'ARMA' developers wanted to make a game 'like Minecraft'

Bohemia Interactive have interest in developing smaller titles in the vein of Minecraft.

Both Bohemia Interactive CEO Marek Spanel and a number of ARMA programmers wanted to work on the development of smaller titles in the vein of Minecraft, according to DayZ creator Dean Hall speaking today with Polygon.

"Marek, the CEO, and the programmers, they didn't want to work on big projects. Even like Command Carrier is quite a big project and ARMA 3 is a very big project. They wanted to work on something like Minecraft. So I think they kind of had that idea for a while. And then Minecraft came along and proved it could be critically and commercially successful. And then DayZ came along and I guess it was just a really good synergy: I wanted to do that kind of thing and they wanted to do that kind of development."

According to Hall, Minecraft influenced the development of the ARMA 2 zombie mod "a lot," adding that the team takes "a lot of inspiration" from its development strategy, calling Notch "kind of visionary."

"Bohemia is really excited about [DayZ] and I am too because we're almost taking more than an inspiration from Minecraft and I almost feel kind of bad at times. We look at what Notch did in terms of how he even communicates with the media and say 'Okay, he had some good ideas.' I guess we're hoping we'll come up with some of our own! But certainly it's provided a really good model."

In response to whether Bohemia plans to continue working on smaller titles in the wake of DayZ's success, Hall stated:

"We hope so. I guess there's a commercial reality to it. This kind of development model leans itself to generating new ideas and it helps gestate that new idea, and that new idea becomes really big, and maybe becomes its own franchise. Maybe that will happen with DayZ or future ARMA projects."

He added the former mod is likely to go to consoles if it proves successful enough as a stand-alone product, calling it a "natural evolution."

DayZ is set to become a stand-alone title as developed by Bohemia Interactive, it was announced last week.