Big publishers weren’t the only companies excited about the newest sequels at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. A few indie developers were also eager to improve on their breakout hits, some of which just came out only last year.

We’ve already covered the new indie games that impressed us at E3, so here’s a short list of the sequels (and updates) that we’re looking forward to.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Dennaton Games had a surprise hit on its hands when Hotline Miami debuted last October on PCs. You play as a vigilante who received mysterious phone calls from someone who ordered you to murder gangs and criminals. Players reveled in the pixelated mess of booze, guns, ’80s-inspired tunes, and blood — a lot of blood. The developer wants to deliver more of everything in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. According to Dennis Wedin, one half of Dennaton Games, the main theme for the sequel is expectations.

“Since it’s a sequel — and people will have a lot of expectations from the first game — it’s not about how ‘I’m gonna make this game that is too much like Hotline Miami, or too little like Hotline Miami,’” he said. “We wanted to incorporate that [theme of expectations] into the story.”

The tense kill-or-be-killed gameplay carries over to Hotline Miami 2. Where it differs is in the number of characters: You’ll play as multiple factions, each with different reasons for killing. The demo showed one of those factions, which Wedin calls “the fans,” people who are so obsessed with the events of the first game that they’ve started killing bad guys on their own (complete with animal masks, just like what the main character wears in Hotline Miami). It was with one of these fans that I got to play around with the new chain whip, a short-range melee weapon that gives you a little distance to work with.

Hotline Miami 2 has an extra twist. In the opening scene and tutorial level, you play as the pig butcher, who was last seen in Hotline Miami’s first teaser trailer. It turns out that the trailer was for a movie … which is actually a slasher film in Hotline Miami 2 based on the events of the first game. You’ll switch back and forth from the movie set and the factions as you progress.

Hotline Miami 2 releases later this year on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Payday 2

Payday 2 doesn’t mess around with its core formula: You still attempt to pull off bank robberies with, ideally, three other people (you can also play by yourself). Instead, developer Overkill Software chose to add more depth to the gameplay by putting in features you’d normally see in a role-playing game. Your job choices now depend on your level, and you choose them via an interactive map. You can customize masks and weapons. And at the end of every mission, you receive a bonus item or piece of equipment based on factors like how the job’s difficulty.

During my E3 demo, I was dumb enough to walk into a bank while carrying my gun, which triggered the alarm (as well as shattering any hope of a stealth approach). The officers in the building died from our gunshots within seconds, but reinforcements quickly arrived outside. While a teammate set up a machine that drilled into the vault, the rest of us had to defend the bank until we could grab the money and run. It was hectic: Cops came through the roof or the open windows, the machine broke down and someone had to keep fixing it, and I was running around trying not to get shot. We barely finished the mission.

Payday 2 comes out in August for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

DayZ

The new DayZ (nicknamed “DayZ Standalone”) isn’t so much a sequel as it is a proper relaunch for the multiplayer-only zombie-survival mod that came out last year. You will no longer need a copy of military simulator Arma II to play it — this DayZ, as the nickname implies, stands on its own. With that comes vastly improved graphics and a lot of tweaks, like a more concise and friendly user interface, smarter zombies, and an item-crafting system.

The original DayZ rose to popularity not because of its zombies but because of the other people you’d face: Do you shoot first and ask questions later? Or do you try to talk to them and maybe work together to search for supplies? Compounding this moral dilemma is the mod’s permanent death system — when you die, you lose all of your items, forcing you to start all over again. These situations led to crazy stories (and videos documenting those stories) that helped spread word of the mod through forums and blogs.

The latest build of the new DayZ at E3 — the developers were working on it up until the first morning of the show — wasn’t connected to its online servers, but I had no reason to doubt its chances of creating new player-driven narratives. What struck me the most, however, was the gameplay elements not related to the shooting or scavenging. You can now change your outfit with any clothes you find in abandoned homes, and some of these will have hidden benefits that could boost your stats. And some of the books you find are more than just decoration: You can read the entirety of such public domain novels like War of the Worlds and Robinson Crusoe.

Bohemia Interactive haven’t pinpointed a release date just yet, but players can purchase the game on PC when it releases the alpha build to the public. Like Minecraft before it, the price will rise as the game improves and closes in on its launch window.

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You’re walking down a dark and dusty hallway. Lightning flashes, illuminating your surroundings for a few brief seconds before your vision fades.

And then you hear a lowly groan coming from down the hall. From the outline, the figure looks familiar. It’s your Aunt Sally, but there’s something strange about her. Her decaying, rotting flesh and urge to feed should clue you in.

Zombies. Undead. “Walkers.”

Those shambling little suckers have almost become an archetype within popular culture. Their appearances from Call of Duty to The Walking Dead have made them the antagonist of choice in many games and media. But why is this? Zombies Ate My Neighbors (for Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis) was my first encounter with these undead.  There was something intriguing about it. The box art scared the shit out of me. Even the title gave me bad juju. For years, I couldn’t bear to play the game. This was my first taste of survival horror.

I was, like, 5-years-old when I saw this. Give me a break.

You play alone (or with a friend) in areas populated with never-ending waves of the undead — and you’re armed with a Super Soaker. Not only that, but caricatures of Jason from Friday the 13th and other miscellaneous ghoulies of the night made appearances in the game and terrified me for years.

That is, until Capcom released Resident Evil in 1996. I’m sure most of us are familiar with this title. The B-level dialogue, tank controls, photorealistic backdrops, and jump-scares — oh God, the jump-scares.

For the first time, I was legitimately afraid to turn on my PlayStation. I got overwhelmed and had to turn off the console and hide the box. I had to detox my brain. I endured sleepless nights, thinking about Umbrella and its plot to take over the world one shuffling zombie at a time. Resident Evil coined the phrase “survival horror.”

HA! Saw that comi — OH MY GOD

But as I became older (and desensitized), zombies stopped being a threat to my psyche. The “-of the dead” movies started to become cliché. Zombies instead became the bottom-barrel movie monster. Is it our way of dealing with mob mentality that makes us so obsessed with the undead? Are we fascinated by the general nature of an apocalyptic society? Do we just want a reason to shoot our boss in the face with a sawed-off shotgun?

Comic-turned-TV-show The Walking Dead tries to emulate the drama of a post-apocalyptic world by using trust and survival as a platform for conflict — the zombies take the wings rather than center stage.

Dead Island tries to re-create this drama with its melancholic soundtrack and “reality” of infection. Left 4 Dead examines teamwork and how we manage blowing through whole city populations’ worth of undead. DayZ presents the imminent threat of death and teaches you not to trust anyone.

In a world where everyone you know has turned into hungry, shambling avatars of themselves, we realize the importance of our relationships with others. Nowadays, we are more interested in our own human nature than the zombies themselves. Are you the type to barricade yourself? Are you willing to explore the infected-populated areas? Does the thought of a zombie apocalypse make your trigger finger itchy with excitement?

Maybe it’s not the zombies we’re obsessed with; it’s what we do as humans that intrigue us.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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After angering gamers in December for making false claims on its Steam page, The War Z returns to Valve’s digital-distribution service.

The open-world zombie-survival game costs $15, although Steam users can spend more to buy it along with extra in-game credits. Developer Hammerpoint Interactive created the online game, which pits players against one another and hordes of computer-controlled undead monsters.

If that sounds familiar that’s because The War Z is nearly identical to the DayZ mod for Arma II, which has a rabid fan following. Some of the resentment against The War Z is traceable back to fans of DayZ who believe Hammerpoint ripped off the mod.

Hammerpoint originally released The War Z on December 18. Valve pulled the game the next day, and its vice president of marketing made the following statement:

From time to time a mistake can be made, and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of The War Z for sale via Steam. We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here: 
https://support.steampowered.com/newticket.php

Again, we apologize any inconvenience.

When The War Z first hit Steam, Hammerpoint claimed the title featured a skill-tree system, private servers, friends list, and maps between 100 square km and 400 square km. In reality, those features didn’t exist or the developer exaggerated them.

Hammerpoint is updating the title for gamers who already purchased it in December. It’s Steam page says nothing about skill trees or  private servers.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar are free.

This morning, the Greek government released game developers Buchta and Pezlar on bail of 5,000 euros each. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras called Czech Prime Minister Petr Nečas to inform him that the two could return to their home country, according to Novinky.cz.

In October, the pair were arrested for allegedly photographing a Greek military installation on the island of Limnos. The government held Buchta and Pezlar on suspicion of spying for more than five months.

Both men work for Bohemia Interactive, which produces the Arma series of military first-person shooter games. Many believed the developers were in Greece to research locations for Arma III, but the studio denied the validity of that assumption.

That denial allowed Czech President Václav Klaus to petition Greece to release the men.

This isn’t the end of the proceedings. The two will still have to go to court, but Greek judges are currently on strike.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Development on the standalone version of zombie survival title DayZ chugs along despite the imprisonment of two contributing designers.

In September, the Greek government detained Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar, designers with Arm II developer Bohemia Interactive, on accusations of espionage. The two men remain in prison and might not face trial for months.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t still making games.

A group of developers are working on releasing a standalone version of the Arma II mod DayZ. Prior to their arrest, Buchta and Pezlar were helping develop the zombie mod-turned-game, and according to DayZ lead designer Dean Hall, Buchta still is:

The lead architect of the revised (and original) Chernarus map, Ivan Buchta, is still imprisoned in Greece on charges of espionage – and [that] is a great loss to the team. Luckily, through letters, Ivan is able to provide some input and insight into the development of the map. Regardless, the continued imprisonment of him and Martin Pezlar has a significant impact on our ability to redevelop Chernarus.

It’s nice that Buchta can still help even while held in a foreign country on suspicions of spying.

Greek authorities contend that Buchta and Pezlar were photographing and filming one of the nation’s military facilities. Bohemia Interactive, which makes military games, refutes the suggestion that the pair was performing research for its next game and claims Buchta and Pezlar were simply on vacation.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The DayZ standalone release missed its end-of-2012 release date, but this is a zombie game — so it won’t stop.

DayZ lead designer Dean “Rocket” Hall, who originally developed it as a mod for first-person shooter Arma II, updated his blog with new info about the status of the standalone release and why it is late.

“Put simply, DayZ standalone isn’t here because we had the chance to go from making a game that was the mod improved slightly, packaged simply, and sold — to actually redeveloping the engine and making the game the way we all dreamed it could be,” Hall wrote. “The plan from here is straightforward. We will be releasing a closed test imminently, during which approximately 500 [to] 1,000 people will assist in  ensuring our architecture is correctly functioning.”

The test is only to test the online infrastructure. Hall will use the information it gathers from the test to help determine a new release date.

Hall then listed some of the major changes his small studio implemented in this new version of the popular DayZ. His team completely removed the existing (and confusing) inventory system and built a new one.

“You scavenge for items now, as individual parts, picking up pieces rather than piles, looking for cans on shelves or under beds,” wrote Hall. “The new system opens the door for durability of items, disease tracking, batteries, add-on components, and much more.”

The blog gave an example of a player shooting another player with night-vision goggles in the head, damaging the head-mounted device.

Other changes include improvements to the user interface, the art, and the world map.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ files for bankruptcy, gaming video giant Machinima lays off 10 percent of its staff, and we crown The Walking Dead as our 2012 Game of the Year.

You’ll also find reviews for Black Knight Sword, Mass Effect 3: Omega, and Middle Manager of Justice.

News:
The DeanBeat: The Newtown shooting will turn up the heat on video game violence — but will it make us think?
DayZ lead designer considered leaving the project
This week in the Nintendo Download: Mario, Wario, and Alex Trebek
Turn your friends into Pokémon in the next Mystery Dungeon game on 3DS
Writer McComb isn’t worried about the lack of the Planescape license for the new Torment game
Valve gives Plantronics the rights to officially brand headsets with Aperture Laboratories and Mann Co. logos
Visualizing a tough year for the retail core game industry
Rabbit pulls reimagined video chat out of its hat
THQ’s bankruptcy filing reveals new games
THQ files for bankruptcy, assets sold to investor Clearlake for $60M
Valve pulls The War Z from Steam over fan backlash, offers refunds
Nintendo’s TVii available tomorrow, but it won’t be fully functional
MeritShare finds a way to gamify employee recognition (exclusive)
Green Throttle Games launches developer program as part of play to take over living room gaming
Assassin’s Creed III glitches and issues addressed in massive patch (full details)
Dartmouth professor names Zynga’s Mark Pincus one of the worst CEOs of 2012
Get ready for great games on a thin laptop as AMD preps new mobile graphics chips
Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion coming to Star Wars: The Old Republic
Nvidia’s next Tegra 4 processor may come with 72 graphics cores
Minecraft documentary free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers this weekend
Online gaming firm Aeria Games merges with Japan’s Gamepot
The spirit of BattleBots lives on in a new robot-building game
Arktos Entertainment acquires majority stake in game studio Hammerpoint Interactive (exclusive)
Why Google predicts Microsoft’s next game console will beat Sony’s
Developer id Software releases Rage add-on next week
Game videos giant Machinima lays off 10 percent of staff
NRA blames video games for mass murders

Mobile News:
Kabam scores big with highest-grossing game on App Store for 2012
Apple freezes the App Store in advance of the holiday app-downloading bonanza
Jordan Mechner’s Karateka remake returns to Apple (iOS) devices today
Mochi Media says 86 percent of Flash game developers are expanding into mobile (exclusive)
MindSnacks’ new iPad games help you learn languages, pass the SAT
After 6M paid downloads, mobile hit Pocket God wraps up with its final, apocalyptic update
Kamcord is helping users record 7 mobile-game videos every second
With more than 20M downloads, Battle Bears mobile game hits San Francisco’s billboards
Plain Vanilla releases its multiplayer video game quiz for iOS
MediaBrix’s responsive design ensures in-game ads will always look right (exclusive)
SGN launches its MasterKey tool for making cross-platform social and mobile games
Gamevil surpasses 200M game downloads on smartphones
Exclusive: Go Ninja developer brings Shaquille O’Neal back to video games

Best of 2012:
GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year: The Walking Dead
The best indie games of 2012
The best games of 2012 (GamesBeat staff picks)
The game industry’s 2012 holiday cards

Interviews:
Heroes of Newerth 3.0 adds bots, hopes to teach new players (interview)
Crytek’s chief: Nothing will beat Crysis 3′s graphics for at least two years (interview)

Previews:
Hawken’s open beta shows a thoughtfully designed mech combat game (preview)
Insomaniac’s Fuse lets you lead a team of four badass agents (preview)
Toki Tori 2′s simple mechanics reward your curiosity (hands-on preview)
Zen Pinball 2 on Nintendo’s eShop gives you a choice of dozens of pinball tables (preview)
The 3DS library gets a little weirder with these quirky eShop games (preview)

Reviews:
Marvel Heroes needs more humanity, more warmth, and more MMO
Black Knight Sword’s punishing difficulty requires more luck than skill to overcome (review)
Middle Manager of Justice is all business, no gameplay (review)
Mass Effect 3: Omega is explosive, nostalgic, and somewhat pointless (review)

Pieces of Flair: 
What sales managers can learn from the four types of online gamers
Solving a Wii mystery: The fate of the awesome toy WeeWaa
Exploring why some players are unable to initiate Halo 4′s single-player campaign
A history of bodies: Video game violence and the player
Love your free players to unlock the full potential of free-to-play games
What are your holiday gaming traditions?
Justin Bieber, Minecraft’s Creeper, and other cameos in modern games (gallery)

If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The War Z’s launch was a mess. It’s a catastrophe for the developer that damaged the game’s prospects for when it returns.

But this story involves another game, and its lead designer spoke out quickly about the combined effects of trying to finish his game while The War Z saga raged around him.

“I’ve been pretty depressed about the whole situation,” said DayZ designer Dean Hall in a post on Reddit. “From a personal standpoint, this whole ‘saga’ of the development made me seriously question if I wanted to be involved in the industry and I gave serious thought to cutting my losses and not being involved in the project.”

For those who don’t know, DayZ is a mod for the first-person shooter Arma II. It is an open-world survival game with zombies, just like The War Z. Many DayZ fans believe Hammerpoint saw the success of Hall’s mod and decided to do the exact same thing on their own. In its defense, Hammerpoint claims it started development on The War Z long before DayZ first came out.

So The War Z already had a bit of a reputation, one that is potentially unfounded, before it imploded on Steam this week.

On Tuesday, Hammerpoint released The War Z on Steam, and it immediately shot to the top of the sales charts. By Wednesday, with angry gamers shouting about the studio making inaccurate claims on the title’s Steam page, Valve had removed it from the store. Hammerpoint destroyed any goodwill fans had for The War Z.

So you’d think Dean Hall would be feeling pretty good. Yesterday, he did tweeted this:

“The slow man with integrity will ultimately catch the swift one who has none.”

— Dean Hall (@rocket2guns) December 20, 2012

But Hall is too busy dealing with the pressures of fan expectations to revel in the failings of competitors.

“I’ve been getting hammered by a massive amount of requests for information about DayZ’s release and interviews for my reaction to [The War Z]  - but for my own sanity, I retreated and have kept to myself,” wrote Hall. “Right now I’m just at home doing bits and pieces on the DayZ development. The rest of the DayZ team is doing the same.”

The designer noted that when he received his recent discharge from the New Zealand Army, the medical exam revealed that he now has high blood pressure.

“Some things in life just aren’t worth worrying about,” he wrote.

Hall usually updates the DayZ Tumblr blog about once a month with news. He told the fan community he would post one about the standalone games progress a few days ago, but that hasn’t happened.

“I realize that I went back on my word about releasing an update, but [I] went back into my shell for a bit last week, and I’ll come out when the dust is all settled.”

Unfortunately, The War Z riled up quite a lot of dust.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s a game about survival featuring wide-open terrains, zombies, and dozens of other real players. No, it’s not the hugely popular DayZ mod for Arma II. It’s a startling similar game called The War Z — and gamers aren’t happy with it.

Developer Hammerpoint Interactive released The War Z on Steam yesterday for $14.99. It quickly shot to the top of the digital retailer’s best-seller chart, where it remained for most of today. But almost immediately, a loud and angry contingency of gamers started drowning out its success with cries of false advertising and more.

And now Valve has removed The War Z from its Steam store.

Valve spokesperson Doug Lombardi provided GamesBeat with the following statement:

From time to time a mistake can be made, and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of The War Z for sale via Steam. We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here: 
https://support.steampowered.com/newticket.php

Again, we apologize any inconvenience.

So, what is the deal with The War Z?

The majority of gamers that are upset with The War Z mostly take issue with a series of claims that Hammerpoint made on its Steam page about features that are no where to be found in the actual release.

The Steam page is landing where potential customers can get info about a title before they decide to spend money on it. The info on The War Z’s profile was misleading until the studio made some changes, although one of the misleading claims remained even after the update.

What were the false claims? Well, previously The War Z’s “About the Game” section on the Steam Store claimed the title features multiple maps between 100 square km and 400 square km, servers with up to 100 simultaneous players, rentable private servers, a friends list, and a skill-tree system.

Currently, The War Z only has the Colorado map which is reportedly only barely 100 square km. Hammerpoint capped all of the game’s servers at 50 players until earlier today.

The capability to rent servers, improve skills, and maintain a friends list are also all inaccessible. The War Z has placeholder buttons for these features, but they don’t exist in the game.

The lack of features is one problem and charging for an unfinished game — that the developer releases as version 1.0 — is another. But charging players for an unfinished game that is lacking features that your feature list promises are in the game is deceptive.

Hammerpoint has since updated the “About the Game” section to reflect that these features are coming in the future, although it still claimed that the live game featured 100-player servers when none were available.

Enter Sergey Titov

“I’m not sure why this is even an issue,” The War Z executive producer Sergey Titov told Gamespy in an interview. “[The] text clearly states ‘up to 100 players.’ And 50 players — [which] we have right now — is what our players [and] our community feels is comfortable level for them to play.”

Titov doesn’t believe that Hammerpoint made false claims.

“I think there’s a difference between false claims and perception of the text,” he said.

Early this morning, Titov posted this explanation to The War Z forums:

As you all know we launched the game on Steam yesterday. Okay – we’re number-one top grossing game on Steam right now – thank you guys for your support.

At the same time it was clear that there were a number of customers that felt that information about the game was presented in a way that could have allowed for multiple interpretations.

We’ve taken steps to correct this and format information presented on our Steam Store page in a way so it provides more clear information about game features that are present in the Foundation Release and what to expect in the coming weeks.

We also want to extend our apologies to all players who misread infromation about game features.

At the end of the day our goal is to serve our players as best as we can, and we love when you guys steer us into the right way of doing it !

Thank you for playing The War Z!

So, it’s not their fault for presenting information that isn’t true. Instead, it’s the gamer’s fault for lacking the ability to correctly decipher the intent of the wording.

Gamers are not happy

Things turned pretty ugly, which is likely one of the biggest reasons Valve pulled the game. Angry customers filled forums like NeoGAF and community sites like Reddit with damning critiques of the zombie title. Many of these complaints focus on the false information, but a number of gamers are also livid at the Hammerpoint’s business model.

Despite costing $15 upfront, The War Z is brimming with in-game purchases. It’s a game about survival and scavenging for items, but you can spend real-world currency on ammo, food, and melee weapons. Players can then equip a purchased weapon to a character, and if that character dies, the item remains on that dead character until it respawns.

Right now, Hammerpoint has the respawn timer set to four hours. That means gamers have to wait for four hours before they can reuse the character with the purchased items … unless they pay up. A real-world-money payment will revive the character immediately.

This cool-down timer doesn’t benefit the gameplay in any way; it is an arbitrary mechanic the developer uses to squeeze some extra money from gamers. Of course, no one has to pay anything, but it’s a bummer to buy a game only to be met with a bunch of features that don’t work and a plethora of exploitative microtransactions.

Still, the anger at this game is greater than the sum of those issues, and it all stems from the belief many gamers hold: that The War Z is a shameless ripoff of DayZ. They both feature similar gameplay concepts and mechanics, and it’s easy to confuse the names, so gamers were already suspicious. Unfortunately for Hammerpoint, the developer only made it worse with these early issues.

Before the game disappeared from Steam, many angry players took to the Internet to make their displeasure heard.

They specifically targeted Titov. Many ganged up on his entry in the The War Z wiki, where they call him a liar and other four-letter words. An angry fan compiled conspiracy theories and a timeline of events in a YouTube video with over 170,000 views. Another gamer created the War Z Scam tumblr in which he collects every piece of damning evidence — verified or not — against The War Z and its developer.

Valve submits

Since gamers were purchasing The War Z through Steam, many took to the game’s forum on the digital-download service to complain, demand refunds, and warn others about its deceptive claims. But many posters complained about unfair bans.

The moderators of The War Z’s forum are deleting the posts, so it’s difficult to confirm exactly what these folk are saying and whether a ban is truly warranted, but Steam community administrator Al Farnsworth wrote that Valve is investigating the actions of the moderators and the developers in regard to the bans on the forum.

It seems they were doing more than that. By removing The War Z, Valve validates the furor over this game. Steam will refund players who believe they were deceived and work with Hammerpoint before allowing the game to reappear on the store.

At this point, Hammerpoint had a day on top of Steam and is left with a public-relations disaster. It will be interesting to see how the studio attempts to bring the game back to market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Sir, you are being hunted. Well, not really, but you could be in the new procedurally generated survival-stealth game from Big Robot Games called … Sir, You Are Being Hunted.

The developer is Kickstarting its new “tweedpunk” sci-fi game. In Sir, You Are Being Hunted, robots hunt humans for sport across the British countryside. Big Robot created The British Countryside Generator, which designs unique terrain for each player. Sir, You Are Being Hunted runs on the Unity Engine and will release on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted is a first-person game. It has a lot of combat and shooting, but it’s primarily about survival. The game uses a visibility meter and a foilage-based stealth mechanic, which allows players to easily hide in the thick English woods.

To survive, players evade the hunting robots, loot abandoned buildings, and collect pieces of a machine that could help the protagonist escape.

Fans of the recent DayZ mod for Arma II or the Ukranian-developed Stalker games should have a good grasp of what Sir, You Are Being Hunted is attempting. Big Robot distinguishes its game with a pinch of dark British humor — promising a disembodied, sinister butler; strange lore; pipe-smoking, mustache-wearing robotic citizens; and pubs.

Big Robot has worked on the game for the past six months and is now asking for help through Kickstarter. It’s looking for 40,000 quid, which is around $64,000. Backers have already pledged over $20,000.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s the community, stupid.

Game publishers may wonder what it takes to get loyal users. Well, the trick is obvious, according to gamer social network Raptr: You have to create a great game. Then you build a community around that game that generates goodwill among gamers. And that translates into better user engagement, revenues, and profits.

Most companies are using their analytics and data about gamers’ preferences to milk them for all they’re worth. They want to target gamers with services and goods that the players will pay for. But that’s a shortsighted approach, and the games-as-a-service business model isn’t as complete as the community-as-a-service approach, says Dennis Fong, the chief executive of Raptr.

“Games-as-a-service has a lot of rhetoric, but it’s mostly about monetizing the user,” he said. “In our view, it’s a missed opportunity. It’s really a chance to build a long-term relationship with the user.”

And Fong has some data to back up his beliefs in a new Raptr Report, which is mined by Raptr’s community of nearly 15 million gamers. The data show that it really does pay to establish trusted relationships with players through community services (which appear to cost money), such as livestreaming, eSports events, loyalty programs, or free modification tools.

Most companies don’t see the light here. They realize that giving to the community generates goodwill, but they worry about the cost and the impact on monetization.

“If you take a player-first approach, it’s good for business,” said Fong. “Companies need to do more, and we have the data to show why.”

Case study: Portal 2′s map creator

A good example of putting the community first is Valve’s recent behavior. In April 2011, Valve launched its big hit, Portal 2. The game was popular, but it had low replayability. In May 2012, Valve released its free map-creation tool that let players create their own maps and share them. Players created an astounding 35,000 levels, which were downloaded 1.3 million times during the first week after the launch of the mod tools.

Portal 2 saw an 806 percent increase in daily active users (the number of users who play a game in a day) the day after the tools were out. A month later, there were still 40 percent more people playing the game daily compared to before. Valve saw a 2,218 percent increase in new users. After release of the tools, they accounted for 18 percent of all daily active players. A month later, Portal 2 still had 28 percent more new users than before. Portal 2 also saw a 1,113 percent increase in bringing back lapsed players the day after the release; about 46 percent of all daily active users were returning lapsed players. A month later, there were still 15 percent more returning players than before.

The average daily playtime per user grew 36 percent from 1.4 hours to 1.9 hours per day. A week after release, people were still playing 29 percent longer per day than before. A month later, playtime was 17 percent higher. Valve’s goal was simply to extend the life of the game for existing players, said Fong. But the actual impact was clearly far greater.

Case study: DayZ user-generated mod breathes life into Arma II

A second example is from the military shooter game Arma II, which Bohemia Interactive released in May 2009. The game wasn’t particularly successful, with flat sales after its launch. Then one of the designers at Bohemia decided to create a zombie-themed mod of Arma II as a proof of concept for a game he wanted to create. Within a month after the release of the DayZ mod, sales for Arma II spiked 400 percent to 300,000 units. Within four months, more than 1 million gamers had played DayZ.

A week after DayZ’s release, Arma II daily active users were up 36 percent. But the game gained momentum over time. A month after release, daily active users were up 847 percent. The Dayz mod brought in a 1,343 percent increase in new players in a month. These players accounted for 15 percent of all daily active users in the first month. Returning users were up 20 percent in the first week and 101 percent in the first month. Players also spent 36 percent more time in the game, from 2.2 hours per day to 3 hours per day. The week after launch, players played 23 percent more than before.

“It was like they created a whole new game,” said Fong.

Case study: Riot Games gets players engaged even when they aren’t playing

League of Legends took off in October 2009 as Riot Games published the free-to-play fantasy multiplayer online battle arena game. The title grew steadily to tens of millions of players. On average, League of Legends grows its user base by 7.6 percent each month.

But by turning the game into an eSport, or a spectator sport that was broadcast online, Riot Games was able to bring a consistent boost to the audience. The MLG eSports finals and the Dreamhack competitive event boosted player activity from 3 percent to 10 percent in daily active users. Overall, playtime was up 3 percent to 8 percent following the events. New player rates jumped 10 percent, and returning players were up 12 percent. The League of Legends Season One finals drew 241,000 peak concurrent online viewers, who watched more than 3.6 million hours of video.

“No one really knows if a holding a tournament is good for a game,” said Fong. “We dug into it and found it was true.”

The stats go on and on

Of course, you would expect Raptr, a social network for gamers, to say that social work pays off. Fong said that when Blacklight: Retributions developers engaged the Raptr community in a long question-and-answer session, the number of daily active players increased by 10 percent and playtime increased 19 percent. Players asked 1,600 questions and viewed 60,000 pages during the session.

Fong says it’s critical to know who the loyal players are, where they come from, and what their habits and behaviors are in the game. OGPlanet launched a loyalty program with Raptr Rewards (where brands give rewards to players who play a game a lot). The program helped increase daily playtime per Raptr user by 97 percent. The game saw a 400 percent increase in new players and a 180 percent increase in returning players on the first day of the program.

The conclusion should be clear: Don’t just milk your users. Give them what they want, and they will pay you back many times over.

“Lots of companies treat community as an afterthought or a charity,” said Fong. “It’s a huge missed opportunity.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I hope you’re not tired of killing zombies just yet. With Resident Evil 6, Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, fans of the flesh-eating corpses have plenty of games to play this year. But developer Hammerpoint Interactive is hoping you still have room for one more with The War Z. It’s not just another zombie game: It’s an entire toolset for players to play the game the way they want to play.

“From our perspective, it’s not just a game — it’s more like [a set of tools] for players to help create their own emergent gameplay,” said Sergey Titov, the executive producer of The War Z, in an interview with GamesBeat. “For example, just two hours before our meeting, we went all guns blazing into the city … it was more like a Left 4 Dead experience than anything else. In other plays, we’ve actually taken a really cautious exploration route, [and] it was a completely different gameplay style. We think not in terms of what gameplay will look like, but more like what stages of gameplay will be [right] for you.”

Set for release this fall sometime after the beta launches in October, The War Z is a massively multiplayer online game (without a subscription fee) in which you fight against both zombies and other survivors in huge, open-world maps. It’s already a proven formula thanks to the success of DayZ, the zombie-survival mod for military simulator ArmA II that took the PC world by storm earlier this year.

However, the name and premise for both games might be too similar. Since The War Z announcement in July, some people accused Hammerpoint of simply riding on DayZ’s success, no matter what the developer said otherwise. It’s hard not to see why: With its challenging gameplay and thrilling accounts of personal experiences, over 1 million  players lived and died on the zombie-infested nation of Chernarus. DayZ creator Dean “Rocket” Hall recently revealed that a stand-alone version of the mod will be out in a few months’ time

Here’s a look at 14 of the most dramatic departures from DayZ:

You can re-create Farmville

It sounds absurd, but it’s true: Since private servers (available for a small monthly fee) enable you to tweak a large number of options in the game, one creative tester decided to use a small map of a farm to plant hundreds of vegetables. He looked for water, planted the crops, harvested them, and tried to barter and sell them for equipment.

The reason he did this? He wanted his wife, a big Farmville player, to play with him. “He was like, ‘I basically built this farm in War Z for her to play. So she switched,’” said Titov. “We hope that, from our standpoint, it will be cool if players … work on rebuilding society in this zombie apocalypse. So whatever happens there, and [how] crazy this society becomes, we’ll see.”

Timed day-and-night cycle

DayZ multiplayer servers adjusts its day and night cycles in real time, so depending on its time zone, you might end up playing in the dark if you load up the mod at 7 p.m. in California; the other option is to look for international servers to see if it’s still daylight. For The War Z’s current testing period, from sunrise to sunset, the process takes four hours — for the final release, Hammerpoint wants to keep it between four to six hours.

Multiple characters

With five character slots, The War Z encourages you to experiment with different playstyles, builds, and appearances (six to eight different character skins are available at launch). If you don’t like the way a particular character is progressing, you can delete them from that slot. The DayZ mod limits you to one character at a time.

Skill trees

As you kill zombies and look for loot while running across Colorado (the first map for The War Z), you earn experience points. You can spend these points to unlock additional character skins or increase various attributes in your individual skill trees. In DayZ, characters do not level up; the only way to get “stronger” is to find better weapons and supplies.

“It’s not like superpowers with plus-10 damage, plus-100 health or something,” said Titov. “It’s more like physical training, so you can run for longer periods of time … [other skills] make you reload faster [or] carry more weight.”

Normal and Hardcore modes

Part of the appeal of DayZ is when you die, you permanently lose all the equipment you found; if you want to play again, you’ll have to start over with almost nothing in your backpack. In The War Z, the stakes are higher in what Hammerpoint is calling Hardcore mode: Not only do you lose your items when you die, but anything you learned from your skill tree, any experience points collected, and your position on the leaderboard (separate for each mode) disappear. But if you do choose to play this way, you’ll have access to Hardcore-only servers, where you’re more likely to find rare items than when playing on the regular servers.

Normal mode is for players not willing to risk everything they’ve earned each time they play. Instead of erasing your progress when you die, it locks your character from the game for a set amount of time, ranging somewhere between 24 hours to 48 hours. So you can either wait until that time is up, or just use one of your other characters.

Customizable weapon attachments

Some, such as flashlights and silencers, come pre-equipped with guns in the DayZ mod, but it’s not possible to remove and add them as you see fit. This is doable in The War Z, where a number of attachments can be found in the world; but Titov warned that, next to guns and ammo, these parts are “super rare.”

You can construct buildings and barricades

Titov told another quirky story to come out of The War Z’s testers: One guy built a gladiatorial arena on a private server, forcing players to fight to the death. Though you won’t be able to build such large structures on public servers, you can still fortify existing buildings with over a dozen different objects, such as a wooden barricade.

You can find these as is, so you don’t need to look for supplies or tools to make them. You can also dismantle them if you have to.

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Update: Bohemia has confirmed that Greek authorities have accused the two men of espionage, alleging that they possessed materials that could put the country’s national security at risk. According to Greek law, a case like this could take up to 18 months to go to court.

Last week, a pair of developers working for Bohemia Interactive, the Czech Republic-based studio behind the Arma series of military shooters, were arrested in Greece under suspicion of espionage. According to Greek authorities, the two men (who have now been identified as Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar) were photographing and videotaping military facilities, which some news outlets took to mean that they were researching for Arma III, which takes place on a similar Greek island. However,the studio adamantly denied this, saying that Buchta and Pezlar were simply on vacation.

Today, Bohemia released an official statement further defending its employees and reiterating that they were not acting under orders to collect information for the new game. Saying that the “insinuations are completely false and without substance,” the statement claims that Buchta’s and Pezlar’s trip to the Greek island of Lemnos was actually because the pair had grown interested in it after working on its video game counterpart. Further distancing itself from this theory, Bohemia says the in-game island is ”far from an identical replication of the real place,” and that it “does not attempt to display any real world military installations situated on the island of Lemnos.”

The statement continues to say that Buchta and Pezlar took all of their photos in public spaces, with only one video showing a brief glimpse of the island’s military complex. Bohemia argues that what their employees did is no different from what countless other tourists have done, and suggests that these tourists also had no idea that they had “put themselves or their families at risk” by doing nothing more suspicious than taking pictures of an airport.

Referring to their arrest as a “completely absurd misunderstanding,” Buchta and Pezlar have also passed on a message assuring their friends and families they are being treated “fairly and correctly.”

Dean “Rocket” Hall, the creator of the popular DayZ mod for ArmA II, has also offered suggestions for how you can help on his Tumblr.

You can read the complete statement from Bohemia below, and we will continue to update GamesBeat as more information about this situation becomes available.

Since last Sunday, when two Bohemia Interactive, a.s. employees, were arrested on the Greek island of Lemnos, much speculation about what happened has circulated online. It’s been rumoured that they entered restricted military areas or gathered photographic references of military bases in order to improve the visual fidelity of ArmA III, a PC game currently under development by our company. Far in advance of any formal charges – only hours after they were detained by the local police – many media outlets immediately suggested spying and, only one day later, specifically referenced ArmA III.

Having travelled there, and after meeting personally with them both, as well as their lawyer who is fully acquainted with the Greek authority’s investigation file in detail, we can assure you that these insinuations are completely false and without substance. These employees – our friends, Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar – visited the island as tourists. Their holiday was a product of their interest in the island, triggered by their work on Arma 3 over the past two years of development.

They took photographs and videos in public areas, as countless tourists arriving to enjoy the beauty and hospitality of Greece may well do. These included a short video as they drove through the main road passing around the international airport, where in one short part of the video off in the distance some hangars and other buildings of the complex can be seen. It’s very likely that many tourists may have pictures similar to those taken by Ivan and Martin in their own family albums, without being aware that they put themselves or their families at risk.

We sincerely hope that the whole situation is no more than an unfortunate and deep misunderstanding. The in-game Limnos is close to completion, and it’s far from an identical replication of the real place. It was heavily modified to fit the game’s backstory, a purely fictional 2035 setting. It was rescaled to only 75% of the real island, and it does not attempt to display any real world military installations situated on the island of Lemnos.

To summarize the situation:

• They visited Lemnos on their holiday as tourists.
• They did not enter any military area.
• They did not take any pictures of any military objects to be used in Arma 3.

Martin and Ivan, currently being detained in Mytilene, relayed this message to their friends and family:

“The conditions are tough, but the people we meet treat us fairly and correctly. It is all a completely absurd misunderstanding that will certainly be quickly explained. We mainly think of you, our families; you have to stay calm and not to worry about us. We hope we will meet soon.”

We apologize for any possible delay or lack of communication regarding this important matter. At present, all and every possible effort goes towards supporting Ivan and Martin, their families, and to getting the guys safely back home. Any form of support for our imprisoned colleagues and friends will be more than welcome.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’re in Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo this week, definitely try to stop by the Eliza Anderson Amphitheater for an epic panel for all those zombie lovers out there. Details are below:

What: Fresh Corpses: Not Your Average Zombie Games
When: Friday, August 31 at 4 p.m. PDT
Where: Eliza Anderson Amphitheater in the Grand Hyatt, located at 721 Pine Street right next to the Seattle convention center.
Who:

• Dean Hall, DayZ
• Chet Faliszek, Left 4 Dead
• Robert Bowling, Human Element
• Tony Learner, Plants vs. Zombies

Official description:

Moderated by Sebastian Haley (GamesBeat’s culture editor), the panel explores the current proliferation of zombies in video games and culture and the approach by different gamemakers in this genre. Joined by panelists Robert Bowling (Call of Duty, Human Element), Dean Hall (DayZ), Chet Faliszek (Left 4 Dead), and Tony Leamer (Plants vs. Zombies), the discussion looks at the most illustrious properties in the zombie realm and why audiences are obsessed with these animated cadavers.

The panel is open to PAX badge holders, but anyone can participate by tweeting questions in advance to @downwardviral. The panelists these queries during the Q&A session and throughout the session.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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DayZ is a horror-themed mod for developer’s Bohemia Interactive’s PC military simulation ARMA 2. The undead-apocalypse inspired experience drops players into an open world teeming with zombies and other individuals competing over limited resources. And that really should be enough tension for anyone.

Some players, however, can’t get enough of a good thing, even if the thing in question is pants-wetting anxiety. A few intrepid hackers, modders, and all-out trolls have taken to the DayZ servers to make their virtual neighbors’ lives more horrifying than they already are.

Ghostman

One mysterious figure has decided to devote his free time to tormenting DayZ player Z0mbiemaster. He does this by entering Z0mbiemaster’s game and stalking him, similar to the creepy Internet meme Slender Man.

One would think that this targeted “haunting” would ruin its subject’s experience in the game, but Z0mbiemaster doesn’t seem to mind. He’s more frightened of the guy in the ghillie suit slowly pursuing him than he is of the zombies actively trying to eat his brains, but he’s obviously having a lot of fun with it.

“Ghostman,” as his victim has come to call him, has struck several times. Skip to the 4:33:00 mark in this video to see a well-executed (and hilariously literal) jump scare.

The scary demon voice

OK, not all of the people on this list make DayZ better for everyone else. Take YouTube user TheBeachedHippo, for example, who attempts to strike fear into the hearts of his fellow players by watching them from afar and yelling at them in what he describes as a “demon voice.”

While Ghostman’s antics add to the game, Hippo is basically just a guy shouting from a rooftop and antagonizing everyone he sees. He’s trying really hard, though.

More creepy noises (only better)

I showed you that last video, so I could show you this video.

YouTube user BestBudGaming takes the same approach as TheBeachedHippo but understands that you can’t just yell at people and hope to scare them. Horror is about keeping people off balance, and BestBudGaming accomplishes that with science. Or, more specifically, “How we do this is through a program that allows us to play sounds as if it [sic] were played directly through our microphones,” the description on the below video says.

The effect selection includes a few creepy voices and the sound of a helicopter, the last of which sends many players ducking for cover or frantically scanning the skies (in DayZ, the arrival of a helicopter usually means that a bunch of guys are about to show up and re-enact that scene from every Vietnam movie ever made). Apparently, some players can’t handle that kind of stress.

The Axe Man

The Axe Man is responsible for some of the creepiest game footage I’ve seen in a while. He operates similarly to Ghostman in that he isolates and torments individual players, but while Ghostman takes the more subtle approach, Axe Man appears as a grotesque, indestructible killing machine.

Did I mention that he can teleport? Or that he stalks his victims while playing creepy audio of a young girl singing? Yeah, that information is kind of important.

Well, maybe that guy isn’t having such a good time. But look what happens to these two people when the Axe Man finds them. Hilarity, that’s what.

Alright, maybe they aren’t quite enjoying themselves, either. But at least they can laugh about it.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Not even the massively multiplayer online (MMO) space is safe from the shambling corpses of the undead: The War Z is an upcoming “survival horror” MMO developed by Hammerpoint Interactive, an independent Los Angeles-based studio formed just last year. Arktos Entertainment Group, a privately held investment firm, clearly believes in the developer’s vision as it has previously invested $4 million into the studio.

Set to release this fall on Windows PCs, The War Z tasks you with the immense challenge of fighting against both zombies and other survivors in huge, open-world maps (ranging between 200 to 400 square kilometers), including large, infested cities. The developers stress the inclusion of “strong role-playing-game elements” with an experience-point system that can be used to purchase new skills for your character.

Safe settlements are scattered across the post-apocalyptic world, and they provide opportunities for you to purchase supplies or sell your own. The developers also tout “unique social elements” in the game, like placing bounties on and sending help requests to other players, who of course may or may not help you, depending on their own agendas.

“The whole team is obsessed with zombie culture as well as with post-apocalyptic games like Fallout,” said Eric Nordin, the senior game designer for The War Z, in the press release. “At the end of the day, we want to ship a game that we want to play ourselves, and we’re hoping that other gamers will recognize our passion and be excited about playing as well.”

It sounds a lot like the popular zombie survival mod, DayZ, for Bohemia Interactive’s ARMA II, right down to The War Z’s Hardcore mode where death is permanent (in DayZ, this is the only option). DayZ, however, is just a side project still in alpha being managed by a one-man team, with constant updates being made almost every week. The War Z, also currently in alpha, has a full-fledged development studio behind it.

Hammerpoint bucks the usual trend of the MMO-subscription model for The War Z by only requiring a single purchase, and it promises free content updates upon release, as well as dedicated public and private servers. For those looking to get in on the action early, a closed beta is in the works.

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