A lot of buzz has been surrounding Sony Online Entertainment’s recently announced zombie survival MMO H1Z1. The most obvious idea to come to mind when taking a first look at H1Z1 is ‘I’ve seen this before’. And that’s justified, because, frankly, we have seen it before, multiple times. Zombie games were always popular, there’s no doubt about that, and the genre has evolved even more since The Walking Dead TV Show aired for the first time. Seeing the characters of the show trying to survive and killing zombies made all gamers itch for a similar experience.
The first guy to nail the concept of open-world zombie survival was Dean “Rocket” Hall, who created the extremely popular mod for Arma 2, DayZ. Yes, the mod was extremely buggy and many features were never implemented due to engine limitations and because of the lack of a massive development team. Still, the mod became insanely popular, simply because it provided players with a rough, brutal and somewhat realistic world infested with zombies, where survival was the one and only true goal. Taking advantage of DayZ’s success, multiple clones appeared in a short span of time, the most obvious (and horrid) being WarZ. In fact, WarZ was such a terrible game and such an obvious cash-grab, that it was removed from Steam altogether and eventually was renamed to Infestation: Survivor Stories. Other copycats soon emerged, among which was Nether and the more successful Rust. Granted, Rust started off as a DayZ clone but evolved into a complex and fun game of its own that seems to be going down an original path.
No kissing on the first date in DayZ!
Rocket moved on to recreate DayZ in a standalone package, which he and his team launched successfully on Steam’s Early Access platform in December 2013. The launch proved to be exceedingly successful, propelling the small team to financial heights they never hoped to achieve. DayZ’s success is remarkable especially since it’s still an alpha, incomplete version that still needs heaps of work. Despite that, almost 2 million people purchased the game so far, showing that there’s a profitable market for the genre. Sony Online Entertainment wants a piece of the pie too it seems. What sets it apart from other studios attempting to grab some of DayZ’s fan-base is the fact that the studio actually has the necessary finances to put a solid team to work on the game, something that we’ve seen to be crucial.
Is then H1Z1 a more expensive DayZ clone? That’s definitely hard to tell at this points, but based on what we’ve seen and heard so far, the answer tends to be yes. However, if SOE does manage to bring some measure of originality into its game, it will easily lose that label. It all comes down to how good of the job the developers behind the project are capable of doing. The premise is the same, the goal of the game is the same. You have a large open world, filled with various urban and rural landscape, infested by zombies, and you have to survive. You’ll have to defend yourself both from zombies and from players, so nothing new here. We already have that with DayZ. What we don’t have in DayZ is a finished product and a level of polish. Unfortunately, Sony Online Entertainment also aims to launch H1Z1 as an early alpha, so once again we’ll be getting an unfinished product that might or might not shine in the long-run.
Vehicles might be used as an original concept in H1Z1, but these are nowhere near being new in DayZ
Interestingly, SOE president John Smedley wasn’t shy about revealing that DayZ was a major source of inspiration. He recently shun some light on the DayZ-clone accusations via Reddit, where he stated the following: “Not going to give some politically correct dodgy b.s. answer. H1Z1 is a survival in a Zombie Apocalypse game. So is Day Z. They have made a brilliant game (first I might add). They have a great vision for it and can count myself and most of the people on our team as fans and contributors. So sure. We’re another Zombie Apocalypse game. Call it what it is. But our goal is to make ours fun, accessible, hard core and super, super deep.”
That, unfortunately, is a poor defense. Rocket also aims to make DayZ a mature, gritty and hard-core game in which survival really only comes to the fittest. H1Z1 aims to set itself apart by providing town-building, base-building and food harvesting. Sorry, but both DayZ and Rust are working towards the same goals. Yes, DayZ is far from providing a working base-building environment right now, but it’s definitely on the team’s to-do list, and Rocket did explain that this will be an integral part of DayZ once it’s completed. So we’re not seeing too much originality so far. In fact, the games look and feel similar too. The only difference is that DayZ is set in an Eastern-European setting while H1Z1 seems to be more modern-day and Western-European. Will that be enough to make a difference? It’s doubtful.
Base-building is also being worked on in DayZ and already works in Rust, so it’s not exactly an innovation brought by H1Z1
I really want to believe H1Z1 is more than a DayZ clone, I really do. Competition can only be good for both the industry and gamers, with more choices providing more possible sources of entertainment. But so far, I have nothing to fuel those hopes. H1Z1 will have 3rd and 1st person camera? Great, DayZ already has that. Vehicles? Incoming to DayZ in June or July. The only notable difference seems to be the price, which in the case of H1Z1 seems to be based on a free-to-play model, with Early Access costing around $20. DayZ on the other hand is a buy once, play forever type of game, with Early Access costing around $30. That’s not much of an incentive.
What are your thoughts? Are you happy to see someone else attempt to remake the vision behind DayZ, or are you tired of people going for an easy cash-grab? Do you think SOE’s H1Z1 has the potential to be successful and threaten DayZ and Rust’s genre-leading positions? Sound off in the comments below.