Undead Labs talks about surviving the zombie social scene

does anyone else find irony in a Developer named Undead Labs making a Zombie MMO that is a "living" world?

But but... he can't do that in a console game! This persistent, dynamic, living world I'm sad to say I doubt him.

How many times will a developer promise me that my decisions will impact the world before I actually see it?

Looks like most of this is still in the concept phase? Let me know how it is in playable form, thanks.

Sounds like the same Snake Oil Paul Barnett was selling before Carrie Gouskos ate him.

It would be pretty darn cool if they came up with some way of creating an ever-changing world. If they are pushing the survival method, then why not have completely player-created safezones?

How cool would it be if players could band together and create towns, complete with defenses...and the computer would react by sending increasingly deadly patrols of Undead to attack it depending on how big the outpost was?

You could have a whole game made out of scouting around during the day, grabbing supplies and scrounging for stuff, and then defending your outpost at night.

Come to think of it...am I not just talking about Minecraft?

:P

-Birk

One of my most anticipated games of the future. I know it can be done, what they have to battle is the temptation to do what has already been done and prove will make money.

Every so often a courageous group of game developers makes a stand a says, "We are doing what hasn't been done, we don't know what will happen, but we think it will be good."

From a game developer point of view, it would be easier for me to provide the players with the tools to create a city, than it would be for me to hire programmers to build it for them. In fact, with the right implementation of tools and possibilities, the players could generate all the content, and the game wouldn't need expansions, or at least the could focus on bugs, balance, and new features, and not worry about, new zones, dungeons, cities, space stations or what ever.

I read an article that pointed out the players out number the npc's in almost every game, this needs to change, the players need to be way outnumbered. The world needs to be big, and expandable.

A posted above said (Pingles), "If you clear a town of undead what is the next guy gonna do? Or the next thousand people who happen upon that town?" They would thank the guy that did it, or they would run from him because he is a bad ass that cleared an entire town himself. Or they are going to defend it. the next wave of zombies is only just around the corner.

In fact if they were smart, they introduce a mechanic in the game that send more zombies at larger groups of people, the larger the group the more they are attacked.

Make sure the system has a true resource degradation system so nothing last forever.

Hell just like, Birk said, Minecraft already has the gameplay, they just need to expand it and make it look good.

Wow, a persistent, evolving world where the players get to be heroes! Never heard that one before. Talk is cheap. I'll believe it when I see it.

This sort of game is the only where it may be possible to achieve those goals however. But they can't make it like Warcraft with zombies. There can't be dungeons with bosses or special 'boss' mobs. Because if you want players to affect the world, having repeatable quests after one 'hero' already killed a boss just destroyed that idea. You can't blow up a bridge, then have it respawn for the next guy.

I hope this game is more of a survival game than action game.