Former DAYZ developer called to give players full control in the surviva

Brian Hicks (Brian Hicks), former creative director of Dayz, co -author of the genre of the royal battle and the current creative director 775 Interactive, I am sure: in order for Survival-game to live for a long time, it should give gamers more control.

In a conversation with IGN journalist about a career Hicks I recalled work on BlackFrost: The Long Dark 2 Hinterland. He believes that players need to open access to all “levers and settings” that developing developers to change complexity and atmosphere.

In his opinion, in the surviva https://nongamstopcasinosites.co.uk/ where there is no competition, this approach is practically no risks. He gives an example 7 days to die, where almost every variable is available through XML files. Hicks He calls it “soft modding” – the ability to programmatically change the game without resorting to full -fledged modifications (“hard modding”).

Some games are already using this principle. For example, Crusader Kings 3 allows gamers to radically change the mechanics through editing text files. But many projects remain closed, preserving the vision of the developers, but limiting the freedom of players.

At the same time Hicks recognizes risks: the game may lose its identity. He calls Minecraft “a victim of his own success” – now it is more a platform than a game.

I think that, unfortunately, to some extent Minecraft became a victim of her own success. She took off to crazy scale, and now the expectations of players from what it is Minecraft, extremely fragmented. There is content Minecraft, which I do not know anything about at all, although I worked on the publishing side of one of the franchise games.

Brian Hicks

However, according to Hicks, Many developers are unlikely to be afraid of repeating the path Minecraft: loss of clear identity – a small price for worldwide recognition.