Undead Labs

AUTHOR: Emily DATE RECORDED: October 20, 2011 AT 11:51AM

‘Class3’ has gone into production, and that means that we’re going to need a ton of art to fully flesh out the world. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with the talented team at  FUTUREPOLY Studios for our art production needs.

Headed up by Jason Stokes and Levi Hopkins, two of our good friends and former colleagues, the FUTUREPOLY Studios crew will be working side-by-side with our artists to create all of the visual details that we’ll need to bring Class3 to life.

Read on for more details!

Veteran Game Industry Artists to Help Realize ‘Faded Americana’ Setting of Zombie-Survival Game

SEATTLE – 20 October 2011 – Undead Labs, developer of online world games for console gamers, announced today that it had selected FUTUREPOLY Studios to provide art production services for its original zombie-survival franchise codenamed ‘Class3‘. Located in Seattle, Washington, FUTUREPOLY Studios is the game-production division of FUTUREPOLY, a digital-art school focusing on advanced training for professional video-game artists.

“We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with our friends and long-time colleagues at FUTUREPOLY on Class3,” said Jeff Strain, founder of Undead Labs. “Many of the Team Zed artists have worked with the founders and principal instructors at FUTUREPOLY for close to a decade, and these guys are among the most talented and experienced artists in the business. They’ll also be bringing their elite students onto the project, so we get a team of great artists, and they get the chance to work with a veteran development team on a kickass zombie-survival game.”

Led by well-known game industry artists Jason Stokes and Levi Hopkins, FUTUREPOLY Studios will be working closely with Undead Labs Art Director Doug Williams to realize the beautiful post-apocalyptic world of Class3. Defining an artistic style Doug describes as ‘Faded Americana,’ Class3 avoids traditional urban and exotic game settings, and instead returns players to the heart of the zombie-surivival genre: small-town America.

“FUTUREPOLY has enjoyed great success with its core mission of offering video-game-art development courses taught by experienced industry professionals,” said Jason Stokes, founder of FUTUREPOLY. “Our instructors are some of the best known and most highly regarded game artists in the industry, and our students are universally talented game artists looking for the edge they need to be even better. With the launch of FUTUREPOLY Studios, we’re bringing that talent and experience together to offer superior game-art production services, and we can’t think of a better inaugural project than the ambitious zombie-survival franchise under development at Undead Labs.”

About Undead Labs

Undead Labs is a game development studio dedicated to creating a new class of online world games for console gamers. Founded in 2009 by MMO industry veteran Jeff Strain, Undead Labs is a creative studio built around the most talented—and zombie loving—developers in the industry. Based in Seattle, Washington, the studio’s singular focus is creating the definitive zombie-survival franchise for console gamers. The company’s inaugural game, currently in development, is an open world zombie-survival game for Xbox LIVE Arcade, published by Microsoft Studios. For more information, visit undeadlabs.com.

About FUTUREPOLY

FUTUREPOLY is a digital arts training studio specifically geared toward video game development. Sharing decades of professional experience, instructors offer a focused curriculum with an emphasis on real-world workflow solutions. FUTUREPOLY Studios is the game-production division of FUTUREPOLY, bringing together experienced industry game artists and selected students to provide game-art production services for top-tier video-games. For more information, visit futurepoly.com.

# # #

CONTACT:

Jeff Strain (for Undead Labs)
contact@undeadlabs.com
Jason Stokes (for FUTUREPOLY)
jason@futurepoly.com

Some information relates to pre-released product which may be substantially modified before it’s commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here.
Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
Undead Labs and the Undead Labs logo are trademarks of Undead Labs, LLC.
FUTUREPOLY, FUTUREPOLY Studios, and the FUTUREPOLY logo are trademarks of FUTUREPOLY, LLC.
All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

AUTHOR: Phinney DATE RECORDED: October 14, 2011 AT 19:39PM

Day 17

Reckon I can’t think of a more bullshit situation. And that’s a fact. When one of us dies, we come back as one of them. Our loss is their gain. Randy thinks the bites do it. He figures it’s something in the saliva or bodily fluids or some such thing. It’s hard to say. These days, ain’t like it’s easy to find someone who hasn’t been scratched or bitten at some point.

Shay’s got another theory. Says maybe we were all infected already. I don’t know if that scares me or not. Maybe that means we can find a cure. Maybe it means we’re all fucked. I just know this: so far, every one of my friends who’s died has come back.

The first time we had to put down someone we knew, I almost couldn’t do it. But then it went after Shay, and I just reacted. Later, my buddy Chuck asked the question we were all thinking: When these people die and get back up, are they still themselves? Deep inside, can they still think or feel? Do they have any choice? And did we?

But experience has answered that one, time and time again. We’ve seen how they act, more instinct than thought. And we’ve all seen that look. We’ve seen it in their eyes. Just hatred and hunger. Not one ounce of humanity left. Better that way anyway. It’s not your friend. It’s just a shell. It’s just a shell.

Day 18

Put more of the bastards down today. It’s crazy to think about how much things have changed. I still remember the day we started calling them zombies. Sounded fake at first. Like something out of a fucking horror movie, but what else would you call them? You see a man die — stone cold dead — and then get up and walk. And there ain’t no way to put one down but remove its head or destroy its brains. Wasn’t too long before we got real comfortable with the term.

They say the first one’s always the worst, and I’m sure as hell not going to argue. I pumped ten bullets to the torso of that fucking waitress and she just kept coming. Took a bullet to the brain to finally drop her. Lucky for me, she was one of the slow ones. If she wasn’t, who knows? I’d probably be shambling around with the rest of them.

Day 19

Everybody knows Randy’s the best shot, but he’s getting cocky. Today, he used that big ole Remlinger 700 to shoot a leg and an arm off of one. I swear he was aiming for the extremities just outta sport. The thing goes down, of course, but keeps on crawling. Never seen one deterred by pain, and that’s a fact. Well, Randy walks right up to it and caves in its skull. Stomp, stomp with his boot heel.

Reckless son of a bitch if you ask me, but he’s a sure shot, and I know we’re lucky he joined us. Just need to find a way to put his sharpshooting abilities to more reliable use.

Day 20

Can’t take nothing for granted. Tried to build a kind of guard tower for Randy out of oil drums and two-by-fours. Damn thing tumbled and nearly cracked open my skull.

Soon as Chuck and I have our talk about why duct tape is not a substitute for a 3¼ inch nail — even if it is “abundantly quieter than all that hammering” — we’re gonna hit the veterinary clinic. Shay’s right that we lucked out this time, and our old collection of first aid kits is running a bit on the thin side these days. We need to secure a more comprehensive inventory of medications and medical supplies in case we’re not so lucky next time.

Day 21

Bad fucking day today. Bad fucking day.

Day 22

I don’t know if Chuck’s gonna make it. He’s starting to have that look. I do know I don’t want to be the one to do it…if it comes down to the mercy shot.

We try to look out for each other. Usually, when someone goes down, we’re able to drag ‘em to safety. Had some pretty impressive escapes a time or two, even when someone started off on their own, we got there in time. You might lose some of the stuff you were carrying and be outta commission for a bit, but it’s better than the alternative.

Hell, I’m pretty careful, but everyone screws up on occasion. A time or two, I’ve turned a corner while bringing home a duffel of soup cans or some such thing and found myself face-to-face with a whole horde of zombies. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the infirmary or over with the Wilson boys…back when they were still among the living and breathing.

Can’t push your luck though. How many times can you count on getting rescued in a situation like that? Not many, I reckon.

Because of some of the scrapes we’ve survived, people sometimes look at me and Chuck like we’re invincible, but we know better. Fact of the matter is there’s nothing magical or special about either of us. Every day we stare down death, and every day we face the risk of extermination. There’s no Ctrl-Z or reload to save us.  And once you’re dead, you’re one of them. There’s nothing you can do to control it or fight it. It’s a done deal. The best you can hope for is that your friends carry on in your memory.

Well, don’t count on it, Chuck. I’ll be damned if I’m ready to make any memorials for you. You got no choice. You have to pull through. You have to.

Day 23

Fever and chills for Chuck today. He has the glazed over look in his eyes that we’ve all seen before. Shay asked me what happened out there. Always treating everything like it’s a puzzle that can be solved, that girl.

I told her we took our precautions. We’ve been carrying food and medicine with us on our scavenging runs, like she insisted. Give yourself a burst of energy or heal up a wound and help you keep going. It can help you out of jam, but you have to think about weight. Sure, we could have taken more with us, but the weight is a killer. She knows that. The more you carry, the faster you wear out.

She wanted details, but what was there to say? We got tired, but those bastards never slow down, and they never get tired. Ain’t too hard to ward off a single swipe or attempted bite from a zombie, but when you’re exhausted, when you get surrounded, you can’t…you can’t keep your feet. They tug at you, drag you down.

What could I tell her?  Chuck got all tore up. I helped him to his feet, but there were so many… he was taken down again. We were lucky to get him back home in one piece.

I couldn’t really finish the story. We looked in on Chuck together. Saw the same thing. He might not make it. I didn’t say anything, but she leaned in and real quiet like said, “I’ll do it. If it needs to be done.” Don’t know where she gets the strength.

Day 25

Hell of a day yesterday. Randy says that karma is on our side. Wouldn’t have taken him for a buddhist or hindu or whatever that is.

A car wrecks half a block from our little stronghold — I can call it that now that the guard tower is stable — and the commotion brings a mess of zombies. The driver’s still alive, but Shay doesn’t think that trying to get to him is worth the risk. “He’ll be one of them by the time we get there,” she says.

Randy ignores her and looks to me to make the call. “I’ll go,” he offers, plain as that.

“Just cover me, asshole,” I answer and head out to get him. To her credit, Shay comes with.

The repeated report of Randy’s Remlinger behind us has the simultaneous effect of thinning the zombie numbers ahead of us and drawing some away from the car. The fuckers do have a spiteful attraction to loud noises.

The driver’s still alive when we get there, and we learn, once he’s safely back home with us, that he’s a doctor, an actual licensed MD. He’d been holed up at the church with a few others but when things turned to shit, he grabbed a car and tried to get the hell outta dodge.

Hope to God he’s a better doctor than he is a driver.

Day 26

The good doctor shows his gratitude by tending to Chuck. Popping a Tylenol is about as much as I know about medicine, so I can’t say exactly what the doc did. All I know is that whatever it was helped Chuck turn the corner. This morning, he was even up and moving around a little.

Doc says Chuck’ll be kind of low energy for the next day or so, but the talk of a mercy shot is behind us. The doctor’s still got a busted up leg from the wreck, so he won’t be able to join us on supply runs for a while. That’s okay by me. I think we might prefer to keep him safe and sound at home anyway. He can still treat people with a bad wheel, and that’s what matters.

Maybe Randy’s right. Karma’s on our side. Think I might head to the church tomorrow, see if anyone else made it and needs our help. We’ve been treading water too damn long. It’s time to start trying to build something.

This is the heart of Class3. It’s a game that’s not just about fighting zombies — it’s focused on the dangers and struggles of post-apocalyptic survival. To us, this means making your choices matter. It means giving you freedom with consequences, and sometimes those consequences are harsh: your community can be wiped out, and all characters (including yours) are at risk of permanent death.

This is a risky design choice and one that could easily lead to a game that’s only for the most hardcore players, but that’s not our goal. We are always guided by two words: fun first. That’s why getting overwhelmed in a single fight won’t instantly get you zombified. It’s also why you’ll get clear warning signs if a character is close to succumbing, and why there are ways to build on your legacy if someone doesn’t make it.

As development moves forward, we’ll continue to test, tweak, and balance a lot of these mechanics, but our guiding principles have never changed.

For a lot of you, I know this article will only whet your appetite for more information. (That’s good, right?) While I’m sticking to my guns about not giving everything away before the game is even out, I’m sure there are a lot of questions we can answer right now. If you’ve got one, hit reply, and fire away.

We’ll do a follow-up Q&A article next week.

Phinney

AUTHOR: Jeff DATE RECORDED: September 30, 2011 AT 18:23PM

Dear Team Zed,

Today was a momentous day at the Lab.

As you know, pre-production is the project phase where we lay down the design, create the core technology, develop the art style, build the art production pipeline, and prototype essential gameplay systems. At the end of pre-production, we should have a no-bullshit, fully playable game. Of course, it won’t have the polish or scale gamers expect and demand, but it should be a real game. And it should be fun.

Today was our final pre-production milestone, and you guys delivered. Hard.

I’m blown away by how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time. Our task now as we move headlong into the production phase is to take this fun little gem and turn it into something we’re proud to show the world. Over the next few months we’ll be bringing on some great art production partners, voice actors, motion actors, musicians, and world-class writers to help us get it done. We’ll of course also continue to have the support of our dedicated partners at Microsoft Studios.

We’ll have some great help, but the heart and soul of this game is each of you who have been here over the past year pouring your talent and passion into this game to bring it this far. I’m truly honored to work with you.

Let’s get this done. Onward to production!

Jeff

AUTHOR: Gronk DATE RECORDED: September 23, 2011 AT 17:40PM

On Friday, September 23, a detailed Survivor Diary was discovered near the Undead Labs office in Seattle. From the author’s references to his years of work as a video game artist, we’ve been able to ascertain that these are the writings of one John Gronquist.

The following excerpts provide insight into his personality, his life history, and the conditions he faced during the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse.

Read on to learn his story…

March 20

I can’t believe how much this guard tower is starting to feel like home. It’s only been a few weeks since we hoisted the recliner up. It’s starting to feel like my old living room, only instead of late-night horror movies, I’ve got the real thing. It’s all zombies, all the time.

There’s no electricity at the moment, but I still brought a TV up here for shits and grins. It’s sitting unplugged in the corner, and makes a great foot stool.

The rest of the camp is perfectly happy with me spending most of my time up here. We don’t have enough manpower to cover all the guard posts, and I’m one of the best shots in the camp. Who’d have thunk that a handful of years in the military in my youth would help me score the safest spot in the apocalypse?

Was that really me, all those years ago? It’s starting to feel like some other life I heard someone talking about while I was busy keeping an eye out for runners or screamers.

I spent four years in the Air Force — two stationed in the hills of Germany and two in San Antonio. In Germany, I learned respect for quality beer and mustard. In Texas, I learned respect for cheap beer and pico de gallo, and met my wife of 21 years. I hope her and the kids are doing okay out there. God knows she’s more capable of handling this than anyone else I know.

April 27

We finally got the power grid stabilized! The new batteries we grabbed from the boat store were the key — those babies should last us at least a year before they burn out.

It’s nice to be able to charge my laptop again. I can’t believe I still have the thing! It was just laying in the back seat of my car, which is now hanging out of the window of a mini-mart four blocks from here. May as well be four miles with the size of the horde that’s out tonight.

May 2

Got my laptop back from that damn thief, Dunniway. He snagged it a few days ago but failed to realize that there’s no wi-fi around here. I think he’s been sneaking extra whiskey rations.

I fired it up and took a trip down memory lane. My favorite programs, all intact. Photoshop, of course. My old friend, 3D Studio Max. Maya. Flash. After Effects. God, I was such a junky for anything related to making games.

I got into the industry by painting and teaching myself 3d modeling. I got some freelance work, one thing led to another, and bang — I’m no longer doing database programming. I’m a professional artist!

I’d worked on a number of great projects too, starting with Total Annihilation (ironic, considering our current situation.) I spent my days modeling and animating tiny tanks and robots, and it was amazing. I’d go to work each day and all I’d hear was, “Hey John, can we make that robot bigger, and maybe do some sort of flamethrower effect for it?”

Ha. I’d give anything to get my hands on an actual flamethrower.

May 7

Almost screwed the pooch today. Was engrossed in a game of Dungeon Siege and a handful of zoms got past my watch. Luckily, McMillan and Dunniway managed to catch them before they got their mouths around anyone at camp. Guess I’ll be giving them my beer rations for a month — they did just save all of our asses.

Still, this game is pretty dang fun. I created most of the UI and cinematics, and even got to model and animate a bunch of stuff for it. A little bit of everything.. I’ve always been a sort of Jack of All Trades. I love figuring out how things work.

Crap. Our scouts are coming back, and they’re dragging a horde behind them. Gotta go…

June 19

Rough day today. We’re running out of ammo, so we’re having to look for supplies farther and farther from base. Everyone know that we’ll eventually have to leave, but we’ve put so much work into building this thing up. Having to leave “home” is almost more painful to think about then all the crew we’ve lost over the last few months.

On the plus side, we scored an Xbox360 when we were out scavenging! We were so excited that it took us less than five minutes to get that thing up and running. Had to keep the sound down, obviously. Had an even harder time keeping our voices down during our Halo matches.
I casually dropped that I’d worked on FX for Halo 3 and did modeling and sky painting for Halo: ODST.

I’ve now become Target #1 in all our slayer matches for being Braggy McBraggart. Good times.

July 11

Happy birthday to me. Dunniway says that the giant mob of zombies hanging out at the foot of my tower are celebrating. Yeah, that’s a nice thought. At least they can’t climb ladders.

July 12

When I woke up, I realized that I was alone — the camp buggered out in middle of the night, headed for safer ground. Thanks a lot, guys.

Maybe they’ll come back for me, but I wouldn’t, so I hope they don’t. I’m glad I grabbed the satchel full of silencers and a case of ammo last night to restock my tower.

July 13

Lucky day. Some idiot drove a truck through town, pulling away half the horde. If I was a different kind of guy, I may have popped him and “borrowed” his truck.

July 23

Trying not to use too much of the battery left on my laptop, but I can’t help it…it’s the only link I have to my old self.

Today, I found some concept art and bits of design from when I tried starting my own game company.

Heh. If I had more juice in this thing, I might even try and finish one of these games. Not much else to do up here except wait for the zombies to pile up.

August 5

I couldn’t stand not having power. Food I could live without, but electricity is the only thing keeping me sane.

They thinned out a little last night, so I made my move. Snuck down the ladder, grabbed a big bag of dog food, a case of beer, hooked a lead wire from the batteries and wrapped it around my waist. I even managed to bring the Xbox back to my tower. You do crazy things when you’re desperate, I guess.

What do you know? My TV foot stool has a new purpose now.

August 10

I ran out of dog food the other day. Not wanting to deal with the zeds, I held out as long as I could. Got too hungry, so I snuck out again and went exploring. Came back with a case of noodles and another blast from the past: an Undead Labs hoodie I’d found in someone’s closet. We’d finished Class3 about a week before the outbreak hit.

Oh, the irony…

October 2

The power line got pulled loose by one of those damn stiffs. Stupid screamer got wrapped up in it, and shrieked like an animal until I used my last round to put it out of its misery. Now half the damn town is clustered around my tower again, and I’ve got no way to shut them up. If I don’t die of starvation, I’ll probably go crazy from the moaning.

October 4

The guy with the truck came back today. Don’t know what he was thinking, driving straight into the mob. Gotta give him credit, though — he managed to take out half of them before the truck got stuck. They pulled him out, and that was that.

I can see the keys through my rifle scope. As soon as it gets dark, I’m going to sneak down and make a break for it. Here’s hoping that there’s gas in the tank…

October 30

After a hellish drive, I managed to find the new base! Most of the old camp is here. They were shocked to see me, and said they’d left suddenly that night. By the time they realized they’d left me behind, they couldn’t go back — too many zeds to deal with. I was pissed, but when Dunniway told me that he’d heard news about my family, I forgave them. Can’t hold grudges in this kind of world. People need to stick together.

To show how sorry they were, I got treated to a bowl of hot stew. It was some canned crap. The meat was dry, but after living on dog food for weeks, it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

November 7

I miss my family. Going to make my way towards their camp tonight. Wish me luck.

As a parting gift, I gave my laptop to Dunniway. I’m not sure how he plans to do it, but he told me that he’s thinking of restarting the Internet with it. Wish him luck, too.

Signing off.

Gronk

(Emily’s note: If you just can’t get enough Gronk and would like to know more about him, be sure to check out Jeff’s introduction.)

AUTHOR: Jeff DATE RECORDED: September 23, 2011 AT 17:40PM

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, our most excellent art director Doug Williams introduced himself on our website with a post titled “They Actually Pay Me To Do This $%#@”. It was an earnest, personal, and thought-provoking post. And then some clown gets on the comments and posts this gem:

Doug, I think the truck should be more red.
ps. If I eat your brains do I get your powers?

Brilliant. Mod it out? Nah, there’s no harm in it — it’s just silly.

Some people.

A few days later, Doug, James, and Dave came to me and said they knew the perfect guy to fill our recently opened position for an effects and environment artist. “Who?” I asked? “Gronk!” they said, looking proud. Just that: “Gronk”. Like I was just supposed to know who “Gronk” was. Like “Madonna”. Regardless, if these three were endorsing the guy, I figured I should meet him.

“Gronk” came in a few days later to interview for the position. It turns out his name was John Gronquist, and that he was a cool guy, a total bad-ass environment artist, and a zombie freak to boot. He’d spent the last three years doing FX and environment work for some little indie game I’d never heard of — ODST? Or Halo something? Reach 3? All of those.

Fortunately for us, Gronk was ready to tackle something new, and our passion for zombies and the design directions we were exploring for Class3 were right up his alley. He was at the Lab with his hands down in the guts of CryENGINE 3 a few weeks later, and he’s now our go-to guy for effects, user interface, and lighting. He’s a fantastic artist, and we’re lucky to have him.

But there was something about his name that stuck in the back of my mind. Where had I heard it before? Oh yeah. He was the clown who called out Doug for the not-quite-red-enough truck. His comment is still there on Doug’s article, by the way, setting the maturity bar for all of us…

Hey Gronk — thanks for jumping in with us on this. You kick ass.

Jeff

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Gronk’s welcome to his fellow survivors!

AUTHOR: Emily DATE RECORDED: September 21, 2011 AT 12:12PM

A few months ago, the entire Lab went on a post-milestone adventure to a local shooting range to get some hands-on firearm experience. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that some of us really wanted to go back to keep improving our skills and that Brant, the author of our gun-focused Weapon of Choice article, has continued to make the shooting range his new home away from home.

A gun-enthusiast long before he came to Undead Labs, Brant’s been doing “research for Class3” by hitting the range after work once or twice a week. He always comes back the next day with notes about an increasing variety of firearms (one takeaway: he loves Czech weapons) and with stories about the wide range of interesting classes he’s been taking.

One of the most recent was a defensive pistol course — which his training instructor filmed and then leaked to us. Brant thought the video was kind of cheesy and didn’t even want to show it to everyone at the Lab, so (naturally) I decided to share it with you guys while he’s out for lunch.

By the way — the voice that you hear in the background is Brant’s instructor, Erik Schmidt (who you may have seen in our range trip videos). As a firearms and defensive tactics specialist with a law enforcement background and a hearty love of zombies, Erik has been a great resource for us and we’ll be interviewing him for a future article.

Now let’s see how long it takes for Brant to notice this post…

Emily

AUTHOR: Gronk DATE RECORDED: September 09, 2011 AT 20:10PM

The first thing you notice when you reach the Black Rock Desert is the brilliant white expanse of playa stretching as far as the eye can see. This region is all that remains of a long-evaporated pleistocene lakebed. The terrain is desolate — an arid sea of cracked earth coated with an incredibly fine, highly alkaline dust. There are no plants, no animals, and no insects.

Massive dust storms rip through the area with no warning, bringing winds as high as 70 mph and decimating anything not anchored down with rebar. Temperatures are extreme — during the day, the dry heat can spike well over 110 degrees, and can plummet to nearly freezing at night.

It’s the perfect place to celebrate Burning Man.

Last week, this seeming hell-on-earth was a vacation destination for me and the 55,000+ other people who congregated to form Black Rock City — a make-shift city that becomes Nevada’s ninth largest urban center for the one week it exists every year. It’s an impromptu civilization with few rules, minimal police presence, and essentially no currency. There’s an emphasis on freedom and self-expression, but in this harshest of environments, basic survival needs are an ever-present reality.

It was the apocalypse. Minus the zombies.

I’m not talking about the level of danger, of course. (Though there is that — people die at the event every year.) I did draw some interesting, practical lessons about desert survival from the trip, but there was something else more inspirational: Amidst all of the rows of tents and shacks and RVs and big, organized camps, amongst all of the people eager to trade or share their own unique talents and goods, I saw the echoes of something we’ve talked about here at the Lab. Not the immediate, destructive moment of the apocalypse. Not the intensely chaotic period that would follow. The aftermath. The attempt to come together and be a society again.

One of the most striking things about Burning Man is that the culture of this post-apocalyptic city isn’t just a copy of our society. Fundamentally, a lot of things change.

First, time loses meaning. It can be hard to imagine a day that isn’t ruled by the clock in our wired and go-go-go modern world, but out there it’s very different. Unless you happened to bring a watch or a clock with you, you quickly have no concrete idea of the time. It’s even easy to lose track of what day it is. In fact, most people at Burning Man choose to completely disconnect and intentionally stop keeping track of time.

Day and night become irrelevant because there’s always something to do. You end up sleeping when you don’t have the energy to go on, and you wake up when your body decides it’s rested enough. This is incredibly freeing during the event, but it makes acclimating back into the real world really difficult. (Emily, who also attended, still seems a little spacey if you ask me. )

Second, your sense of direction and spatial awareness changes dramatically. Away from the usual landmarks of home (and the crutch of GPS or online maps), getting lost becomes an everyday event. While all of the streets in the massive semi-circular city are named or numbered, it can be really hard to figure out where you are. As the week goes on, street signs are stolen or swapped by pranksters, the huge fixtures like the Man are burned, and new art installations pop up every day.

Aside from the group of DPW volunteers that head out to the desert early to set up the core of the city, there’s no Department of Transportation maintaining order and clarity. Throw in a dust storm or the nighttime darkness of a city with a limited electrical power grid, and navigation becomes a real challenge. Even with all the fires and illuminated art installations, you’d better have a headlamp or flashlight if you want to get around.

Third, you completely re-evaluate what does and doesn’t have value. At Burning Man, real-world currency is largely useless… much like it would be after a societal collapse. Would you want to trade the food you need to survive for some green paper? I sure wouldn’t. There’s a lot of fun bartering that goes on at Burning Man, but — unlike a real apocalyptic situation — there’s also a tremendous amount of people that share what they have with no expectation of reciprocation. Home brewers set up make-shift bars to share their beer and absinthe. People spend the mornings cooking up pounds bacon for passer-bys. Carts are set up to kick out sno-cones in the peak of the afternoon heat. Professional masseuses bring their massage chairs out to work on sore bodies.

Little things that would be easy to take for granted now assume an immense, life-saving value in a place like that. A duct tape patch I used to seal a hole in my air mattress saved me from a week of sleeping on the ground. I learned that vinegar is the best way to combat the damage done to your skin by the extremely alkaline playa dust that covers everything.  A chance to bathe is a godsend. Imagine the trade value — in a land with no running water — of a camp with a functioning shower. (Also worth considering in a world without indoor plumbing: a certain highly popular device handed out every year by the crew over at Pee Funnel Camp.)

Finally, without the same safeguards we have in everyday society, you really get to see the ways you can and can’t trust other people. Don’t get me wrong. Burning Man is a wonderful, fun, and (mostly) safe environment. It’s an arts festival. There were no roving bands of gun-toting marauders slaughtering innocents and setting camps on fire. There were no starving masses of refugees desperate for food we could scarcely spare. But even so, the generous spirit of sharing you see with most burners isn’t embraced by everyone. Throughout the week, I heard accounts of tents and camps in the outer parts of the city getting raided by thieves when their owners were out at night. Most people lock their bikes to keep them from getting stolen. Ultimately, it all comes down to human nature. The same behaviors and emotions that people carry with them every day exist on the playa, whether they manifest as love, hate, generosity, greed, hope, despair, or something else.

So often, when you play a game set in a dramatic situation, a lot of the characters in the world don’t seem to recognize the situation. You’re trying to save the world from certain doom. They’re looking to charge you as much as they can for the next weapon upgrade. In Class3, we’re trying to do something different. We want everything, from the look-and-feel of the world, to the behaviors and motivations of the NPCs, to reflect the situation you’re in. Last week I had a unique chance to get a first-hand look at the psychology of a society without rules. It was a best case scenario, but I still had an eye-opening look at how it affected me and the people around me, both for good and ill.

Now all we have to do is add the zombies.

Gronk

P.S. As I mentioned, some of the actual survival lessons were pretty interesting. Right before we set out, I’d checked my list, making sure that I had everything that people recommended for the week-long excursion, but as I was loading our camp’s truck for the trek, my first thought was “Are two coolers and a few boxes of food really going to be enough to feed more than a dozen people for an entire week?” It seemed like a stretch from what I was used to back in Seattle, but the answer, I discovered, was absolutely. By the end of the burn, we still had half of our dry goods left and a third of our cooler items left. Part of this was due to our eating habits changing in the desert — on the playa, you wind up eating when you’re hungry instead of adhering to regular meals. I found that I was generally too busy (or hot) to want to do much more than snack.

When we actually did cook, it became apparent that dried foods like pasta, rice, and beans really go a long way — they’re filling, they can be stored for months without spoiling, they don’t need to stay cold, and they generally don’t take a lot of prep to make. If an outbreak happened tomorrow, make sure you stockpile this stuff — it’ll be worth more than gold.