a mountain out of a molehill in retrospect on that, considering what was to come. But, yeah, that was the darkest time, indeed.”


RISING DEAD If 2011 was the worst of times for The Indie Stone team, 2021 was definitely the best. December saw the release of Build 41, which had been a huge undertaking for the team and it’s co-development partners, bringing in new animations, a character overhaul, reworked multiplayer, new combat system, a new city and much else besides. Simpson said it had been years in production, with much of the spent years polishing features and updates that were a big deal to the Zomboid community. If not a sequel in many respects, it was at least a remastering. The studio even broke the habit of lifetime by issuing a release for the update and hitting it. “We’re not the most reliable at giving dates,” says


Simpson, who like many developers deploys the age-old ‘ready when it’s ready’ mantra where possible. “That basically eliminates all crunch and it’s a fun, fantastic way to work. Our community generally has gotten used to it. It does cause a few frustrations, but I think they get better quality updates. All in all the policy has a really good impact on what we do. But this was the one instance where we said we’ve got to give some kind of ETA because we’re yanking peoples’ chains if we don’t.” The update didn’t disappoint. From a concurrent


userbase of around 7,000, the number rose to a record of 65,000. Things seem to have settled down to around 15,000 (not far off 2021’s game du jour Valheim), but which is three or four times the average player count Zomboid had for most of last year.


THERE AND BACK AGAIN It’s fair to say that Project Zomboid has lived and died and lived again largely thanks to its community. Over the years the studio has endured a difficult relationship, but it’s one that’s delivered in terms of word-of-mouth in the early days, to the importance of mods and influencer content today. “Will (Porter - Indie Stone’s resident


writer) has a term, that it was forged in the fires of Mount Doom,” smiles Simpson. “We went through such a dark time early on with all of the various misfortunes and bollocks-ups that it both brought us a lot closer to the community and gave us a massive crash course in how to be very good


May 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 21


“It’s fair to say that Project Zomboid has lived and died and lived again largely thanks to its community.”


at dealing with the community. It’s very obvious to us what the right way to do things is, and that’s come from the early days. We’ve got the most lovely community and it’s, you know, a nice symbiotic relationship.” “We’ve gotten comments from people saying that our


community is one of the least toxic ones they’ve been a part of, which is saying something,” adds Siu-Chong. “In the beginning, we didn’t know anything about how to deal with things. I guess one of the biggest things we’ve learned is that people like to know, because if people don’t know, they think the worst, right? People really appreciate transparency. I think people also appreciate that there’s not like a PR spokesperson, like in between you and the dev team, so like when you talk to us on Twitter or something, you’re actually talking to one of us, not someone we hired just to manage Twitter.” It’s a way of working that has its disadvantages, says


Simpson, who admits he’s messed up countless times in communicating to fans. The team can sometimes come across as short or


defensive, but that’s outweighed by fostering a personal connection with the community that has been a huge benefit to the game.


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