Jeff Strain's Undead Labs, Zombie Console MMO

[UnSub]

Here's the official announcement.

EDIT:

We plan to be very transparent during the development process, and to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the early life of a new development studio and the process of bringing a triple-A MMO (or, MMOZ) to life. It’s too early to build a real game community, so hang out here if you are into the behind-the-scenes stuff. If you just want to hear about the game, file all of this in your “cool stuff to check into later” box and we’ll be sure to make some noise when the time is right.

Ho ho ho...

[Xuri]

Sigh... MMOZ makes just as little sense as MMO.

"Massively Multiplayer Online Zombie! (...err....game)"

Come ON.

[Velorath]

This is the one kind of MMO where I'd not only condone, but require permadeath.

[Bzalthek]

Oh no no no.  You cannot make a zombie character.  However, if you die, your character becomes a zombie which you can then play!

This will make the non-zombie endgame truly epeen worthy and will ensure the low level game is populated!  Brilliant!

I look forward to munching on copious amounts of popcorn during the development of this gem!

[schild]

http://www.doublebearproductions.com/ <-- I like what Brian Mitsoda is doing more:

DoubleBear is currently working a project we have codenamed “ZRPG,” a zombie-apocalypse survival RPG:

    * PC RPG, turn-based, 3rd person perspective using Iron Tower Studio’s Age of Decadence engine.
    * Set during the breakdown of society as emergence of zombies causes widespread panic and disorder.
    * Slow, shambling zombies. Spreads like a virus/bite transmission. No, you are not a zombie, that would be stupid.
    * Serious examination of a national crisis or natural disaster. Humans and a lack of order are a bigger threat than the undead. Think Hurricane Katrina, Children of Men, Dawn of the Dead – NOT Resident Evil, Return of the Living Dead, zombie shooter-type games.
    * Game is about survival. Scavenging resources, exploring the area, dealing with other survivors, and managing a “shelter” of sorts are the main focus of the game.
    * Game is open-ended. There are characters and events that could happen, but the story depends on where you go, what you do, and who you meet.

[Draegan]

http://www.doublebearproductions.com/ <-- I like what Brian Mitsoda is doing more:

DoubleBear is currently working a project we have codenamed “ZRPG,” a zombie-apocalypse survival RPG:

    * PC RPG, turn-based, 3rd person perspective using Iron Tower Studio’s Age of Decadence engine.
    * Set during the breakdown of society as emergence of zombies causes widespread panic and disorder.
    * Slow, shambling zombies. Spreads like a virus/bite transmission. No, you are not a zombie, that would be stupid.
    * Serious examination of a national crisis or natural disaster. Humans and a lack of order are a bigger threat than the undead. Think Hurricane Katrina, Children of Men, Dawn of the Dead – NOT Resident Evil, Return of the Living Dead, zombie shooter-type games.
    * Game is about survival. Scavenging resources, exploring the area, dealing with other survivors, and managing a “shelter” of sorts are the main focus of the game.
    * Game is open-ended. There are characters and events that could happen, but the story depends on where you go, what you do, and who you meet.

Cool idea. 

[Goreschach]

None of this shit will ever happen. End thread here.

[SnakeCharmer]

http://www.doublebearproductions.com/ <-- I like what Brian Mitsoda is doing more:

DoubleBear is currently working a project we have codenamed “ZRPG,” a zombie-apocalypse survival RPG:

    * PC RPG, turn-based, 3rd person perspective using Iron Tower Studio’s Age of Decadence engine.
    * Set during the breakdown of society as emergence of zombies causes widespread panic and disorder.
    * Slow, shambling zombies. Spreads like a virus/bite transmission. No, you are not a zombie, that would be stupid.
    * Serious examination of a national crisis or natural disaster. Humans and a lack of order are a bigger threat than the undead. Think Hurricane Katrina, Children of Men, Dawn of the Dead – NOT Resident Evil, Return of the Living Dead, zombie shooter-type games.
    * Game is about survival. Scavenging resources, exploring the area, dealing with other survivors, and managing a “shelter” of sorts are the main focus of the game.
    * Game is open-ended. There are characters and events that could happen, but the story depends on where you go, what you do, and who you meet.

I'd play that.

[NiX]

None of this shit will ever happen. End thread here.

 

[Goreschach]

How many times do you have to watch the trainwreck before it gets boring?

[schild]

How many times do you have to watch the trainwreck before it gets boring?

What I posted might happen. It's folks from Troika. Might be buggy, but will probably happen.

[UnSub]

None of this shit will ever happen. End thread here.

It, or something like it, will happen. But zombie games face a few specific issues to their particular lore:

 - can players be zombies?
 - if you have zombie players, can they turn back to 'human' players?
 - is it going to be a Rambo-FPS style game or a very struggle for survival in a sandbox?
 - fast zombies or slow zombies or a mix?

Going back to the Exanimus forums, there was a core group of players who wanted a zombie MMO where they could turn into zombies and kill other players (open to exploitation / spies) and another core group who wanted a sandbox MMO where every day was a struggle for survival in searching out materials and overall doom was a certainty. Neither idea says "fun" to me.

However, someone, somewhere will get a next gen MMO onto a console. Undead Labs has as good a shot as anyone.

[Threash]

Once you let players be zombies then they are no longer zombies.  Zombies are mindless and slow and predictable, they see prey they slowly shuffle towards it until they eat it, THATS IT.

[Sheepherder]

Once you let players be zombies then they are no longer zombies.  Zombies are mindless and slow and predictable, they see prey they slowly shuffle towards it until they eat it, THATS IT.

Someone's obviously never fought a Draugr before.

[Trippy]

Or played Left 4 Dead.

[schild]

Once you let players be zombies then they are no longer zombies.  Zombies are mindless and slow and predictable, they see prey they slowly shuffle towards it until they eat it, THATS IT.

The HL2 mod Zombie Survival is a good example of player zombies and disproves your shit. The problem with player controlled zombies is that developers won't often force zombies to be slow, mindless, and predictable. Zombie Survival is also why I can't enjoy Left4Dead as much as I'd like to.

[Count Nerfedalot]

A Zombie PvP MMO seems the perfect place to deploy this stupid design idea that I can't seem to purge out of my head, no matter how much alcohol I scrub it with:

Suppose you had a PvP game where the server basically lied to people and sometimes let both sides think they had won the fight?  Opposing sides not only can't talk to each other, but only see generic names, etc.  When you get into combat, you see your character fighting the other, and you mash buttons at appropriate times and both side's health bars go down during the fight until the other guy drops.  You emote some suitably lewd adolescent insult over the corpse of your opponent to emphasize your elite uberness, loot something from his inventory, then wander off to the next conquest as his corpse dissolves into the ground.

Only the thing is, the other guy has the EXACT same experience.  He sees YOU drop dead, loots something that seems to come from YOUR inventory, azzrapes YOUR corpse, and goes on to brag about it to his friends.

I don't know why someone would make the server do this.  Maybe to balance things out when the sides are lopsided or to force a world event to progress in some particular direction?  The thing is, how would you ever know?  How do you know they aren't already doing it?  Especially, say, in Eve or Darkfall where the devs have shown a certain degree of willingness to, ah, enhance their personal play experiences through means not available to people who don't have access to the server hardware?

[pxib]

Schrödinger's Catass 

MMOs already lie to the players to disguise the underlying clock mechanics and make their interactive experience seem more immediate. There are visible times where two combatants kill eachother simultaneously in ways that could not have been simultaneous. Both are a little upset to see behind the curtain, but are more likely to think AWESOME than I WAS ROBBED. It works because they're still actually fighting another person, and the experience is shared because they're both dead. It's better than obviously being killed by high latency. Which also happens. A lot.

Fighting an NPC with some player's name isn't PvP. Lie about timing and there's still some human mind on the other end. Lie about specific actions and something smells. Lie about who won and we might as well be grinding mobs. You could do it, but what's the point?

[DLRiley]

Jeff Strain? As in Arena.net Jeff Strain, as in master mind of Guild Wars Jeff Strain? Fucking yes please.

Fighting an NPC with some player's name isn't PvP. Lie about timing and there's still some human mind on the other end. Lie about specific actions and something smells. Lie about who won and we might as well be grinding mobs. You could do it, but what's the point?

I bet you 1million dollars you can lie to players about what constituents a npc-controlled-by-half-decent-ai verses a real player in an open world pvp game and 99% of the playerbase won't tell the difference or won't care.

[pxib]

I bet you 1million dollars you can lie to players about what constituents a npc-controlled-by-half-decent-ai verses a real player in an open world pvp game and 99% of the playerbase won't tell the difference or won't care.

I, for one, welcome our massively multiplayer half-decent-ai overlords. If I had a million dollars laying around I'd stake it just to see someone create such a thing. I still think calling it PvP because the AI has another player's name over its head is absurd.

EDIT: Now I'm imagining somebody creating AIs that pass the Turing Test by acting like they're afk, or running in panic circles when attacked, or yell at their healers. This game is going to be great.

[DLRiley]

You can call it pvp as long as your playerbase doesn't know the difference. Maybe in an arena the best scrippted AI will be quickly pointed out for not being players, but in a massive "omg look how many noobs are seiging this castle!~!!!" game, who gives two shits. WAR would have been 100x better with AI overlords doing most of the rvr and players simply participating when they want to.

Again holy shit Jeff fucking Strain is making a zombie mmo. Shit I should be filling out an application, let me do that man's coffee.

[Cadaverine]

DL is right, franklly.  Spend a while in AV, or any of the BG's in WoW, and to be honest, 90% of the players could be replaced with some basic AI, let alone halfway decent AI.  I'll go a step further, and say that even in the Arenas a goodly percentage of the players could be replaced by bots without much of anyone noticing.

PC zombies would be fine, but as noted, the devs would have to stick to their guns, and keep the zombies slow, etc.  Zombies power isn't in their speed, and physical prowess, but in their numbers, and their inevitability.  Eventually, you're going to fuck up, run out of ammo, fall asleep, etc, and they're going to get you.

[Bzalthek]

Spend a while in AV, or any of the BG's in WoW, and to be honest, 90% of the players could be replaced with some basic AI, let alone halfway decent AI.

10 Congregate at bridge
20 Go to 10

[DLRiley]

To be fair, replacing players with AI with more than 3 scripted responses isn't necessary unless the amount of players participating actually matters. In wow arena the amount of players is fixed and there is cross server ques to handle any lack of players queuing. Even if the number of players queuing drastically decreases, the cross server mechanism will handle most of the slack. On the other take war entire rvr system based solely on players being their to give a shit. In that system to encourage activity there must be something happening in the first place, and its up to the devs to insure that this is the case 100% of the time. Where player activity is necessary in order to keep the ball greased and players are unreliable (which they are btw) you can safely replace players with AI. Unless your building an EVE game where the "500 man seige!!!" isn't the  point.

[Velorath]

NECRO!

Undead Labs is going to be releasing a single-player game on XBLA first.  Essentially sounds like they're putting a lot of their ideas into a downloadable single-player game, presumably to see how they work out in practice and to get more funding for the eventual and more ambitious MMO version.  Apparently even this is still in the early stages though, as the game is still under a code name (Class3), and there are no screenshots, just 10 pieces of concept art.

[Lantyssa]

I see what you did there.

[Bzalthek]

38 Studios bought Undead Labs?

[schild]

NECRO!

Undead Labs is going to be releasing a single-player game on XBLA first.  Essentially sounds like they're putting a lot of their ideas into a downloadable single-player game, presumably to see how they work out in practice and to get more funding for the eventual and more ambitious MMO version.  Apparently even this is still in the early stages though, as the game is still under a code name (Class3), and there are no screenshots, just 10 pieces of concept art.

I wonder which fake MMOG will come out first - Torchlight or the Undead Labs game.