Senior Vice President of Product Management & Operations, Pc Connection
Search every verified Brian Hicks interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Brian Hicks, known for his work as creative director on *DayZ* and executive producer on *Icarus* at Rocketwerks, has discussed the challenges and design philosophy of survival games. In a September 2020 PAX Online panel with Dean Hall, Hicks stated that a major trap for survival games is scaling, and emphasized the importance of clearly defining a game's pillars and experience. He noted that *Icarus* aimed to give "real treatment to those core survival mechanics" and that the team had been "tracking really well" by sticking to milestones and testing assumptions. Hicks also reflected on *DayZ*'s development, saying that "it wasn't just about throwing money at the problem" but about getting experienced people, and that he considered being able to say "Thanks, I hate it" to identify mistakes as his most important role on a project. In earlier appearances, Hicks discussed technical and community aspects of game development. At a 2019 Elm conference, he gave a talk on designing good APIs for user interfaces, recommending a "with-star" pattern for view code. In a 2018 interview, he expressed regret over starting *DayZ*'s status reports, calling them stressful and demoralizing for contributors. He also stated that he would not remove third-person gameplay from *DayZ*, as it was "not our right to remove it," and suggested that starting every player with a radio and battery would improve player interaction. At E3 2015, Hicks announced plans for a single-player *DayZ* option and the public release of server-hosting tools upon the game's beta.
“I think the big one is it's really being really clear about what your product is and I think that's super important with survival games, what is the pillars of the game, the experience, the feeling that you're trying to get through.”
“Looking back at what happened with DayZ, it wasn't just about throwing money at the problem, a lot of it was about getting the best people, people who had experience.”
“We've been able to work really closely with Epic who have been fantastic; they actually have direct access to our source and are telling us hey you should use this like that and just being able to have that level of engagement and support from an engine developer is just incredible.”
“I think that being able to have that genuine relationship with the community you also need to sort of temper that with well you know other community going to understand and be able to appreciate what I'm telling them. I'm going to be pragmatic and honest.”
“When you left DayZ, you commented that you felt the game was fundamentally flawed. I think a big part of growing as a developer is being able to be a critic of yourself to avoid repeating past mistakes.”
“The big trap for survival games is scaling; it's very easy to get the first few steps out of the way but eventually the game starts scaling and both from a scale in terms of the inflation effects of your economy itself and the game.”
“I think the brilliance of PUBG was recognizing these feelings that you know people will be like what are you doing DayZ for? It really took away a lot of those questions because you can just very easily explain to someone what happens.”
“We've stuck to our milestones, challenging and testing those assumptions and staying true to the pillars of the game. It's been tracking really well.”
“I think that if you're making a survival PvP game, you really better make it better. PvE hasn't been looked at the same; that's what we wanted to do with Icarus, to give real treatment to those core survival mechanics.”
“Being able to step in and say 'Thanks, I hate it' is maybe my only role in the project, the most important one, to be able to say we did this wrong.”
“There was a 1991 study that found if you put a stop sign somewhere and people don't think it's necessary they'll run it, and it causes an average of I think it was $291,000 a year in terms of wear and tear on cars, damages, enforcement costs, pollution and noise abatement. That's a staggering amount of money for someth...”
“Right now I'm 35 but if you ask me about two weeks from I'll be 36 — oh well happy birthday for two weeks from now — I'm actually okay with just staying 35 over 35 and then I feel like that's pretty much 40 you know and I don't I'm not ready for that.”
“Exactly the same thing I've been doing for the last ten years which is to say I am developing video games in the same role I was over at Daisy — just with a different company on a different project that I can't quite speak about yet.”
“I started streaming because some friends of mine... invited me to start playing with them — I was having a blast and eventually started streaming with them; I would do a full eight hour day then come home and stream 8 to 12 hours every day.”
“Honestly I think I almost regret starting them — status reports caused a lot of stress for me. Every time a status report came out I was there reading the reaction instantly; the reactions were demoralizing for contributors and it was always like pulling teeth to get data.”
For the 2020 PAX Online Panel "Survival of the Fittest", Dean Hall & Brian Hicks sit down to discuss the origins, present landscape ...
Working with HTML in Elm is a joy: creating little reusable functions like 'button' is so fun! But what happens when options invade? Icons? Sizes? Loading states? In this talk, we introduce options for dealing with the inevitable complexity in your style guide and get back to the joy of creation. Brian's talk at Elm in the Spring, a one-day Elm conference at the Newberry Library in Chicago on April 26, 2019.
Part 1 of 3 of my interview with the legend himself, Brian Hicks. Don't forget to leave a comment in the comments section!
This is the habitat restore in Raleigh north Carolina. This is the flagship 75k square foot store in Wake County. There are five total ...
DayZ Standalone's producer Brian Hicks - PC Gamer Show 2015.
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