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Interesting, thanks for chiming in! This is all based on information I have gathered from comments during previous discussions like this, so it's not something I made up myself. Seems that the only thing that was directly "wrong" though was that I thought there were investors aswell.
Even Hicks have been carefully but obviously hinted that the DayZ developers do not want to release this year, but that it is the Bohemia management that is pushing them to release this year, no matter what state the game is in. More and more content is already being pushed back to a late date, but you will still release 1.0 this year.
Can you confirm whether or not most of the DayZ developers agree with releasing the game this year, with all the content that is missing? Again, the way current and previous DayZ developers responds to questions like this during interviews, they all seem super uncomfortable. Most devs are usually super happy and looking forward to releasing their game, this does not seem to be the case with most of the DayZ dev team.
I'm not asking to bash the game or dev team, I love the game and you guys. But all this does worry me as a player a bit.
Brian Hicks no longer works here, he's not actively involved in any part of the DayZ development, and he's not around the office now, so his thoughts are very much his own. And I don't think he's ever implying otherwise.
The same way Brian can't, I can't answer for any single person on the team, but the general feeling I see around the office is that of course a lot of people wish we could take longer, that we could add more things or have more time to polish the game.
But the thing is, having a clear release deadline on your ass (pardon my french) accounts for something. You know that the year is your deadline, and so you make sure to get the most out of a situation you have.
Realistically, I find it hard for anyone to be happy with the situation we have - from our QA, through department leads, to our CEO. But the thing is, if we keep pushing for more features and content now, we just keep on adding half-finished things into the mix. And you can always keep doing that, there's always 3 more months that you can add, because the feature and content backlog is massive for DayZ, and the ideas to expand it further are pretty much endless.
So while it definitely makes some people really feel uncomfortable (for one, I personally would freaking love to set the release further and have more things in it, also because the time to plan proper marketing support for our releases is generally very short), it's also understandable that having some closure is important before going further.
And for me personally, that's the selling point. I know that as long as we have a development team (which we have and will have), we'll keep on working even after the 1.0 release. We'll just have the benefit of working with a game that's a bit more stable, we'll already have the modding tools in the hands of the community, and we will enter the next phase with some positive energy gained from actually meeting some milestone.
This situation is not that much different from what happened with Arma 3, and look where the game got after leaving Early Access. Of course, the DayZ project has always had the issue where all of our cards were always on the table - all the painful things that normally happen behind closed doors in game dev happened publicly, in front of the entire community in a very organic, sometimes messy way.
But other than that, if we release now, or 5 months later, we'll always be in the same situation with development, just with a bit more features to chew on, and 5 more months of frustration in the community. Ultimately, it's almost not important where you draw the line, i think it's important to draw it while you still can.
That's how I feel about things. Insecure, but I accept them. I don't think I'm alone, but again, I can speak for myself :)
But the thing is, having a clear release deadline on your ass (pardon my french) accounts for something. You know that the year is your deadline, and so you make sure to get the most out of a situation you have.
f**k you (pardon my french) it's your own self imposed deadline. You don't get to make an arbitrary deadline and then throw your hands up and claim there is nothing you could do about it.
Yes, and the fact that it's a self imposed deadline is the whole point (the point you're not seeing). Like i said, drawing the line at some point IS important. Game development can keep on going forever if you don't draw the line. But you never have forever.