A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post on BlueSky:

I turned 40 recently. I feel like I’ve experienced 40 years’ worth of life. I’ve had the priviledge of living in a couple of different countries and travelling to many more. I’ve spent years nurturing relationships, and seen some crumble painfully. I’ve failed at many things, and achieved some others.

When I think about my younger selves—5 year old Giancarlo, 15 year old Giancarlo, 25 year old Giancarlo—I think about how strange it is to say that those are all one and the same person. I don’t know that I have much in common with those versions of me. I’ve certainly changed a lot over the years.

One thing that has never changed, though, is my love of video games. I am and always have been a gamer.

Somewhere in an old family album, my mother has a picture of me in front of our TV in our living room in La Guaira, Venezuela. An NES controller in my hands, “Super Mario Bros.” no doubt on the screen. I must be five or six years old in that picture. No matter where I’ve lived or what I’ve been going through, I’ve always played video games.

5 year old Giancarlo played Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt. 15 year old Giancarlo played Diablo II and Civilization III. 25 year old Giancarlo played Skyrim and Battlefield 3.

Now, at 40, I’m happy to say that I still play video games. I’ve been through a lot in the last few years, including working on open source investigations that have had a lasting impact on my mental health. Video games have helped me cope through problems my younger selves could not imagine that I would experience.

I want to tell you about a game that I’ve been enjoying recently. This game has grabbed me with such intensity that it’s taken me back to earlier years when I would spend time in class waiting for the bell to ring so that I could run home and play.

Sometimes, when I play this game, I’ve thought about what it is about it that speaks to me so deeply. I think that the reason why I love this game speaks to where I am in my life right now, and I want to share that with you.

Maybe you’re in a similar place in your life, and maybe there’s a game out there that would speak to you in this way, too.

Chernarus, and the World of DayZ

I started playing DayZ in December 2025. Since then, it’s become my #1 most-played game on Steam, where I’ve played hundreds of games over the span of two decades.

DayZ is deceptively simple to describe. It is a multiplayer zombie survival game. Your character starts the game with nothing but a t-shirt, shorts, shoes, a piece of fruit, a bandage, and a glowstick (these are useless—if you’ve played the game, you’ll agree).

You spawn without a map somewhere in Chernarus, a 225 km² landmass modelled after a region of Czechia. Chernarus is dotted with abandoned towns, farms, and military bases. Chernarus has been decimated by a zombie apocalypse. Civilization has collapsed, and the only inhabitants of Chernarus’ towns are infected who roam the streets for victims.

The only goal of the game is to survive.

To do this, you need to find drinkable water and food. Most towns will have a well, which takes care of the water. To find food, you need to either scavange abandoned buildings for canned goods, or hunt and cook wildlife. Along the way, you need to look through deserted towns for items like knives, can openers, antibiotics, and clothing to keep you warm.

The infected that stalk Chernarus are intimidating at first, but after learning their attack patterns they become manageable. Soon, you learn to ignore them—although if you let your guard down and let a couple swarm you, you’re still in trouble.

The game has a disease and weather mechanic as well. Drinking untreated water from the rivers that snake through Chernarus will make you sick. Your character will vomit, dehydrating you further. Ditto for eating raw food. Walking around in the rain will soak your clothes, making you liable to catch a cold. Surviving in Chernarus is difficult.

Here’s the kicker: If (or rather, when) you die, you lose all of your progress. Every item that your character has found, every scrap of food, every weapon disappears from your inventory, and you start again from zero.

The Deadliest Killer

Zombies, starvation, and disease are not Chernarus’ deadliest killers, though. It’s the other players in the game.

There’s no rule in the game that says that you must fight other players when you run into them. There are enough resources in Chernarus to fulfill every player’s needs. Indeed, teaming up with other players can make a lot of sense, since you could trade items with them and enjoy safety in numbers.

Still, most interactions with other players end in violence. I don’t know why this is. It’s just the culture of the game. It’s probably due to people’s fear of being killed by a stranger (you). If someone ran into me in the woods, why risk their lives by approaching me and asking me if I’m friendly?

This makes any encounter with another player an adrenaline rush. Do I wait for them to shoot first? Or should I? I only have two bullets, and my gun is damaged. What if they try to trick me by pretending to be friendly?

This is not to say that 100% of player interactions end up with someone getting killed. When I play, I make it a point to try to talk to players that I run into, especially when my character is newer and has fewer items on him. These interactions are always exciting and memorable because they’re underpinned by the fear that the stranger that I’ve just met is just waiting for the right moment to kill me.

Most servers hold a maximum of 60 players. Because Chernarus is so big, you may play for hours without running into anyone.

I’ve spent dozens of hours carefully moving through Chernarus, collecting rarer and rarer items, staying silent, averting danger, surviving. The visceral fear that I get when I hear distant gunshots or footsteps nearby is hard to describe.

In Peace, A State of Constant Tension

Most of the time, nothing is happening. But something bad could happen at any moment. This is the magic of the game.

This combination of factors (the map being so large making player counters rare, the undying spectre of violence, the endless search for food, etc. ) puts the player in a state of constant tension, even when all they’re doing is walking through the beautiful rolling hills of Chernarus.

And Chernarus is beautiful.

Because player encounters are so rare, I spend most of the time walking through Chernarus’ lush forests and along its gentle brooks, and taking in its beautiful sunsets. Occassionally, seemingly at random, the game’s musical score kicks in. The dreamy, droning compositions perfectly compliment the solemn emptiness of the landscape.

On any given evening, I might play DayZ for an hour or two. Most of that time I’ll spend walking through forests and valleys, listening to the sound of birds singing and of the wind blowing through the pines. It feels therapeutic. At the same time, I’m constantly on the lookout for signs of other players, wondering if the sound I just heard was a distant gunshot or if it’s just my imagination.

In other words, DayZ offers both time to reflect in peace, and also adrenaline rushes that I’ve rarely felt in other games.

This cognitive juxstaposition is enthralling. The game engages with me on these two opposite levels at the same time. It provides me with the visuals and the sounds to help me relax, and dangles danger above me at all times. It allows me the time and setting to contemplate my life as deeply as I want to, all the while engaging me in the minutae of survival in Chernarus. DayZ gives me the room to let my mind wander and the drive to hyper-focus all at the same time.

To 60 Year Old Giancarlo

I think that what appeals to me about DayZ is unique to my current self: in other words, I don’t think that my younger selves would have liked DayZ nearly as much as I do now (in fact, I’ve known about the game’s existence for at leats a decade, but only picked it up recently!)

I think my younger selves liked games that overwhelmed the senses, that provided a fantastic escape from everyday reality. That’s not what DayZ offers. DayZ offers me hours and hours of time to think about whatever might be happening that day in my life, interspersed with spikes of adrenaline and action. But for the most part, it’s the thinking and the nature that I enjoy.

I don’t know what 60 year old Giancarlo will be like, or if he’ll be at all. If he is, I hope he plays something that grabs him as tightly as DayZ grabbed his 40-year-old self.

The BlueSky post that got me to think about writing this was not a call for you—for us—to take on childlish hobbies. It was a call for us to not let the world take away the joy and wonder that captivated our younger selves.

This world can be dark. It will try to beat you down and keep you there. You’re lucky to have found joy in a simple pleasure. Keep fighting for it. Do it for your younger selves.

If you play DayZ on PC and want to survive in Chernarus together, send me an email: giancarlo.fiorella@proton.me