Bohemia Interactive recently shared a video outlining the Arma franchise's lineage, reviewing how this military simulation series became a testing ground for various multiplayer modes thanks to its open modding ecosystem. Games like DayZ, PUBG, and the new title War Dogs all trace their origins back to it.
DayZ originally began as a mod for Arma 2. It combined player-versus-player combat with environmental survival, making it difficult for players to easily determine whether strangers encountered on the road were trustworthy. After this gameplay gained attention, Bohemia Interactive, the developer of Arma, collaborated with mod creator Dean Hall to turn it into a standalone game.
This title subsequently influenced the development of survival games, with titles like Rust and ARK: Survival Evolved adopting their own open-world survival designs. The influence of Arma thus extended to another multiplayer gameplay style that later became widely popular.
Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene initially created a battle royale version based on the DayZ mod, forming a "mod of a mod." He later ported it to Arma 3 and named it PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale. Greene also worked on H1Z1: King of the Kill before joining Bluehole to develop PUBG; Epic Games then added battle royale gameplay to Fortnite in 2017.
War Dogs, a 100-player first-person shooter that has recently gained attention on Steam, also continues the design tradition of Arma 3 mods. Its origin is the Arma 3: King of the Hill mod; when developing their new title, War Dogs developer Bulkhead collaborated with the mod's creator, retaining the basic framework of three teams competing for control of a central area and purchasing equipment.
The large-scale role-playing community NoPixel for Grand Theft Auto V also started as a role-playing server for Arma 3. Similar gameplay includes Altis Life, where players can assume different roles based on the rules and maps provided by the military sandbox.
The ability of these works to evolve from mods is partly due to Bohemia Interactive's long-term strategy of operating Arma as an open platform. In addition to providing creators with a military sandbox, the company hosts annual mod-making competitions with cash prizes, offering a space for experimenting with new multiplayer gameplay.