DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse?
I m waiting behind a big green house in the grass, watching the city below me from my little hill. It s my second time in DayZ, the first consisting mostly of finding and eating sardines with my guide, Andy. I m waiting for him to find me when I see a silhouette coming up through the grass toward me, a big M4 rifle pointed at my head.
I yell, Wait, wait, don t do that! and turn and run round the other side of the house. When I turn to look back at him he s stood waving. It s Andy, but as a woman, in different clothes and wielding a weapon I hadn’t ever seen before. He thinks I m an idiot.
I’m so new to this that I feel a lot like the hopeless little kid from The Road and Andy is a bit like my dad, leading me through the world and trying to keep me alive. But not in a weird way, that’s just an analogy. I have no idea what I’m doing, though, or what my course of action is for bashing into other survivors.
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