10(ish) games for the 2010s pt 8

#3 ARMA 2
	My best guess is that you’ve heard of most of the games on this list so far.  Maybe you haven’t played some of them, like me, but at least you’ve been aware of their existence.  So about now, you might be looking at the game above and going to google asking “what the hell is this game?” The answer? Not much.  At least originally.

	Released in 2009, ARMA 2 was an open world military game that as far as I’m aware, no one played ever.  Of course, being released in 2009 and being pretty irrelevant on its own, one might ask why the hell it’s on the list.  The answer comes 3 years after the games release with a mod called DayZ.

	DayZ was a mod created to simulate life in the post-zombie wasteland, where you had to survive in a hellscape populated by the undead and worse, PvP obsessed players.  I initially encountered this mod through a series of youtube videos by a group of Minecraft griefers I thought were entertaining.  They showed off their hacking and relentless ability to aggravate random servers of players, all of which was pretty entertaining to young(er) me.

	Moving past that, however, came something new and interesting: another mod built off the framework of DayZ: a battle royale.  This mod was the predecessor of a number of games built on this premise, with the creator building a game that would inspire a revolution: PUBG.

	The idea of a deathmatch, last man standing game is pretty damn old, but the concept was popularized around 2012-2013 by both DayZ and Minecraft Hunger Games servers.  This idea was refined and refined until we got where we are today: where PUBG swept the world before being eclipsed by a game some consider a blessing and others a scourge: Fortnite.  From Fortnite spawned an army of clones, copies, and alterations on its formula that have shaped gaming for the past several years.

	Would we have gotten to Fortnite without ARMA 2, without DayZ? I don’t know.  Probably not.  And maybe this entry lacks merit, maybe the next few years will show that these battle royale games were just a flash in the pan.  But looking back, I think the impacts of DayZ can’t be understated.  While the follow-up game built on the mod was lacking, and the numerous copycats got nowhere, the past decade has had so many derivatives based on the formula of a big map with random weapons and a need to survive against impossible odds.  While the zombie craze may have died down (heh), the need for freedom, the chance at glory, and the struggle against near-impossible odds will continue to drive gamers forward.