Massively Multiplayer Online Zombies

The zombie craze might be starting to annoy those that buy game after game after game, but , for the more casual player, zombies are still absolutely tops when it comes to NPC enemies. Treyarch’s Call of Duty outings and Left 4 Dead cemented the walking dead this generation in terms of first person shooters, but there’s been one genre in which zombies have been specifically lacking, however, and that’s in the MMO.

I’m not talking about random enemies, there’s probably loads of games which use some variation of the zombie; I mean a full zombie MMO in which your survival, as well as the survival of those around you, relies on your ability to ration food and water, fight off enemies and build and maintain safe houses.

It seems like a simple enough premise, an idea that should excite the zombie-loving masses, but zombie survival is a genre that we’re only just really seeing. Bigger studios prefer more action-based gameplay, as blasting away many enemies as possible in as little time as possible, but for those longing for a more lengthy experience there’s not a lot on the market. That’s why the past few months, specifically the past few weeks, have been very, very good for those wanting a deeper game involving flesh-eating mutants – who the hell doesn’t like the sound of that?

Take Project Zomboid, for example, an indie game that had a few problems – PayPal blocked their account and stopped them taking money from people buying the game and their code (and much of their backup) was stolen from their flat meaning they had to go back over their work, this resulted in something of a PR nightmare – but is now available for download and purchase from their official website (projectzomboid.com). They have built an RPG where the focus isn’t on singlehandedly taking down monster after monster, but on keeping yourself alive and keeping the NPCs around you on your side.

As far as I’m aware at this point there isn’t a multiplayer component but, if there’s not, there certainly should be in the future. It has a fantastic retro look that suits the style of the game and, as far as RPGs go, it looks like a winner. It’s the fact that the developers are doing something so unique, so big that’s impressive and I strongly urge you to go and take a look. But this is an MMO site and the impressive news that came last week is that Undead Labs, made up of industry veterans including the lead programmer on World of Warcraft, are making an MMO based around the very premise of surviving a zombie attack.

But more unusual than it being a survival MMO, rather than simulating an adventure, is that this is an MMO that is to be published by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. Not only is this game being developed by people trying to create a whole different subgenre of MMO, but it’s being created from the ground up to work with a controller exclusively on consoles, I’m not sure that’s ever been done before. With so much hard work, talent and innovation going into this MMO, codenamed Class4, it’s going to be hugely interesting to see how it works out. Of course it might be terrible, but I’m thinking that they’ll pull something fairly fantastic out of their hats.

Happy at the news of Class4’s existence, I’ve been thinking this week about just what an MMO built around surviving a zombie apocalypse would actually include. You’d have to completely scrap almost everything we know about MMOs: quests would be cumbersome and would force players to act in a certain way; levels and experience couldn’t be handled the same way because, instead of expanding the places you visit like in a regular MMO, your goal is to stay alive and in relative safety; items and loot would also have to be handled differently because the focus isn’t on the undead, who would be best to be ignored rather than fought.

That’s why Undead Labs have their work cut out for them, they’re having to rewrite the rulebook as they go along, bringing only a degree of their previous work with them. The important thing in a survival MMO isn’t that you travel a certain distance, get to a certain level or fight a specific amount of monsters – the point is that you don’t die. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be able to fight, in limited quantities that would be a necessity, but forcing it onto the player would be a mistake. If you check every window, block every door, collect enough food and make sure your safe house is sufficiently protected, there should be no reason for you to actually fight one on one.

Teamwork also needs to be the top of their to-do list. I once heard about a zombie MMO that I believe Hideo Kojima wanted to make where, if you turned the game off, your character went to sleep. It was up to the people that WERE playing to make sure that those that weren’t remained safe. It wasn’t as easy as that though, if the zombies managed to break through the line of defences and the safe house hadn’t been properly prepared, everybody in the safe house would be killed and logging back in would be impossible.

That was the major part of this idea that I disliked, Kojima (if it was Kojima) had some pretty crazy ideas about pricing and how character would be handled. If you died - and let’s face it, it was only really a matter of time before you went away for a couple of days and ended up needing a new account – you’d be forced to buy a brand new account and a brand new character. This was in lieu of a subscription fee I believe, but the idea was that you were so susceptible to the mental errors of others that you would constantly need new characters.

The idea of a zombie MMO really excites me, not because it involves zombies which, frankly, are becoming a bit old hat in the video game world, but because they offer the chance for a different sort of MMO - the sort of MMO where the enemy is outside trying to get in and you have no option but to hide and hope for the best. When you have to go outside, you’re constantly being threatened by overwhelming numbers and low ammo count and only as a team can you and your friends survive. But not only that, you’ll need to outsmart other real people, vying in a battle of survival of the fittest.

Either you have what it takes to hoard resources and defend those resources, or you’re zombie food. I’d like to think Undead Labs are going to go for something like this, something a little bit different, a little less run of the mill. A quick glance around there website gives the impression that they’re trying their best to bring something new to the genre and that would be a welcome breath of fresh air in a market filled with clones of the game some of them helped put on a pedestal to begin with.