I know, you’ve heard this before. I know you are not impressed, because every time you hear this it either never happens, or you get a weak port of an otherwise excellent PC title that does not feel at all like a true console game, and then the publisher expresses amazement that it was not successful and blames the console platform. It happens every time, and now “they” are saying that FPS MMO games are just simply better suited to the PC, and that console developers should just give up and go build more Tomb Raider and Madden sequels.

We hear you, console fans. But this time it’s going to be different, because we are willing to chart a bold course and develop an FPS MMO specifically for consoles, which will allow us to take advantage of the unique features of the platform and give you a true console experience. The pundits still say we’re crazy, and that it will never work. I guess we’ll be able to look back in ten years and know who was right.

So, let’s talk about some of these “unique features” of a console FPS MMO…

Okay, that was a bit snarky, but the parallels are striking. I can’t tell you how many industry insiders “just know” that MMOs won’t work on consoles. They also “just knew” that FPS games would not work on console *cough* Halo *cough*, and they “just knew” that any game that required an accessory would fail *cough* Guitar Hero *cough*.

The problem, of course, is that they are looking at it through the lens of the games they can see today, rather than the games that might be designed differently tomorrow. Does anyone really believe you can take a game like World of Warcraft, polished though it may be, and port it to the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and have a great game experience? Of course not. A great console MMO will require rethinking the fundamentals, starting with the user interface and all the way through the core combat mechanics, social infrastructure, avatar control, world interaction, and sense of pacing and scale.

More importantly, it’s not just about solving problems; it’s about taking advantage of opportunities.

Here are some opportunities we see for MMOs on consoles. These aren’t necessarily things you can only do on consoles (although many of them are), but they are instead things that are expected by console gamers and naturally supported by the platform hardware. We’ll be exploring these in greater depth in future articles. Take a look, ponder, and feel free to share your own thoughts on the best ways to leverage the console gaming experience into the world of MMOs.

Social Gaming (No Really)

Everyone knows that MMOs are social games, right? So why do so many people associate MMOs with the stereotype of the loner 30-something guy who spends all day in his mom’s basement surrounded by old pizza boxes? (C’mon man, that’s not us. It’s our roommate’s house, and we throw the pizza boxes out every day.) In some respects MMOs can actually be antisocial, because the PC is usually in an isolated room of the house, and because you can’t easily share the experience with your roommates, friends, or family unless they bring their gaming PCs into the same room.

By contrast, game consoles are often connected to large-screen TVs in the family room, which makes it easier and more fun to invite friends and family to jump into a game and play with you. A well designed multiplayer console game, such as Lego Star Wars or Lego Indiana Jones, provides a contextual split-screen view and makes it easy for friends to join you with easy drop-in/drop-out play.

Imagine if we could bring that to the MMO world. Imagine tossing a controller to a friend so she can quickly login with her character and join you wherever you are, right on the same screen. Or perhaps she logs in with one of your characters so you can show her around the game. Either way, it adds a new dimension to the “social” aspect of MMOs.

Freedom of Movement

Remember your first few hours with Super Mario Bros., and how the controller seemed to disappear from your hand? You became one with Mario; you stopped thinking about controlling him; he was simply an extension of your will. That’s some beautiful console mojo, and something we hope to achieve in our MMOZ. Leaving behind the mouse and keyboard for the console controller gives us an opportunity to make it fun to just move through the world.

Okay, we’re not going to achieve Super Mario Bros. perfection, but we can get damn close.

Visceral Hand-to-Hand Combat

Click target. Click attack skill. Wait. Click heal skill. Click area-of-effect skill. Click new target. Click ranged attack skill. Power players: Click target. Press ’2′. Wait. Press ’5′. Press ’6′. Wait. Click new target.

Okay, it’s not that bad, but it would never fly in a console game, so it won’t fly in a console MMO. We want to get in there and mix it up with the zombie hordes. We want to fight with crowbars, chains, spoons, and, well, banjos. We want the action to be in our face, hot, and bloody.

This is tough to pull off in an MMO, because you have to consider latency when designing your combat system. Having said that, we have to do it. This will be part design magic, and part technical magic, but rest assured that making a combat system that feels more like a console than an MMO is one of our top priorities.

Vehicle Combat

You’ll be fighting for survival surrounded by the abandoned products of 21st century civilization. Will there be cars, motorcycles, and trucks? Of course. Should you be able to drive them, crash them, and splatter zombies with them? Yes, please.

Destructible Environments

Would you accept anything less? Neither would we.

Fun With Physics

You may have noticed that zombies are kind of stupid. Sure, they can rip out your beating heart and eat it in front of you if you let them get you cornered. Or if they sneak up on you at night. Or if there are just too many of them… But they still behave according to known, or at least discoverable, rules, and you should be able to have fun exploiting those rules.

Building traps from objects you find in the world (yes, including crates, but probably not pressure plates), or channeling the shambling hordes through your murder holes and across your cleverly (or even poorly) concealed pits is part of the fun. By integrating physics not only for combat and vehicles, but also for the way the zombies interact with the environment, we can give you the power to use the environment to your advantage when fending off an attack.

Invisible Interface

I’m sure you’ve seen worst-case-scenario examples of MMO user interfaces that are cluttered with countless rows of buttons, status bars, notification windows, chat messages, and icon docks. (I wish I could post an image here, but our lawyers would probably shoot me.) This is one of the main reasons that hybrid games attempting to play well on both PC and console often fail. In general, console gamers expect interfaces to be more transparent and to “get out of the way” of the game world. Moving into the console world allows us to rethink the MMO user interface and design something that is leaner, lighter, and less intrusive.

Voice Chat

We often hear that the biggest design challenge to MMOs on console is the lack of a keyboard. It’s true that people are accustomed to chatting by text, and that there is a certain comfort in the anonymity that a text communication interface provides. However, we view the fact that real-time voice chat is both ubiquitous and expected on the console platform to be a huge opportunity to bring new community and teamwork dynamics into the MMO genre. A challenging opportunity, to be sure — do you really want the badass ex-Marine in your party to sound like a 13-year-old? — but we have some good ideas about how to solve those challenges. In any case, voice chat is the gold standard in the console world, so you can bet we’ll make good use of it.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of console-speicific features, but it’s a good start. We are excited to have the opportunity to rethink the MMO from the ground up so that it is, before any other consideration, an excellent console game.

We’d love to hear your ideas as well. Tell us what you’d love to see in a console MMO!

Next up: Zombies.

Jeff

Any games mentioned in this article not owned by Undead Labs are trademarks of their respective owners. No endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation between those companies and Undead Labs is intended. Please don’t sue us kthx.

Check out the full interview on the G4 website.

G4: I hope there’s no actual zombie apocalypse between now and [release].
Strain: Well, it would be good source material wouldn’t it?

Today Undead Labs proudly announces… well, our existence. Here’s the official word.

So what’s this site all about? Well, you’ll notice a few non-traditional things going on here.

First, the name of the studio. It’s not “Grumpy Gopher Games” or “Silver Platter Studios” or some generic name that can be applied to any kind of game. Traditional thinking is that your studio name should be genre-neutral, the rationale being that even if you want to make a game about the rotting undead today, in five years you might want to make a pet monkey simulator, and you don’t want to tie your name to a genre.

Um, yeah. Honestly, if we decide to make a pet monkey simulator in a few years, we’ll start a studio called MönkeyWerks or something. This studio is all about making the ultimate zombie apocalypse game, so we are Undead Labs.

You’ll also note that this website is very “blog like” in its layout and focus on news-style content. The fact is that we don’t have a game to put in your hands today, or a marketing team insisting on a “marketing focused” website, so right now the focus of our website is to let you know how it’s going.

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.

For now, you can expect a few posts a month with features on the studio, the development process, design direction, the industry, and so on. A great way to keep up with new articles is to click that big orange RSS button at the top of this page, or you can just click here to subscribe. We’d also like to encourage you to be part of the Undead Labs community by sharing your thoughts on the articles we post (after reading the Lab Etiquette Guidelines, of course). Many of the initial articles will be written by me, but as new developers come onboard you’ll be hearing from them as well.

Thanks for reading. We look forward to getting to know you. Stay tuned.

Jeff

The first room of the exhibit showcased some of his acrylic-on-black-velvet paintings. I usually associate this medium with bad Elvis paintings from Las Vegas, so it was interesting to see Burton’s whacked sense of shape and color brought out in a darkened room under black light. As I was standing there waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, a woman pushed her way to the front with her camera and started taking photographs with full flash. I’m pretty sure she actually had two flashes on her camera; one pointing at the Burton paintings, and one pointing backwards directly into my eyes.

Rude!

I suppose it’s too much to hope that she is a zombie-console-MMO fan and is reading this and feeling crushing guilt. My only consolation is that her pictures are going to suck, because the flash will totally destroy the effect.

Which brings me to the real focus of this article: the venerable, and highly secretive “Rude Q&A” document.

Rude Q&A is a document that your PR guys (in our case, Steve the PR Guy) prepare when you are about to issue a press release, and it contains every rude question — the questions you hope the editors don’t ask — you can think of. The idea is that you sit down and think of answers to these questions beforehand so you don’t get surprised and say something stupid during an interview, like “Oh, we’re not really thinking about play mechanics right now, because we’re focused on finding new ways to monetize our players…”

Whoops.

In preparation for the announcement of Undead Labs, we also prepared a Rude Q&A document. I know these things are supposed to remain super secret, but the document contains honest questions with honest answers, and I’d like to share it with you. So, here it is, with original answers, and embedded comments on each question.

(Oh and please don’t actually ask me any of these questions kthx.)

Jeff

CONFIDENTIAL – FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY

Undead Labs Studio Announcement Rude Q&A

Q: How many employees does Undead Labs plan to hire?

[Why is this rude? Because if you reply with a small number, you sound like a couple of kids in the garage. If you reply with a large number, you sound fiscally irresponsible and scare off publishers and investors.]

A: We’ll stay relatively small through the winter and spring as we flesh out the design and start building the production pipeline for the game. Starting next summer, we’ll ramp up quickly for preproduction. My expectation is that Undead Labs will have around 50 internal artists, programmers, designers, and production managers onboard during the peak period of development.

Q: What is the name of the game you are developing?

[Why is this rude? Because it can take years to trademark a name, and you don't want to announce the name until everything is buttoned up nice and tight.]

A: Usually the answer to this question in the early stage of development is diversionary because the name has not been determined. My answer will be diversionary because we’re not ready to announce it yet.

Q: Which platform(s) will the game be developed for?

[Why is this rude? Two reasons: 1) if you say "every platform in existence!" you'll live to regret it, because resources, especially engine programmer time, are finite; and 2) unless you are a first-party developer, console publishing can require complex and sensitive business negotiations, and it's usually not a good idea to talk openly about it while they are in progress.]

A: We’ll be developing for high-end game consoles. By today’s standards, “high-end” would include Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. But the market can change rapidly so we’ll have to see how things look when we are further along in development.

Q: Can you tell us more about the game Undead Labs is developing?

[Why is this rude? Are you serious, man? Developers get slammed all the time for making promises they can't keep. Can you imagine publicly itemizing every "wish list" feature you'd like to have in your game and then shipping with 50% of it? It happens all the time, and it's not pretty.]

A: I really wish I could, but we’ve already broken every rule in the book by announcing we’re making a zombie MMO. Usually new studios are very secretive about what they are working on because they believe their idea is so hot that if it leaks out every other developer out there will jump on it and try to beat them to market. I’m not discounting the need for confidentiality in the business world, but ultimately execution matters at least as much as ideas, and I’m confident in our ability to execute. Having said that, “zombie MMO on the console” is all I can say at this time.

Q: Are there any other partners involved in Undead Labs?

[Why is this rude? Because you might plan never to have partners. Or you might have definitive plans to bring on additional partners in the future, but they are currently at other companies. Or, you might be in sensitive discussions with potential partners at this very moment.]

A: Not at this time.

Q: Will you (Jeff) play an active role in the development of the game? If so, what will it be?

[This one's not really rude, unless you are planning to be a suit for the rest of your life and you just don't want to admit it.]

A: Absolutely! I’ll be the executive producer, and will also write as much code as I can get away with.

Q: When will the game be finished/released?

[C'mon.]

A: If you order it today before 5:00 PM, it should be on your doorstep when you wake up tomorrow morning. Okay, truth is that these things take time. Don’t check back every day. Just file it away in your “future cool stuff” memory, and I promise you’ll know about it when we get closer to release.

Q: Do you have any partnerships in place with Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo?

[See "which platforms?" answer.]

A: Well, since we’ll be making console games, we damn sure better. But there’s nothing to announce on this front right now. Not that it really matters — we’ve been hearing about strategic partnerships, discussions, and intentions about console MMOs forever. We’re not going to add to the noise until we are ready to show you, you know, an actual game.

Q: Will the game carry a subscription model like WoW, or will it be more like Guild Wars?

[Oh gee, this one isn't scary at all, is it? This one is rude because the answer essentially determines not only your business model, but also your game design. Most developers want to leave all options open for as long as possible, and once you make public statements, you are committed forever. It's important to be very honest with this answer, because you have exactly one chance to establish trust with your future fans and customers.]

A: The game will almost certainly be subscription based. I’ve always said that a game should be designed around its business model, and Guild Wars is certainly designed to be a free-to-play online game. In fact, there are hundreds of free-to-play online games on the market today, but some publishers are increasingly relying on micro-transactions, in-game advertising, “premium” accounts, or, at worst, lead-gen scams to generate more profit. I don’t like this nickel-and-dime approach, because it leads to design decisions that are based on something other than what’s most fun for the players. We want to focus on making an MMOZ that is, first and foremost, fun to play. Not a Skinner Box. Not a teaser for more stuff you can buy from us. Not an advertisement for stuff you can buy from someone else. Our singular design focus will be to create a game that is fun to play, and every month we’ll either earn you respect and your money, or we won’t.

Q: Why are you creating a Zombie MMO?

[Not rude, unless asked in the same tone as your athlete-god older brother asking you, "Dude, why do you play those stupid video games all the time?"]

A: We’re creating a zombie MMO because we love zombies! I know zombies are “hot” right now, with tons of mainstream (and mostly well done) books and movies coming out over the last year or so, but nobody has really captured the essence of the post-apocalyptic zombie universe in a game. It’s going to take a full MMO to really do that.

Zombies are fun because they give us an excuse to break all the rules, without guilt. I’m not just talking about over-the-top violence — we’ve got aliens, terrorists, and robots to fulfill those needs — but instead the suspension of rules across the board. Here you are in a huge, rich world as it existed at the height of society, and it’s yours now. Everything. You can do what you want, go where you want, and take what you want. In fact, you have to, if you are going to survive.

Traditional fantasy can be fun too, but at this point it’s been squeezed dry — several times over.

Seriously, if I were to sit down with you and say, “Guess what? I’m building a new studio to make fantasy MMORPGs!” it would take about 10 picoseconds for your eyes to glaze over, and then I’d spend the next hour describing all the esoteric and complicated game mechanics that would differentiate my fantasy MMORPG from every other fantasy MMORPG out there. Look, I’ve been a fantasy fanatic my whole life. There are some truly great fantasy games out there, but there are also a LOT of fantasy games out there, including one in particular that Pretty Well Dominates the genre. Fantasy is well covered territory at this point, and I really don’t think I have much more to contribute there.

Conversely, when I say “Zombie MMO on the console!” people’s eyes light up. In those three words — console, zombie, MMO — people seem to immediately get it. No hour-long discussion of “differentiating features” necessary; those three words suffice. I’ve also been stunned at just how many people — gamers, non-gamers, geeks, and “regular” people — claim to be zombie fans. We’ve all asked ourselves, “What would I do?” while watching a zombie flick. That’s what makes this fun; now you can find out.

Q: Why develop for the console and not the PC (or both simultaneously)?

[Why is this rude? Because it puts you in a "camp," and might cause some gamers to get pissed off and leave. On the other hand, increasingly gamers are omnivorous when it comes to platform, so perhaps this isn't that rude.]

A: Because we love console gaming, and it’s time for a great console MMO! There are scores of MMOs on the PC. There are very few on the console, and exactly zero developed specifically for the console. The first “great” MMO on the console will be built just for console, just as the first “great” FPS for console (Halo, or GoldenEye 007 — take your pick) was built just for console. Nobody wants to see a PC MMO ported to console, with a hybridized design attempting to appeal equally to all players. We’ve been down that path before with other genres, and it doesn’t work. We’re going to make a game designed for console gamers, by console gamers, with the action, streamlined interface, polish, and same-screen cooperative play that console gamers expect

Q: Why did you really leave NCsoft?

[Why is this rude? Well, because it's a question about me, rather than the studio, the team, or the game. But some interviewers think it's important to ask.]

A: Whenever my wife drags me out shopping, I spend my time in the department store thinking about how I could barricade the doors and block the escalators in the event of a zombie attack. When I drive my kids to school, I find myself wondering how many people could survive in the cafeteria, and for how long. When I lock the door of my apartment at night, I find myself being thankful that there is only one door to the hall, but worrying about the windows and door to the patio. In short, I’m a bit… obsessed… with zombies, so I’ve been putting serious thought into what a great zombie MMO would look like.

I’ve been working in the game industry for 14 years, but over the past few I found my career taking me further and further from actual development. Last summer my love of zombies and my desire to return to making games reached critical mass, and I knew it was time to get busy on something new.

Q: How far along are you in development?

[Why is this rude? Because this is all about announcing a new studio, so things are very early, but you don't want to have to say that...]

A: We’re off and running, but that’s all I can say now.

Q: How many employees are at Undead Labs right now?

[This isn't really rude, but it can be hard to answer. In the early life of a studio, many of the initial employees are in various stages of finalizing their relationship with their former employer, so it can take some time before you can answer this question clearly.]

A: We’ll be staffing up soon, but are currently looking for incredibly talented developers who are fanatical about Zombies. We’ll definitely have a home for them at Undead Labs.

Q: Fast zombies, or slow zombies?

[Now this is rude. You think answering "PC or console?" puts you in a camp? This is religion, plain and simple. Still, it's a fair question, because if you are going to claim to be a zombie fan, people have a right to know where you stand.]

A: Let’s get it out on the table; I’m more a fast zombie guy. But I know my roots, too. Casual zombie fans believe that fast zombies are “scarier,” and slow zombies are “funnier.” But the real artistry comes in extracting the menace from slow zombies, and the humor from the fast zombies. Our thinking is that we want both in our game world. In terms of game mechanics, it’s clear that being zombie-motility-agnostic will give us a more diverse toolbox with which to create an interesting and challenging game world.

Q: Is it just a coincidence that you came out with this announcement right after Left 4 Dead 2 was released?

[Well, that's rude! To mention another game when talking to us? And of course it's just coincidence that we'd announce our studio and our focus on the zombie genre just when millions of players are getting their yearly zombie fix with another game, hanging out on online forums, reading news about zombies, um, Googling...]

A: We love Zombie games, and Left 4 Dead 2 looks like a great follow-up to the original. But of course the timing is purely coincidental.