Travicity
02-03-2011, 10:17 PM
When ArenaNet co-founder Jeff Strain and a handful of his cohorts announced Undead Labs in late 2009 with the intention of creating "the definitive massively multiplayer online zombie game (MMOZ) for console gamers," we don't know what we expected, but it probably wasn't an Xbox Live Arcade game. Some fourteen months after that announcement, Undead Labs is ready to start talking about its "inaugural" title, currently codenamed "Class3," an XBLA game being published by none other than the MMO-wary Microsoft Game Studios and billed as "an open world zombie-survival game."
If that Xbox Live Arcade setting sounds anticlimactic, you'll be happy to hear that it's just step one for Strain and friends. "We plan to create an ambitious open world XBLA game and use its gameplay, setting, and technology as the foundation for a full online world game," Strain said. The press release continues, "The open world develops in real-time, shaped by player actions, with content determined by their choices and the ever-increasing zombie threat."
It's worth pointing out that Undead has backed away from the term "MMO" entirely; it never appears in today's press release, and while that followup project – codenamed "Class4" – will contain many MMO elements, even that won't be branded with those three little letters. For more on Class4, check out our interview with Jeff Strain later today.
If that Xbox Live Arcade setting sounds anticlimactic, you'll be happy to hear that it's just step one for Strain and friends. "We plan to create an ambitious open world XBLA game and use its gameplay, setting, and technology as the foundation for a full online world game," Strain said. The press release continues, "The open world develops in real-time, shaped by player actions, with content determined by their choices and the ever-increasing zombie threat."
It's worth pointing out that Undead has backed away from the term "MMO" entirely; it never appears in today's press release, and while that followup project – codenamed "Class4" – will contain many MMO elements, even that won't be branded with those three little letters. For more on Class4, check out our interview with Jeff Strain later today.