A 'little educational game for middle-schoolers' left DayZ's creators obsessed, inspired, and embroiled in a contentious presidential campaign: 'It's 4.5 years later, and I'm still talking about this story'

During the pandemic, while most of us were stuck inside, the RocketWerkz dev team, including former DayZ creative director Brian Hicks and head honcho Dean Hall, were roaming around in Eco—an early access sandbox that Hicks describes as a "little educational game for middle-schoolers".

Hicks was there at the birth of the modern survival genre, becoming smitten with DayZ when it was still an Arma 2 mod, before eventually leaving his job at Microsoft to work on the standalone game. He teamed up with Hall again for Icarus...