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.
"One of the things that is key in [the zombie] genre is really giving players a sense of purpose that is not just kill monsters and level up," he tells us.
"MMO players like to have a home, and that is one of the reasons I'm not going to throw them out into a post apocolyptic world. The goal here is to make them feel like there is a purpose. You're trying to restart society. You're trying to reclaim the world. One of the very first goals is going to be to get together with other players and establish a place that you can call your own that you must actively maintain and defend, and that over time will allow you to have a home base that will allow you to restart the economy, start trading with other 'blue zones' and feel like you have a home again."
Strain says that you will have to be defending your town, especially at night when the hordes come, but that as you build your town you should also build a sense of safety. However, you will also be able to run out into the land of the dead in order to get special items, supplies, or other things that are needed for survival.
"The game is going to really encourage you to go out for all kinds of different reasons," adds Strain, "and when you are out in the world and walking through the streets, or small towns or shopping malls it will be very easy for the game to give you that sense of you versus the masses or the hordes. It is important to state that this is not a horror game. You have to have a purpose and you have to believe you're trying to survive for a reason and that is why you have a safe base."
There are a plethora of zombie games out there with more on the way, what's this game about and what makes it stand apart?
The main thing that sets Class3 apart from other zombie titles is its focus on survival. You know that whole “what would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the world were filled with zombies” question that horror fans like to debate? Playing our game will give you the chance to actually live out your answer. It’s all about surviving in a world that’s been completely wrecked by the zombie apocalypse. Rather than just running around and killing zombies, you’ll be doing things like finding and fortifying a home base, going out into infested areas to scavenge for supplies, and rescuing other survivors and bringing them back to your community.
So this is an open world post-apocalyptic game, will its story follow suit or is it more of a linear experience?
Our core mission is to create a game that gives you the ability to answer the question, “How would I survive the zombie apocalypse?” Keeping that goal in mind, we’re creating a true open world that gives you the freedom to explore your surroundings and take on enemies at your own pace. Of course, just like in the real world, there will be plenty of stories just waiting to be told, but how and when those stories unfold will be based on your actions and the choices you make while you play.
The team at Undead Labs has big plans for the studio's first two projects currently under development: Class 3 and Class 4.
So far, we know that Class 3 will be a non-MMO console zombie shoot-em-up game developed for Xbox Live, and Class 4 is intended to be the game that crosses into a massively online world
where are you now on Class 4 in terms of development?
Class 4 is being developed simultaneously with Class 3. You can think of Class 3 as the platform for Class 4. There's a big difference between saying that you're going to create an open-world survival zombie game and saying that you're creating an open-world survival zombie game that can then quickly turn around and evolve into an online world.
In terms of the scalability of our content, how robust the player engagement technology is, and our production pipeline -- all of that has has to be engineered towards the greater demands of a full-scale online world. Ultimately, as we develop the game (Class 3) we're also developing Class 4.
I think that's the game my son was telling me about the other night.
He said something like "I didn't have enough torches so the zombies over-ran my house one night".
Sounds fun. And how lucky am I with the one kid who's responsible, active socially and in sports and still enough of a nerd to talk to about video games
At the Lab we refer to the game we are making as a “survival sandbox” game.
We want to drop you into the heart of a zombie apocalypse and let you put your personal survival plan to the test in an open world,
with no predefined quest paths, no levels, no corridors, and no canned character progression; just you, your plan, your equipment, and your wits.
Dee Cazo from MMOZed asks: “If you can hit a church bell to make noise and cause a distraction, are you able to shoot the bell to cause this? Would the bell cause more attention than the gun shot?”
It depends on the gun you’re using, how many shots you fire, and on how long the bell keeps ringing. Unless you want to invite all of the zombies in the area to dinner, I wouldn’t recommending going full-auto with a machine gun on a church bell, but that’s up to you.
John from MMOZed asks: “How will the players handle waste, from trash to the toilet? Can rotting trash attract zombies? Can players get cholera from sub-standard sanitation?”
The game is about survival and that includes all of the challenges above and beyond being eaten by zombies. Things like cholera and dysentery will be among the hazards you face… though you won’t spend a lot of time in the game managing a communal inventory of feces.
Is it just zombies or are there other frights out there lurking in the dark?
We are not re-skinning orcs and calling it a zombie game. At its heart, the zombie genre is about survival in the face of societal collapse and the complexities of human relationships in the face of dwindling resources. That is the experience we hope to recreate, so don’t expect to encounter 20-foot boss zombies, mutated Werebears, or emo vampires.
That said, the greatest enemy in any apocalypse scenario is often our fellow survivors.
Just as in the world today, most people are basically cool, but a few can be real douchebags. The zombie apocalypse would probably amplify those personality traits further, drawing a clear line between people who have your back, and people who would be happy to stab your back. While the fundamental conflict is “humans vs. zombies”, you can bet we’ll be working in the human conflict as well.
‘qwerty’ asks: Is Class3 still going to be split screen? I’m just wondering because most open-world-like games I know of don’t support it.
Unfortunately, we won’t be able to include split-screen play in Class3. CryENGINE 3 does not natively support split-screen, and we’re already pushing the engine to its limits to create the open, seamless world of Class3. Rewriting major components of the engine to support split-screen would be a massive undertaking and cause substantial delay to the release of the game
After months of resume reviews, phone discussions, and all-day interviews at the Lab, we’ve finally welcomed the inestimable Sanya Weathers to Team Zed.
Sanya has excellent credentials in the online community field, including six years as Director of Community for Mythic Entertainment (if you’ve ever played Dark Age of Camelot, you probably know her as Sanya Thomas) and a regular contributor to MMORPG.com. But we were looking for more than that; we were looking for someone who genuinely likes people; who radiates positive energy; and who views building and nurturing a great game community as a simple matter of communicating in an honest, no-bullshit manner and treating people well. I know those sound like obvious qualities for anyone choosing to build a career working with online communities, but that’s surprisingly not always the case. As you’ll discover over the next few months, it’s the only way Sanya knows how to operate.
