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Undead Labs' Jeff Strain is totally into zombies
We've already told you about Blizzard/NCsoft vet Jeff Strain's startup, Undead Labs, which is creating a zombie-centric, console-based MMO (sorry, marketing dept., we're not going to call it an MMOZ), but we haven't told you much about the game itself. Though this Eurogamer interview still provides next to no perspective on that topic, it does offer a considerable amount of insight into how much Strain thinks about zombies. Take this gem for instance: "People are passionate about zombies ... the reason I'm talking about it is because I want zombie fans. I want the best developers in the industry that love zombies to want to work here." Or perhaps this: "The reason zombies are so powerful and transcend fantasy is because right now they are the modern, societal guilt-free meat-puppet. We've been through the Nazi phase, we've been through the communist phase, we've been through the terrorist phase. Those were all at various times in history fair game in the gaming culture. Right now zombies are fulfilling that need for us. That no-rules, no-guilt mentality is something that people really resonate with." So, what Strain is saying is that we used to be really angry at terrorists, but now, instead of that, we hate zombies. Will history remember how close Strain just came to inventing the zombie terrorist, the video game enemy that will someday unite the world, Wyld Stallyns-style? We suspect it will not.
Undead Labs creating zombie MMO for consoles
Poor zombies. By hungering for nothing so much as our brain matter, they've turned themselves into the most widely-slaughtered video game villains after Nazis and spiders. Now a start-up developer called Undead Labs is taking the zombie genre to the next logical step with a currently untitled zombie-based MMO made specifically for consoles. In the announcement, company boss Jeff Strain said "Every time I see a good zombie movie with friends, we spend days debating our strategies for surviving the zombie apocalypse. The police station, or the supermarket? Garden rake, or staple gun? Bach, or the White Stripes? I'm a game developer, so I'd probably be useless for anything other than ghoul bait, but I'm excited to have the opportunity to build an MMOZ that lets us put those strategies to the test and find out for sure." Strain, who helped found ArenaNet and was the executive producer for NCsoft's Guild Wars, certainly has the right pedigree for a project like this. But it's hard to say if this will be the ultimate zombie experience, or the title that finally (re)buries zombies for good. Here's hoping it's the former.
ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain opens new studio
Remember Jeff Strain? His August departure from ArenaNet was big news, and we haven't heard a lot from him lately. We found out today what he's been up to, and we couldn't be happier. Jeff Strain has a shiny (slimy?) new project just officially announced today. Undead Labs is his new studio, which is already at work planning a zombie MMO -- more specifically, a zombie-console-MMO. To quote the Undead Labs site, "Zombie MMO! Hell yeah!" Of course, we already have a million questions, but he was kind enough to answer many of them well in advance. (Points to him for anticipating them and spelling it out right up front, and for making us laugh.) It's early days yet so we don't have a laundry list of specific details and screenshots, but the site already shows a departure from the traditional way of doing things when it comes to MMO development. A look around Undead Labs sets the tone right off, beginning with the aforementioned answers to questions, and continuing with a fairly amusing etiquette guide. Strain and Undead Labs look to be off to a running start with things, and we are going to be keeping a close eye on the impending zombie apocalypse.
