Why haven't any major developers made a Day Z type game?

[Zhukov]

So I recently decided to get back into Day Z. God only fucking knows why.

Installed, logged in. Ran straight into the shitty, laggy interface, the shitty, laggy controls, the lacklustre graphics, the hilariously glitchy AI and animation. Promptly decided to get back out of Day Z. Uninstalled.

However my multiplayer survival itch remained unscratched. So I decided to get back into Rust. Installed. Logged in. Now to be fair Rust has improved a great deal since last I played it. Sadly the combat is still a clumsy barebones mess and it's the fucking Wild West of hackers.

Now I love these games and I'm happy to see the explosion of this new genre. My problem is that every single entry into this new genre is utter shit. These games survive and even thrive on their strong premise, but the execution is garbage across the board. They're all unfinished, poorly made messes.

This makes me wonder why none of the big developers/publishers have stepped in to capitalize. I undertand that major companies are notoriously risk averse, but in this case the demand is clearly there. I don't have any figures on hand, but Rust and Day Z (among others) have remained stubbornly high on the Steam bestseller list for years. Literally years. And any competent, well funded professional game studio could squeeze out a better game than those with their eyes shut. I'm rather little puzzled as to why they haven't done just that.

Anyone have any insight to share or care to point out something dumb that I'm missing?

 

[leberkaese]

H1Z1 comes to my mind. It's published by Sony and made by those guys that developed Planetside and Everquest.

But I think nobody else does this, because you can't calculate if your survival game will be a success. It's hit or miss, if the people will like the game. Some games like Ark become huge and some others like The Forest never make it.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Probably because it's really niche, and therefor not really suitable for the bloated nature of major publishers these days. I mean, you have to love both 'hardcore' simulation games, zombie games and MMO's. That's a pretty specific Venn diagram, and not all that big even if they seemingly sell well.

Major publishing houses are usually looking for something with more guaranteed mass appeal. Around 3 million sales isn't that much for an EA- or Ubisoft-type company.

 

[1981]

And any competent, well funded professional game studio could squeeze out a better game than those with their eyes shut.

I agree that they could do it, but the keywords here are "competent" and "well-funded". As Cowabungaa said, even if the game was guaranteed to sell as many copies as DayZ has sold to date, it just wouldn't cut it.

Why take risks when you can make money by doing the same thing over and over again? I just finished Bioshock Infinite (got it for 1? by voting at GMG) and I can't think of a single thing it did better than Bioshock. Same graphics, same story, worse gameplay. That's how you sell over 10 million copies.

 

[Amaror]

Well because it's very risky. Yes the interest is clearly there, but there are various complications.
1. The interest is there but the audience is still not as huge as for other AAA titles.
2. The pricetag. People aren't really willing to spent the full 50 - 60 dollars on a game like this and the other titles sell for around 30.
3. The game. This kind of game is not easy to make. A huge open world complicates things. Having lots and lots of players play on the same huge open map complicates things even more. And while people are generally relatively forgiving for bugs and problems at release for indie games, their not as forgiving for studies with publisher backing.

 

[thewatergamer]

It's a very niche thing that is over-saturated to a ridiculous level, anybody that loves the "genre" either is sick of it now or has their own game, its sort of the same reason companies aren't making MOBA's or MMO's because the market is already dominated by a few big games and breaking in is almost impossible and not worth the risk

 

[1981]

It's saturated with unfinished games being developed by amateurs. That's the problem.

Don't Starve is probably the only (multiplayer) survival game not still in early access. I love it. But I'm desperate for a first-person version with realistic graphics and more building options. I had high hopes for 7 Days to Die, but from what I know, it'll never amount to anything unless the devs change the way they work and completely rewrite it. I've heard good things about Project Zomboid. Gotta try the demo sometime.

 

[Savagezion]

That's a good point. I haven't really jumped on the bandwagon myself other than Ark and it even needs some work. You would think that considering these games have relatively small budgets, that a large budget could double the quality in half of the time.

I do think one problem is that designing these kind of games is very tricky. None of them have really hit upon a polished formula and the genre is still in the process of being invented. Open-ended open world is a very vast design module which makes it hard to pin down necessities that need to be included. How safe should a player be allowed to be? How do you regulate low player areas and high level areas? The entire game is pretty much end game content from the moment you load it up.

This is certainly a genre that could benefit from a constant DLC model as much as people may not like to hear that. Although, at the same time bogging the game down with loot runs into the issue of pulling away from the survival angle. I think it would be good if these games had some sort of in-game goal that isn't focused strictly on hoarding. However, I don't really know what that could be. For example though, if the theme is zombie apocalypse ala Day Z, a nice addition may be to add NPC citizens that the player could escort to safety and there would be timed intervals where choppers would fly in and rescue these civilians and based on how many were saved, resource drops would dropped in. Perhaps Make it so that a zombie horde would flood the map in areas at random intervals.

I think it is a matter of evolution and currently the genre is in a very early stage of it. Thus, it is an indie supported genre. There is simply way too much left on the drawing board design wise.

 

[BoogieManFL]

It's not first person, but I have to add that I think Project Zomboid is the best of those kinds of games. It still being developed of course, but it's come a long way and massive sweeping improvements and additions have been made. It's grown a lot in the last year or two.

If you haven't checked it out you really should. It's in a state now where you can have fun and it's only going to get better.

 

[Rewdalf]

I fear such a future.
True, a large company can fuel a lot more money into this (admittedly starting-to-be-overdone) genre, but the prospective negatives far outweigh the supposed "quality" we would expect...

Namely, and RUST is already delving into this, pay-for-extra content...
We know all too well what major companies love to do...
Hell, H1Z1 had that whole "membership" thing going, didn't it?
Not to mention the mess that was Nether. Buggy. Low content. Shameless cash grab that didn't go anywhere... Only reason I have it stuck in my games list is because a friend bought it for me and a few others hoping for a good time.
It was awful.
That's why I stay the hell away from early access games with "premium" content...

Not to say I wouldn't take a triple-A survival game out for a test run, but the issue there is if you buy it and hate it, you're stuck with a $60 game as opposed to just wasting $10-$20 on an early access mess.

 

[WolfThomas]

I've gotten back in H1Z1 recently I have a group of four people including myself who I know in the flesh. We're in a PVP lobby wandering/scavenging/marauding. The danger of PVP spices it up. But we haven't had the group wiped completely so it's easy to quickly restock our gear if a single person dies.