The problem with DayZ, and this arguement in general, is that DayZ doesn't encourage behaviour beyond "murder everyone who isn't a close personal friend" at all. Unless they've changed it drastically since I last played there's no disincentive to murder people and take whatever they have, and no incentive to team up and be friends, or trade.
The only arguable reason not to instantly murder someone the moment you see them, aside from if they are better armed than you, or they have friends, is if you need a blood transfusion. But then again, they have no reason not to just murder you and take your bloodbag. Or your beans. Or just incase you might murder them afterwards. And if you play with a friend, or a group of friends, then again you're back to literally no reason not to murder everyone.
All those Newbs and FPSers (you know ARMA is a FPS/TPS right? if you play ARMA 2 and have you view mode to first person, congratulations you're a FPSer) are simply playing the game according to the rules, constraints and rewards provided to them. People sure
want DayZ to be about teaming up and working together (Rocket says he does) but it's just not there in the game. Or wasn't for months and months and months after release.
Most of this is owing to the fact that in a world with finite resources where you play a character who has to drink 12 gallons of water an hour and eat a ton of beans a day, people will fight over resources. Once people start being well armed then people will fight over weapons to defend themselves so they can get more resources. That's basically the progresson of DayZ food/water -> weapons -> vehicles. Though vehicles were (are?) way more down to luck than anything else. After that there's not much else to do, so most people just start killing indescriminantly. Mostly because theres no real other option. You can't build bases, you can't clear out a town of zombies, you can't really accomplish anything else other than finding more food guns or supplies. Except now you don't have to walk for 40 minutes to get to the next town only to find nothing but tin cans, you can just shoot someone and take their stuff. One of the most telling pieces of DayZ development history is when Rocket decided he didn't like players making tentfarms and all congregating together to horde loot. So he introduced some sort of infection mechanic that would cause people to have a chance of getting sick if they spent time together. Or the time he just flat out wiped all the contents of tents on the hive. You aren't meant to work together in this game, that was his message there. (I know he often says in interviews he thinks the game should be about working together. He does that often: says one thing and then says the opposite about his own game. Go figure)
Believe it or not, it was once worth trying to tell if someone wanted to kill you or not!
Why? Aside from the obvious fact that if they wanted to kill you and you didn't know about it they could do it easily, which still means it's worth trying to find that out in DayZ today.
And to me, emergent gameplay > all other forms. Also, if emergent gameplay is intended in the game's design, like it is in EVE and DayZ, then I think it counts as player-created content. You took the argument to it's logical extreme, but what I meant was that aside from DayZ, I know of no other zombie game that relys upon the players themselves to create their own gameplay, goals, and social constructs. All of which are definitely content.
See above for why players don't create their own goals or gameplay in DayZ. the goals are allready layed out for you. It's implicit in the game design and mechanics (or lack thereof).
Author
Topic: The War Z (Read 39995 times)