As one of the first sandbox zombie survival games to come out for game consoles, State of Decay quickly became quite popular around the gaming community. As a regular YouTube surfer, I tend to watch gaming channels and popular YouTubers test and sample games. Though I watch a wide variety of videos, I find myself going back to the games within the free world/sandbox category. I especially enjoy the open world survival MMOs.
Among the PC gaming community, I found that these games were very popular with DayZ ranking an obvious choice as the most popular of the bunch. DayZ is a game modification originated off of the army simulation Arma2. Every time I would watch these games, I would feel the excitement of the players while they encountered other groups of survivors with gun-blazing shootouts. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “What makes that so exciting compared to other shooter games?” Well in DayZ, once you die, you lose everything. That’s right, EVERYTHING. Your character drops all the items you collected through out your journey and you end up having to create another character in a second life slot out of the four total you can have for 24 hours.
Where I am getting with this is that, with this game, you feel like you are surviving as a real human being. Collecting food and water and clothing to escape from dying from exposure. Fending off flesh eating monsters and raiders that hunt you for your findings. I have always wanted to play these games for the PC but unfortunately I haven’t had that opportunity yet.
Around the time of me getting into the zombie survival game mode, I saw advertisements for a new console game coming out that would fulfill my “craving”. The game’s title is State of Decay. It is a zombie survival that isn’t as freely played because of the story line, but that’s what helps get you “lost” when playing the game. Your choices determine each outcome. Who survives, how it all ends, all depends on your decisions and actions which makes it so diverse and suspenseful. Not only do you feel the emotion, but you feel like it’s you inside of the game. Helping with this experience is the day/night cycle and fatigue you go through.
Another feature of State of Decay is the dynamic progression. The game world continues acting whether or not the game is being played. If the game is not being played, friendly survivors within the home can still use and gather supplies, and possibly be injured. Some characters may take weapons and ammo from the supply cache and may level up their abilities. Cars the players’ survivors own can be repaired, and weapons can be repaired. NPCs can become injured or fatigued with the player absent. With there being so much more detail within the game play, I wont go into a complete review and I’ll wrap this up here.
This game has so much to do, so many different side missions to go with the main story line that it is so easy to lose track of time. Just like many open world games, including Skyrim and the Grand Theft Auto series, this game has so much more to it then you could even imagine. I played State of Decay all of the way through and spent hours upon hours working towards the ending because of the great amount of endogenous value added by the developers.
I’m glad you used this example. Last semester I became fascinated with these open world zombie survival games. I considered playing State of Decay, but ended up deciding to wait for an opportunity to play the stand alone version of Day Z when it comes out. Some of the critical reviews of State of Decay turned me off to it, but your blog post made me intrigued again.
Is the following a fair summary of your analysis? Day Z uses its mechanics to give survival and killing other players very high endogenous value–i.e., the game’s rule is that players’ inventories can be looted upon their death. As you put it, this makes the game feel very realistic–as if you were genuinely struggling to survive.
State of Decay is similar but uses a different strategy for hooking players and giving them this experience. The game doesn’t reward/punish players for survival/death in the same way. Instead, it uses dynamic progression to make it feel as though players are people struggling to survive in a difficult environment.
Is that right? Would it be oversimplifying too much to say that Day Z uses mechanics to establish high endogenous value whereas State of Decay reinforces it through more of a mix of story and mechanics?
By the way, keep up the good work in terms of tipping me off to games I should be playing. You’re two for two so far.