Is DayZ realistic?

[joaby 25]

Actually, there are a couple of things going on here.

I think DayZ was an experiment in a different way to how you think. What they were experimenting with was seeing whether DayZ was a viable game, because Rocket had shopped it around and had been told it wasn't what people wanted from a game... Obviously that's not true.

As to how it would ever work as a psychological experiment about people's reactions in a zombie apocalypse... the thing about video games is that the number one way to interact with a game - almost any game - is through shooting/violence. It's unsurprising that when presented with the ability to interact with people in DayZ that most people are trigger happy.

[Jia 1]

Another thing to keep in mind is that survivors don't really "die". A bandit can go on a killing spree, but effectively he's not reducing the survivor population at all, because a killed player will simply respawn on the beach. Survivor lives are disregarded because their numbers never dwindle - we know that there are thousands of DayZ players out there who keep coming back. There's nothing special about a survivor, he's not the "endangered species" that he should be during a zombie apocalypse.

Players would act differently if they knew that the guy/girl they're watching who's scavenging a supermarket might be their last tie to humanity and civilization.