Jeff Strain Working On Zombie MMO For Consoles
Brought to my attention by a Tweet from N'Gai Croal, Destructoid recently sat down with Jeff Strain to talk about his next project, a zombie MMO for consoles. The article is rather lengthy, and if you don't know Strain, you get a hint that he's been involved with both World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, and every Blizzard series. The game is being developed by his new company, Undead Labs.
Why the console, though?
Strain puts it quite simply:
"When I say MMO or RPG to you right now, you probably think fantasy. You probably have certain expectations for how the mechanics work... there's this overwhelming template for how you play these games," he says. "I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but by changing platforms and changing genre and having a fresh perspective you can go shake up some of the fundamentals of how the game is played.
Essentially, he believes a jump to the console allows a reboot, to correct some problems with PC MMOs, and will allow him to change gameplay considerably. Enter zombies because you can change fundamentals such as:
"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 apocalyptic 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."
He also quickly answers a question many will have: fast zombies.
VorpalBunny
Posted to MMOs, Video Games on 23 November 2009
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