[HICKS] We've Only Got 2*+ Years of Dev Support Left

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

QUESTION: The final release is coming 1.0 at some point. Do you see yourself adopting more of the Minecraft model of 1.0 happens and then we just keep going on? Or do you see it more as we hit 1.0, the game is done, we’re going to continue to support it with patches and bug fixes, but do you see the content continuing to trickle out after that?

Brian Hicks: What the company does is not specifically up to me, but I and I believe Mark, the CEO, both agree on this, is the development continues on DayZ long past 1.0. I’m not talking just bug fixes. We’ll flesh out more types of vehicles, we’ll implement things that we might not have been able to get to in the early access development. We will continue, but hear me, we’ll continue developing DayZ past 1.0. How far past 1.0? I don’t know, but I know when I’ve spoken to Mark, he was passionate about at least two to five years.

Source: http://www.dayztv.com/post/dayz-interview-brian-hicks-engine-mods-hordes-beta/

Mark is Marek Spanel (CEO) and the source material ^ is from 2015.

In earlier portions of the same article ^, HIcks also says:

I don’t think we’re looking at any severe delays. I think, all in all, when you look at the scope of the project, we were looking at originally a 2.5 to 3-year development cycle. I think if we don’t hit that 3-year, we’re going to be damn close, I honestly believe so.

With all of that said, Hicks said Marek Spanel (CEO) is interested in developing 2-5 years past 1.0 when they believed 1.0 was going to happen by the end of 2015. A very valid argument can be made that we've got 2 years left. Devs (Eugen) currently say (Status Report) that DayZ has another year of development left which reduces that figure to one year. Will they go over the 1 year mark of final development? Probably. Predicitng the future has never been BI's strong suit so if we look at the bottom of the bottle here: We'll be lucky if we get what was promised on the roadmap(s). I wouldn't expect anything extra.

In 2015, I bet sales were much better than they are now which opens another can of worms: is it profitable for BI to development another 2 or 5 years after 1.0 at these buy rates? I know for a fact sales are stale. I've been tracking units sold since the beginning through 3rd party sites (which are no longer available). If I'm not mistaken it took BI ~2 years (March 2017 - December 2018) to sell ~500k PC units (possibly counting console by varying percentages).

A company simply can't afford to support an IP when the money dries up. Devs said that since EA on XBL there has been 500k units accessed (using my own word here, can't find source) meaning 500k people is the number of people that have played DayZ for that free week as well as those who bought a copy combined. How many played during the free week that are being pooled into this number that didn't purchase a unit(?)...no idea. But I think we can all agree that it's a significent amount otherwise they wouldn't even mention it. Maybe how DayZ got to 4M units sold is due to console and console alone. Nobody knows because sales tracking has been down for several months and two possibly important articles are currently offline (looking for source on the 500k bit).

https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-20-november-2018

https://dayz.com/blog/xbox-development-briefing-30-11-2018

https://dayz.com/blog/xbox-development-briefing-november-16-2018

TL;DR

There is a strong air of uncertainty that DayZ will reach the end of the roadmap(s) that's been discussed. We'll possibly be feature complete, possibly not. Sales are down and 1.0 is a shitshow, how long will Marek support 88 devs at a cost of 3,500,00 - 5,000,000 (guessstimate based on 50kx88 equalling 4.4M which is how I got to 3.5M - 5M as some are presumably making more or less than 50k/year) annually just for salary (I didn't include other costs which I'm sure are really significent).

 

[MaxwellHouse69420 87]

Well this is why I don’t laugh at games that have feature bloat but an infinite backing of money via Kickstarter backers and such . I know it can be scam city but games like star citizen and other crowd funded projects are getting so much money and In turn , even though development times are much longer , they seem to be Able to pump out the content promised and more , and still have plenty of extra revenue for the workers and everything else.

I have high hopes for dayz 1.0 and 2019 , but your words in this thread scare me , maybe it’s just the propaganda of it all lol  

[OrLoK 16191]

The future is fine.

The source material is from 2015. 

Things change.

 

ps "1.0 is a shitshow" is not constructive critique.

Edited December 13, 2018 by OrLoK