It’s taking forever FFS! Why is this game taking so damn long? Blah, blah, blah…
We hear it all the time, discussions on the glacial pace at which DayZ is being developed. With now more than 2 million gamers having chipped in to the Early Access version of the game, there’s more voices than ever talking about the speed of development.
With Early Access having gone live in what some may say was very early in the development process it feels like an eternity since any big new features have been added. Vehicles anyone?
Having stumped up pretty early myself, I learned a valuable lesson with DayZ. Put the damn thing down for a while and revisit it when there’s something really new to enjoy.
This is also the advice that the DayZ producer Brian Hicks has dished out on the forums in response to community members wondering if anyone else has lost faith in the game.
I’ll be honest, I do not have time to go through 9 pages of posts, so I’ll respond to the first and last posts with this statement:
You are not playing DayZ, you are playing development builds. Early development builds.
DayZ is 11 months into principle development, on what should be a 3 year standard development cycle. I can’t force you to be a fan of DayZ, but I can call this out:
Defining or judging what DayZ is by a build so early in its development is much a kin to judging a painting within the first few brush strokes. Hell, even Bob Ross’s paintings didn’t look great for the first few minutes (until you realized what it was he was making).
I can promise you none of your favorite AAA games played, or even resembled the final product that early in their cycles. (Okay, maybe some of the larger titles that push small incremental updates out every 12 months – but we all know those are special snowflakes)
Take a break, and come back in beta or even the full release. The Early Access period of development will have many peaks and low, low valleys. This is the nature of software development. Yes, it is stressful as heck – for all of us, but you get to be part of shaping the DayZ experience.
For me, its worth it – for some of you, it might not be. No one can fault you for that
Some sound advice there. Just calm down and come back to it later when the game is further down the line.
The problem with Early Access is that it can feel like a game is taking forever to be developed when it’s opened up early and I think gamers are learning slowly but surely that Early Access takes you along for the development ride. It’s not a finished game.
