From battle royale to burnout with former DayZ director Brian Hicks

(Image credit: Rocketwerkz)

Positive Influence

This article first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 359 in July 2021, as split of our 'Positive Influence' series, where every month we natter to a different developer almost the inspirations and unexpected connections behind their work.

There was no PUBG when Brian Hicks and Jordan Tayer conceived the Subsister GameZ, a finally-instrumentalist-standing tournament for DayZ. But in 2012, The Hunger Games was an world-wide movie phenomenon, and Tayer couldn't stop talking about its potential.

"He just kept pushing that betoken," Hicks recalls. "The more He talked nearly it, the more I realised he'd push to pass materialize, whether operating room not anyone had the ability to technically implement it. He put me in a position where if I didn't jump in, pick up how the hell Arma 2 worked, and name IT out, we were going to land flat on our boldness and everyone busy was going to see it."

At the time, Hicks was a companionship man at Microsoft Studios, project managing aside day and streaming DayZ by nighttime. But suddenly, he was working flat intent on build a 32-player event version of Chernarus. "I didn't undergo time to overthink things," he says. "I didn't have time to doubt myself. We had two or terzetto weeks to get our first epitome on the job, because that's the date Jordan FALSE all our promotional material."

The events snowballed in popularity, becoming a bimonthly spectator sport that attracted 263,000 TV audience. For a while, Hicks acted as tech developer, session admin, and talent horse wrangler, as well as spawning objects into the world as the factual dungeon schoolmaster. The stress didn't exactly endear him towards what he was creating.

"I hated the Survivor GameZ," Hicks says. "I despised the idea of what we today know as combat royale, I never competed in one of the events. There were so many times where I was like 'If this died tomorrow, I would be happy'. Only it was succeeding, and having my creative output succeed felt good." To this day, Hicks can't face playing PUBG operating theatre any of its battle royale peers. For him, they're associated with blackmail and burnout. Thankfully, though, the experience didn't contamination his love for survival games—and did draw the attention of Dean Student residence, who hired Hicks to work on standalone DayZ.

Czech Match

Practical in the Czech Republic offices of Bohemia Mutual proved to be the game development equivalent of method acting. For almost half a decennium, Hicks inhaled the Mnisek countryside and breathed it extinct again Eastern Samoa DayZ.

"It's tangible," He says. "For years unmatched of the loading dab screens was a foggy shot of trees with zombies off in the distance. That was a real-aliveness movie. We drove out north of Prague, near the Polish border, to these reddish, rocky spires. That field is in DayZ now."

To this day, Hicks hind end't face playing PUBG Oregon whatsoever of its battle-royale peers

Players will live the Tisy discipline base, which in reality is located three and a half kilometres leading the road from the Mnisek studio. "It's an abandoned Soviet open-to-air missile installation," Hicks says. "Early warning from when it was Czechoslovakia and nates the Iron Curtain. I've got gigabytes of footage."

DayZ's vehicles, meanwhile, came from photographs taken of old Skodas on Hicks' Canon 5D Mark II camera, about Lipová village – which itself is recreated almost one-to-one in Chernarus as Stary Sobor, the map's largest central townsfolk. "DayZ was definitely a project that pulled from reference Sir Thomas More than anything," Hicks says. "We almost never had any conception art at all."

The project was a learning veer for Bohemia Interactive, which found itself at the Centre of a new genre after days in simulation shooters like Arma. In that sense the studio, "sometimes begrudgingly", became a pupil of Hicks and Hall – the pair teaching their employer in the ways of the survival pun. Though both men have since moved connected, you can still realise their lessons in Bohemia's Vigor, a shelter-building shooter kick in post-state of war Norway.

Hicks resumed his role as teacher while at InXile, the RPG developer behindhand Wasteland, on a cancelled VR endurance brave. He found a fain pupil in Brian Fargo. "There was a lot of give and aim in that respect," Hicks says.

Today though, Hicks works at Hall's RocketWerkz, on the upcoming survival game Icarus. "It just matte right," he says. "Throughout my totally career, I've forever worked in sandboxes and virtual worlds. That's my thing. That's what keeps me up at night."