dayz

How they marketed directly to the DayZ community claiming that their game would be 10 times better then DayZ.

Dean was basically making nothing developing DayZ because he wasn't allowed to monetize it (because it was a Arma2 mod).

DayZ and Rust are both extremely interesting game designs that like of which had only been seen in MUDs before.

DayZ and Rust being the most popular but 100s of them are out now.

Do you think Minecraft and DayZ will last as long and become as successful as something like Tetris or Dance Dance Revolution?

In comparison, you can get thrown into interesting situations from the get-go in DayZ.

The next closest experiences similar to UO are Rust, and DayZ (heavily modded).

Or that you can give yourself any weapon and infinite ammo in DayZ.

Just to add to your point: I wonder how many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of the DayZ mod.

Whereas you make need several weeks to months to motivate an interesting experience in EvE, DayZ only requires a time investment of a couple hours (maybe).

DayZ seems to be one of those games like Eve that I love reading about, but sound kind of boring to play.

Just play a few hours of DayZ and you learn that there is no such thing as a stronghold if the enemy has the same guns you do.

Better yet - from another post here: > "How many copies of Arma 2 were sold explicitly because of DayZ?

Apparently, senior engineers from typesafe do hour-long presentations named "Effective SBT" at Scala Dayz conferences.

It's a totally different game but we can compare it to and Sims game, any other simulator or the more recent Dayz.