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DayZ Creator, Dean Hall, Leaving DayZ to Start New Studio

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Two years ago Dean Hall released DayZ, an open world zombie survival mod for the game Arma II. Since the release, it has been quite a wild ride. Just three months after the release, the mod pulled in 1 million unique users, and was allegedly responsible for at least 300,000 sales of the base game Arma II. Before gamers knew it, DayZ was winning awards left and right, and it practically started a whole new genre. Hall quickly announced standalone development, and since then Hall has encountered numerous obstacles while developing the game. Unfortunately, this journey for Hall is coming to end, as Hall recently announced that he will be leaving DayZ.

In a recent talk with Eurogamer, Hall explained that he has plans to leave Bohemia Interactive by the end of 2014. Fortunately, Hall said that just because he plans on leaving the project doesn't necessarily mean he wants DayZ to go down with him. Currently Hall is still willing to work with Bohemia as long as they need him, and he wants DayZ to continue. Hall stresses multiple times that he is willing to be flexible in order to maintain DayZ and please the community.

While talking with Eurogamer Hall claimed "I'm really good at risk-taking and making other people take risks, I've always been good at that in my life. Like you say, maybe I've got the gift of the gab, so I can talk, I can explain something, I can talk people up to the ledge and get them to jump off it." Despite the fact that this may be viewed as a positive attribute, this is also of the reasons for Halls resignation. Hall made the point that "Eventually, you don't want the guy telling you to go over the top and get through. So at some point I'll be a disaster for the project, at least in a leadership role." Hall also stated that he never wants to fully leave DayZ behind, but he just doesn't feel the leadership role is right for him.

Hall's resignation wasn't entirely for the sake of DayZ though, as he also wishes to pursue some personal goals. Once Hall fully leaves Bohemia, he plans to start his own gaming company based in New Zealand. Hall claims that he already has three other game idea written down, and with these games he wants to reach the perfect multiplayer experience. Hall never said what exactly his plans were for these next games are, but he did say that they all did resemble DayZ because he has a fascination in multiplayer and an interest in survival games.

The real question is, what will happen to DayZ and it's developer? It should be noted that this isn't the first time a lead developer has left a popular game. Not to long ago Notch, the lead developer of Minecraft, decided to leave Minecraft. Today Minecraft is still one of the best selling games across platforms and still is in full swing of things when it comes to development. As for Notch though, it seemed as if he died out after his next game, 0x10c, got canceled. Will the same happen to Dean Hall? It's not secret that Dean Hall has been able to start a whole new genre of games, much like Notch, but can Hall do it again? As for DayZ, games like Rust and The Forrest coming make it hard to say were DayZ will land in the rankings of survival games. DayZ will always be remembered as the start of something great, but will the community stick with it?

Sources: VG247, EuroGamer, Wikipedia
Image Source: TheVerge
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Monopolyman
I am a young writer who is passionate about gaming and technology. PC is my preferred platform, but I appreciate all forms of video games. I enjoy voicing my opinion in the articles I write, but also like to keep our readers informed on the latest news.

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