DayZ Social Media und Du - Ein Guide

DayZ Social Media and You: A Guide

This is a basic rundown of our interaction with you, our internal process for communication and some other odds and ends in no particular order.

"When it's ready."

The above is our boilerplate response to, "Where is .60," questions. It's gonna remain the same until such point as we say otherwise, which we will.

Fact is, our highly skilled, exceptionally dedicated development team are working through the very time-consuming task of bringing the very best, most functional version of .60 to you. Outside of providing details in our bi-weekly status report on exactly why it's not live yet and sharing other vital details, they simply don't have time to stop their work to drill down into the minutiae of their daily tasks to keep everyone abreast of everything, all the time, at every moment.

On that...

We are working on more avenues to communicate DayZ details to you.

And by we, I mean myself and Brian. Last year was a bit of a transitional period in a lot of ways, and communication slowed. You'll (hopefully) be quite happy to know that we endeavor to provide even more video content on a regular basis where the above mentioned devs, QA folk and more will take time out of those busy schedules to put together informational content for you to consume.

In this, you'll get to know our team better, understand more clearly the process of our development and what it entails, and get a clearer picture of everything and everyone that is bringing DayZ to you. All of this content will be shared here on this account, as is all official DayZ content and news.

Which brings us to our next point...

No other outlet, forum or person/s are sources of current or new information regarding DayZ but the DayZ Development Twitter account.

None. That means, when you start writing, "I read somewhere that *insert information for unreleased information regarding dates/items/features* was coming on *insert time*," you can save yourself the keystrokes. Unless we said it here, or in a press release sent to an actual reputable outlet, it's guaranteed not to be a thing.

Everyone that works at BI with a hand in DayZ still defers new info to this account, even Brian. If we have an official announcement, you're going to find it here and on DayZ.com first, particularly if it's big news.

This circles back to, "When it's ready." Asking each week if that's the week .60 will drop, is always going to be met with the same answer, because the day we're quite certain (see: 100%) that it's going live, we'll have already posted it across every platform we use. This goes for any other prospective major feature/timeline news. There will literally never be a time someone writes, "So is it coming before next Friday?" that we'll respond with, "Oh! Fffff, totally forgot to share this info! Yes, yes it is. Pardon the oversight."

We want to get the newest content out to you as much as you want it. Trust us, our team gets very excited every time we reach an internal milestone, kill a miserable bug, up FPS in cities even more, etc. But until something is exactly (or as near that as possible) where we want it to be for public consumption, it stays put, and we the fan-facing internet communication-types, aren't going to be share anything new outside of the Status Reports. Which, by the way, are full of clear, concise, easy to delve into information.

Speaking of our excited development team and information...

Nobody is communicating with you in code.

Our developers have Twitter accounts, and working at BI is a part of their life. Twitter is a fantastic place to talk about things in that life! Often, said team will mention their excitement at something that has happened in the dev process as it relates to their particular expertise. Sometimes, they just post a rather ambiguous thing because that happens on social media. Sometimes, they'll even answer basic questions about DayZ. Not often, but it happens.

That said, there are no secret messages or meanings behind comments made by anyone associated with DayZ or BI.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen a completely harmless Tweet get dissected *COUGHredditCOUGH* by fans eager for new info. I even saw a discussion about a winky-face emoticon at the end of a response, and whether or not that winky-face meant the content of this response was actually the opposite of what was written.

This is not a thing. This will never, ever be a thing.

As it relates to DayZ, anything we share we share directly, without need for a deciphering key, or any version of cryptanalysis. I hate the term, but handle your "hype" responsibly. If a BI employee talks about being excited about something on their particular social media platform, that doesn't mean we're ten minutes away from the latest build, nor does it mean DayZ is getting submarines. It very likely means they have pushed the game that much further toward a particular goal, even if something as simple as fixing an obnoxious bug. Being that any major news will be coming from @dayzdevteam alone, simply take these Tweets as a small window into the lives of people working hard on a game they are deeply invested in.

Also, be nice to them. And speaking of being kind denizens of the internet...

Cursing at/harassing us is a fantastic way to get a vacation from our Twitter account!

We get it. Waiting for something you want can get frustrating. Nonspecific information isn't always a lot of fun. Working on early access games of this magnitude is time-consuming, and the process can be painstaking when taking steps forward (though we very much are moving forward). That said, dropping f-bombs isn't cool, and while we're happy to discuss frustrations, we're under no obligation to take abuse.

We're happy to talk to you folks about the things we *can* talk about, and even happier to go out of our way to provide more in-depth discussion when we're spoken to like humans. Essentially, pleasant interaction goes a long way in opening channels of communication. The opposite closes them, though generally temporarily.

tl;dr - .60 is coming when it's coming, you'll know when it's here because we'll have said so, new social content regarding DayZ is being worked on and it's gonna be cool, this account is the official account for all DayZ news (accept no substitutes), there are no secret codes buried in innocuous posts from anyone working on DayZ, and don't be rude, we'll be more willing to chat you up if you aren't.

^DH