DayZ mastermind Dean "Rocket" Hall already pledged his intention of releasing the standalone version of his hit open-world zombie-em-up " before the end of the year ," but in an interview with VG247 , he revealed that his timeframe includes a potential November launch for the alpha.
"I think the most important thing is we deal with hacking, bugs, duping, new content, tidying up some of the features and expanding them a bit," he said. "I think if we can get that base -- by the end of November or December -- then that means January and February will be really happy, fun times."
Hammerpoint Interactive's The War Z, a similar game whose development has been influenced by DayZ's design, heads into alpha next week , followed by a closed beta on October 31.
Hall also felt hampered by DayZ's slowed development time, calling it a "challenge" and a detractor of "how ambitious we can be with the actual content," but he promised the release date stays unaffected. As for future updates, Hall preferred a three-tiered build rollout, starting with internal testing before inviting the public for QA and finalizing a stable patch.
"Code-wise, the updates will be quite well planned -- like Minecraft updates ended up being with update Fridays and all that," he said. "I think content will come out as it's done."
For more of Hall's thoughts on DayZ's future, check out VG247's interview .
