Survivor GameZ

The **Survivor GameZ** (abbreviated **SGZ**) was a community-created 'last-man-standing' (now coined 'battle royale') deathmatch tournament for *DayZ*. The competition split 32 players into 16 separate duo teams with a last-player or last-team-standing objective completed by eliminating all other opponents.

The tournament originated in 2012 in the beginnings of *Arma 2'*s *DayZ Mod* and was created by now-former Creative Director for *DayZ* Brian Hicks, former Community Manager for Twitch.tv Jordan Tayer, and a group of coders for the tools Hicks required to begin the tournament.

The Survivor GameZ can be considered to be one of the earliest broadcasted battle royale genre tournaments. The gamemode used in Survivor GameZ succeeded the premise of 2012's *Minecraft* mod Survival Games, and preceded the work of Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene on Battle Royale (a mod for *Arma 2'*s *DayZ Mod*) and his later genre-defining title *PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds*. Greene has reportedly cited Survivor GameZ as part inspiration for the Battle Royale mod, alongside the plot of the 2000 Japanese film of the same name - an inspiration Hicks also reportedly took for Survivor GameZ.

The tournament was originally suspended mid-2013 for *DayZ* Standalone development, but temporarily restarted for Survivor GameZ V and VI in 2015 on the game.

On July 9, 2019 Bohemia Interactive announced sign-ups for the first Alpha test of the Survivor GameZ as an official *DayZ* game mode, after purchasing the rights from Hicks. It was publicly released as a game mode for all players but was ultimately discontinued as a mode as of October 2019.

## Structure

### Qualifiers

A Qualifier event preceded the Invitational event for its respective Survivor GameZ tournament. Qualifiers were a last-man-standing event. 30 players fight 'solo' until all other opponents are eliminated. The winner of the Qualifier moved onto the Invitational main event with a chosen partner.

As of Survivor GameZ VI, the requirements for eligibility to Qualifiers were;

1. 18 years of age or older,
2. Able to stream with sufficient stream quality (minimum 5mbps upload),
3. Some DayZ experience.

### Invitationals

An Invitational event succeeded the Qualifier event for its respective Survivor GameZ tournament. The winner of the Qualifier moved onto the Invitational main event with a chosen partner, and joins 15 other duo teams. These teams usually comprised of large content creators and streamers. The Invitational events were three-phase deathmatch games, moving players to different areas of Chernarus.

As of Survivor GameZ VI, the requirements for eligibility to Invitationals were;

1. 18 years of age or older,
2. Able to stream with sufficient stream quality (minimum 5mbps upload),
3. DayZ content (frequent and/or recent content is considered) or other survival game content, especially in terms of last-man standing style arena games,
4. Following on *Twitch* or *YouTube* graded on a curve regarding level of interest/traffic. i.e. if 1k concurrents is the average, then 200 viewers becomes lower priority,
5. *Twitch* content is more important than YouTube content because not only is our event on Twitch, the viewership carryover statistics from *YouTube* to *Twitch* is somewhat poor,
6. Engagement with the streaming community, and to a lesser extent, the engagement on all social media,
7. Alumni status holds SOME value but can still be overridden based on reach of other contestants/supply overall,
8. Track record for violations of cheating/hacking/harassment (likely means ineligibility),
9. General conduct. Violating the *Twitch* ToS/RoC or engagement in public harassive or defamatory conduct towards *Survivor GameZ* staff, casters, or other participants, can result in refusal for admittance into the event.

## Events

Hunger GameZ

Survivor GameZ I

Survivor GameZ II

Survivor GameZ III

Survivor GameZ IV

Survivor GameZ V

Survivor GameZ VI

Survivor GameZ VII

## References

1. ↑ https://www.playbattlegrounds.com/news/24.pu
2. ↑ https://www.pcgamesn.com/dayz/the-survivor-gamez-the-dayz-esport-is-returning