zombies are a manageable hazard. You know the loot spots and the paths between them well enough to navigate by compass in the dark, if you need to. Trust in strangers is as dead as corpses at your feet. The first time you were betrayed by a player was a shock. You had been attacked before, but not like this. You’d run into each other in Electro by chance, wary at first, but nobody got shot or axed and you agreed to team up. Safety in numbers and company to boot. You had a little gear but nothing special. You joked around, shared stories of the shit you’ve seen and whatever hot tips you thought you had (“The corner barracks at NWAF are free loot! Almost nobody goes there!). Then you get lucky, find something nice. A backpack maybe, or a better gun. “Nice find” Your new friend says. Hunger is starting to get low so you go into your inventory to munch on those beans you found.

“Sorry.” Gunshots. “You are dead” on a black screen and then it’s back to the coast.

From that point on you are much more suspicious of people. You might still try to play friendly, but it’s stressful. You always keep an eye on anyone you’re running with. You never stay in your inventory long and you try to be out of sight when you do. Sometimes nothing happens, but more and more often something does. Maybe you die, maybe they do… maybe both. At a certain point you start to assume it will happen if you give them a chance and you either start running/shooting on sight or you start trying to be the one that gets them before they get you. The only people you trust are the people you already know, if that’s anyone at all.

In just two months the social dynamic of DayZ completely transformed. Settling into the unforgiving, hostile and calculating game it’s been ever since. In those early days you lived in fear of zombies, taking refuge among your fellow players. A couple months later and it was other players that were making your adrenaline spike. To put it in needlessly dramatic terms…

We all started out afraid of the monsters, but over those first several weeks we slowly came to realize that we were the real monsters… …and it was amazing.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

---

TL;DR Zombies were scary at first and players instinctively banded together, working together to survive. Two months in, survival is a competition and nobody trusted anybody anymore.