DayZ mods birthed the battle royale trend and they could pave the way for its successor

With DayZ leaving Early Access and launching on Xbox One this year, Bohemia Interactive is emerging from several years of almost radio silence to talk about the updated experience. Lead producer Eugen Harton spoke to us about the company’s commitment to mods, calling DayZ a platform for players to build upon. With the game’s already strong legacy of mods that led to the genesis of the battle royale genre, hopes are high that the newly overhauled version with have a similar impact on the industry.

“I’m very happy with the feedback so far,” Harton says. “I feel like we’re doing something right and that’s very comforting after four years of almost radio silence.

“We want DayZ to be heavily moddable. We want people to create games from our platform. That’s been very important to us. I don’t think it’s something that PUBG aims for or Fortnite aims for. Maybe they’ll do it down the road, but it’s something that has been very strong for us. We have the know-how from Arma and DayZ. Maybe we’ll see something that will be the new battle royale, created by the community.

“We’ll see new ideas, new things happen and that’s what we’re excited about. We want to empower those people. Even now for the DayZ release with the new engine, our lead map designer is originally a modder. So not only does it recruit people for us, it gives us new ideas to work on. We can put those people in place and give them the resources to make their dreams become reality.”

You can read the full interview with Eugen Harton in the new issue of MCV, which you can read online here.