Kidnapping and Stockholm Syndrome: Just another day in DayZ


DayZ, a dark and realistic zombie mod for Arma II, has been garnering a lot of attention of late. Taking place in a 255km square world, you start on a beach with a bandage and nothing else and are left to fend for yourself in a world filled with brutal zombie and even more brutal players.

The game takes realism to a whole new level, you have to monitor your hunger and thirst levels or face dehydration or exhaustion, if you have a wound you better bandage that up else you die and that’s it for that character. Lost some blood before you could get to a bandage? You better hope you find another player willing to do a blood transfusion or you’re screwed.

This is the kind of game that generates some incredible stories because the content and world is largely created and controlled by the players. Fast forward to Australian writer Adam Rush’s traumatic ordeal of terrorism. A group of players equipped with guns surrounded him and kidnapped him, forcing him to be their hostage and slave. It’s fascinating to read his tweets as it happened:

Adam wrote about his experiences here, as he became to identify with the group and in the end was left hoping he could rejoin those who had taken him hostage. It’s crazy stuff like this that makes DayZ such a great game to play and it’s well worth checking out.

Source: Kotaku