Undead Labs

I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming. Or, given the ichor and rotting flesh everywhere, I’m probably having a nightmare, but either way I can’t possibly be awake.

How did I get here? How did I wind up with potentially the best community job ever?

Well, it started with a lot of swearing.

Technically, it started with a passion for Golden Age science fiction and fantasy, but I digress. Anyway, at the turn of the century I had a rant site, where I raged about an MMORPG that I loved more than anything. (This is why I never get upset with the screaming guy on a forum. I know exactly where he’s coming from.) From there I moved to writing about games, and from there I moved into community management. I didn’t know what I was doing, but in 2001, neither did anyone else. I figured I’d just treat people the way I as a gamer/sentient adult would like to be treated, and so far it’s worked out pretty well.

All of the great developers are players at heart, and after years of gaming, experienced players have a solid grasp of what makes a good game.I have been managing game communities ever since. There are a lot of ways to do my job, but the way I do it assumes that when it comes to bringing a virtual world to life, players and developers all in this together. It works because there really isn’t much of a difference. All of the great developers are players at heart, and after years of gaming, experienced players have a solid grasp of what makes a good game.

Players and developers working together create something bigger than just a game, and the interaction between them raises a mere product into the realm of art — or magic. It’s why I’m still here doing this job over a decade later. There’s no better buzz to be had.

The development team is building a world, but the players have to live in it.What makes the magic happen is communication. Everyone needs to know what’s going on with each other. Everyone has to be treated with respect, as equals with a vested interest in the success of the project. The team is building a world, but the players have to live in it.

So I’ve always seen my job as the conduit. I’m your representative inside the company, and I’m the company’s ambassador to you. I solve problems, I argue advocate, I bear bad news when I must, and I cheer. I support fansites, wrangle guilds, keep the information flowing, and ensure your voice is heard.

What I’m not is a marketing person. I’m not here to sell you anything. I’m here to make sure you’re never sorry you bought it, and to connect you with thousands of likeminded people.

I’m not alone in holding this non-marketing view of community, but I am decidedly in the minority. That’s why I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming. I have not often gotten to work with a team that shares my philosophy on community building. Undead Labs does to such an extent that I keep looking around my home office for the surveillance camera. I can’t find one, and pinching myself is only resulting in bruises. Ergo, this is really happening.

Many of you reading this have been following Class3 (and drooling over Class4) for much longer than I have, so I’m going to need your help getting up to speed on what has got you excited. The team is highly aware of what you’ve said so far, but there are some mean deadlines looming and everyone’s got to get their nose and every other appendage to the grindstone. No rest for the rotting!

I got to see a kickass demo of Class3, and it gave me the heebie jeebies for three days.Also, because there are no secrets on the internet, I better get this out of the way now: I’m afraid of zombies. They freak me the hell out. If the world we’re building was real, I would be in the fetal position. The first chance I got, I’d fortify some kind of tower, chop down the ladder, and not move until one of you brainiacs built up a compound big enough that I could just stay inside and garden all day. Or assemble explosives. Whatever. Just as long as I didn’t have to look at some shambling, lurching monstrosity liable to rip off its own leg in order to kick my ass.

As such, I haven’t seen any zombie movies. (This is especially awkward on a personal level, because I live with the world’s biggest zombie aficionado, and there are literally thousands of horror movies and splatteriffic games lining the walls of the basement.) I got to see a kickass demo of Class3, and it gave me the heebie jeebies for three days. There’s this thing, with a landmine, and a truck, and the air was just FILLED with zombie parts, and…I think I need to lie down now.

What I mean is that with every game I’ve ever worked on, the community has taught me what really counts. I’m coming to you with no preconceived notions on zombies, or sandbox gaming for that matter, and I am psyched to find out where you want to go.

—Sanya

[Read my introduction post for more about why we think Sanya is awesome. —Jeff]

Today it’s my great pleasure to announce the end of our search for the ultimate community director. After months of resume reviews, phone discussions, and all-day interviews at the Lab, we’ve finally welcomed the inestimable Sanya Weathers to Team Zed.

Sanya has excellent credentials in the online community field, including six years as Director of Community for Mythic Entertainment (if you’ve ever played Dark Age of Camelot, you probably know her as Sanya Thomas) and a regular contributor to MMORPG.com. But we were looking for more than that; we were looking for someone who genuinely likes people; who radiates positive energy; and who views building and nurturing a great game community as a simple matter of communicating in an honest, no-bullshit manner and treating people well. I know those sound like obvious qualities for anyone choosing to build a career working with online communities, but that’s surprisingly not always the case. As you’ll discover over the next few months, it’s the only way Sanya knows how to operate.

Does this mean you can expect regular updates and more information about Class3? Oh hell yeah. You don’t hire a kickass community director if you have nothing to say…

Be sure to check out Sanya’s introductory post to find out more.

Welcome to Team Zed, Sanya!

Last month in our Q&A Ragdolls, Land Mines, and Tentacles, we promised to reveal the composer for Class3.

Today we’re excited to announce we’ve signed BAFTA award-winning composer Jesper Kyd to the project. Jesper is perhaps best known for scoring the Hitman and Assassin’s Creed series, both of which earned him numerous industry awards. Now Jesper’s capturing the Faded Americana style of Class3 in a dark cinematic score mixing live acoustic performances.

Undead Labs Audio Director Kevin Patzelt has been working closely with Jesper over the past few months. Kevin shares his thoughts on the musical goals for Class3, and why Jesper is the ideal composer for the project, in the article Scoring the Apocalypse.

Welcome to our world, Jesper!

Jeff

Happy 2012, fellow survivors!

After a well-earned break for the holidays, Team Zed is back in the Lab and pounding away at the code, art, sound, and design for ‘Class3′.

To celebrate the new year—and, okay, because we haven’t updated you in a few weeks—I took some “spy cam” footage in the Lab today with my trusty iPhone. We’re not quite ready to post official trailers at this point, but I snuck up on Foge as he was testing out some ambush functionality on the Lab TV, so you might catch a glimpse of some early-alpha Class3 gameplay goodness.

Or maybe more than a glimpse…

As we jump into the new year we also bid farewell to Emily, who took point on our website and kept in touch with our community and fansites such as MMOZed.com. Emily is off to new adventures, and we wish her well. Don’t worry—we’ll be keeping you up-to-date on our progress here on the Undead Labs website, and we’ll also be announcing plans for a more robust community site soon.

We had a tremendously productive year in 2011, and we’re anticipating an even better 2012. I’m happy to say that Class3 is on schedule and looking great. We’re excited to show it to you and the rest of the world officially—assuming I don’t get my ass kicked for leaking unofficial gameplay footage…

Jeff

Update: It looks like our comment system is biffed. We’re working on it. For now you can leave comments for the dev team on the Lab Facebook page.

Update 2: Comments fixed. Thanks Liz!

From the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was 13, I was hooked. That stark, black-and-white photography, the unrelenting brutality of the walking dead, the pressure-cooker intensity of the conflict between those few desperate survivors, and that ending! Zombies had their hooks in me and never let go. Dawn followed Night, of course, and from there the rest of Romero’s works, Fulci’s Italian giallo zombie movies, anything I could get my hands on. I devoured the movies, dragged my Dungeons & Dragons group kicking and screaming into games of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and generally watched, played, and read just about anything zombie-related I could get my hands on.

Still, just about any fan knows that all things zombie aren’t created equal. It’s a polarizing genre, encompassing classics of cinema like my old friend Night of the Living Dead, modern blockbusters like Zombieland, and, let’s face it, some pretty cheesy (but still fun) low-budget schlock-fests. Now that I get to do this for a living, I find myself analyzing the zombie stories I’ve loved for more than half my life, asking myself: What separates a fun zombie story from a great one?

Well, I’ve got a theory about that…

At the heart of the matter, good zombie stories aren’t really about the zombies at all. Zombies are a catalyst for story, the fuel that makes the engine run. But just like fuel without an engine can’t take you anywhere, zombies without the core foundation of story can’t move you. Sure, it’s fun to brain them with a tire iron, but by themselves zombies are just monsters to be killed.

Characters, and the conflicts between them, are that core foundation. They’re what the story is really about. They give context to all the zombie-killing, supply-scrounging, base-building action and make your decisions mean something. When you can see the impact your choices make on the world as a whole and on these few scared, scattered people who are your fellow survivors, those moments stick with you.

Picture this scenario: Your friend Ed is sick, maybe dying, and nobody wants to risk him turning in the middle of the night and eating everyone in their sleep. If you can’t get him a doctor, the others are going to throw him out onto the street — assuming they don’t just put a bullet in his head and be done with it. You know of a doctor who survived this whole thing, but he’s not feeling charitable. He’s got expenses, he says, and the meds he needs aren’t easy to come by. He wants more than you can barter, and more than you can hope to scrounge before Ed’s too far gone to save. Maybe you’ve never drawn a gun on a man in anger before, or maybe you have, but the question is: How desperate are you to save your friend?

Here’s another one for you: You haven’t found any food in several days. Your stores are running dangerously low, and you come back from a scouting run to find that one of the other survivors in your camp has been caught stealing from the storeroom. That’s the difference between life and death out here, not just for you but for the whole community that trusts you and relies on you. When Jeb mutters “Somebody get a rope,” what’s the call you’re going to make?

These are the kinds of stories we want to tell — stories that dig down into the people who survived the zombie apocalypse huddled together in makeshift habitation. We want to examine the conflicts that arise in these pressure-cooker situations, whether they’re related to long-term survival or the stresses of post-apocalyptic life or folks who just plain don’t like each other. We want to use the zombie apocalypse as a metaphor, to examine the human condition the way all the great zombie films do.

I have a little trick when I’m writing for Class3. Everything I write, whether it’s a character (like crusty old Doc Hanson or those trouble-causing Wilkerson boys), a plot element, or a chunk of dialogue, I ask myself: “Would this still be awesome if it didn’t have zombies?” If the answer is anything less than a resounding “yes!”, it goes back to the drawing board. Zombies bring the awesome to just about anything, but I don’t want to give you folks “just about anything”. I want to give you the awesomeness of zombies on top of the awesomeness of a compelling story full of interesting characters with nuanced, believable motivations.

Everything I’ve learned in my career as a writer and every project I’ve worked on has prepared me for writing Class3. Alpha Protocol taught me about forcing the player to make hard choices with no clear right or wrong answer, and making the consequences of those decisions have a lasting impact on the game space. Fallout: New Vegas taught me to build a believable post-apocalyptic society, and the tricks and techniques for writing a coherent story in an open-world game where any character can die at any time. My years of writing tabletop gaming books for World of Darkness were all about creating moments of evocative, intense horror and emotional conflict between characters.

So, there you have it: My philosophy on writing zombie games. Take the zombies out of the equation and be damn sure you’ve got a rock-solid story full of interesting, well-developed characters and exciting action.

Then put the zombies back in so those characters can smash their heads in with tire irons.

Travis

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

Frank: So, how many are you holding back?
Joe: How many what?
Frank: You know… bullets. For just in case.
Joe: Jesus, don’t even start that shit with me, man!
Frank: What? You know it’s better than some of the alternatives. You ever seen a person starve to death?
Joe: No, and neither have you.
Frank: Okay, but I have seen what those things can do to a person. And if it comes down to that or a bullet…I got three. One for me, one for Millie, and one for Peter.
Joe: I think I’m gonna be sick.
Frank: I know it’s ugly, man, but you got a wife and kids too. You ought to think about it. It’d be kinder.
Joe: Just…go away, Frank.

This isn’t Shakespeare. It’s also not Stephen King. It’s sure not Emily Post. Hell, it doesn’t sound like book or movie dialogue at all.

And that’s exactly why we asked Travis Stout to join Team Zed to write Class3.

I often have a hard time with dialogue in movies and games, because it sometimes just doesn’t sound like the way real people talk. Like most of you, I didn’t grow up around Oxford professors or jet-setting, poodle-toting socialites. I grew up in a “normal” town in Texas, surrounded by real people—college graduates, high-school dropouts, doctors, farmers, cool people, jerks—and real people don’t say, “Joe, I think it’s time for us to discuss the number of bullets you are holding back as a hedge against the worst-case scenario.” They say, “So, how many are you holding back?”

We want to make a game that feels real—like a place you could actually be, doing things that could actually happen—and one of the most important aspects of that is finding a writer who understands how to build a believable world and fill it with believable characters.

In August we posted a job opening for a writer to our website that began, “If you’re a passionate, professional author or game writer who loves horror, knows your zombies, and wants to tell the story of the struggle to make it in a ravaged world, there may be a spot for you on Team Zed.”

That’s how we found Travis, an industry vet who’s been writing professionally in the game industry for a decade. He’s contributed heavily to Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and campaign settings (notably the 4th Edition Dark Sun campaign setting), White Wolf Game Studios settings (particularly the World of Darkness products), and most recently, extensively to the writing and design for Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3. And, fortunately for us, he’s also a hardcore zombie fan.

After sorting through hundreds of applicants and subjecting the final ten or so to an arduous three-month interview process, we knew that Travis was the guy we wanted, and were able to convince him to join us to helping us to build the very real world of Class3.

Welcome aboard, Travis!

Now, how many are you holding back, man?

Jeff

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

Years ago, my future mother-in-law was curious about what I did for a living and asked me a question about being a game animator, “So do you have to draw every frame?” I thought to myself, “Thank God I don’t have to create 30 drawings for every second of gameplay.”

How could I explain it all? Sometimes what I do is technical, like when you adjust the weighting on a rig so moving a character’s wrist doesn’t make his shoulder flex in a weird way. Other times, it’s a form of acting, creating personality and mood with a stance or a movement. Often, it’s simply about getting the motion right, adjusting how a foot eases into or out of a pose, or showing kinetic energy transferring from one part of the body to another.

Working on a game, you use the same techniques as movie animators, but you often have extreme timing and movement restrictions to fit game balance requirements, and you rarely get to build an animation with just one camera shot in mind. You try to make things look great from every angle. It’s challenging, but when it all comes together, you take a beautiful, static model created by the art team and make people see it as a living, breathing being.

This is what I do.

As a kid, I always liked to draw, but the thing that really inspired me was animation. I would watch Looney Tunes and Disney classics no matter how many times I had seen them before. I loved old Ray Harryhausen movies like Jason and the Argonauts from 1963, and all of his Sinbad movies. Early on, I knew I wanted to be an animator.

As I got into my late teens, though, I learned that opportunities for animation schooling and jobs were few and far between. So when it came time to go to college, I looked for something more practical. A year of drawing bolts and geodesic dome houses taught me that architectural and mechanical drafting was not my true calling. I moved to graphic design next — first at the University of Washington, then transferring to Cornish College of the Arts to finish my BFA. It was interesting, but not inspiring.

Then I got lucky. In 1989, the last semester of my senior year, Cornish added a brand-new class to its curriculum: computer graphics. It probably sounds funny now, but back then things like PageMaker, Freehand, and Macromind Director were cutting edge. These weren’t just new pieces of software; they were entirely new ways to do things. Having access to Director let me try my hand at animation — I still remember that first experience of putting together a series of images and making it come to life.

That was my way into the field. In 1991, a buddy at Microsoft was looking for someone who knew Director to create animations for a new application called Cinemania. I didn’t know how to animate very well yet, and I barely knew the software, but I was in the right place at the right time. I knew this was the chance to do what I’d always wanted, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away.

Over the next few years, I used every free moment to get better and looked for learning opportunities wherever I could. Through a friend at work, I managed to get after-hours access to an expensive SGI computer running Softimage, a high end 3D program. I stayed late every night and taught myself how to model and animate in 3D.

My timing couldn’t have been better, because a game development boom was just starting in Seattle. I felt like I’d landed my dream job when I went to a little studio called Sucker Punch, where I got the chance to animate all of Sly Cooper’s moves in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Racoonus. Up until then I had only done small pieces of character animation, so this was the first time I was ever responsible for fully animating a character — especially a cartoony one with a personality like Sly.

During my time at Sucker Punch, I learned a ton about how animation affects the responsiveness of a character in a game. Animators are trained to have the character anticipate action, but in games, anticipation tends to go out the window in favor of getting the immediate response players expect when they press that button on their controller. With little to no anticipation, you start to learn little tricks that help sell the animation and direct the viewer’s eye.

Until this point in my career, I’d been primarily animating characters by hand. I didn’t have much experience with motion capture (mocap) animation, but this changed when I started working on MAG. While I was responsible for hand keying all of the first person and weapon animations, I also helped direct mocap shoots and modify the mocap data to match the game’s animation style. This experience helped me with my work on SOCOM4, where I was responsible for not only hand keyed character, vehicle, and cinematic animations, but also for character mocap.

I first found out about Undead Labs from my friend and old co-worker, Steve. When I learned that he and two of my other old colleagues, Foge and Shaun, were there too, I knew I had to be a part of the team.

I think that third-person action games are the most fun and challenging to work on as an animator because they really let you put a lot of personality into the characters. Animating combat is also one of my favorite things, and zombie combat is especially appealing to me because you gotta animate over the top!

It seemed like the Lab had everything I could want in a company and a project, and I feel very fortunate to be here.

Class3 presents a great opportunity to do things in animation and in games that I’ve never done before. At this point, I have been animating for games for nearly 20 years, but I’m still hungry to learn new things. As an animator, you can always improve — you’re always learning and there’s always more to learn.

I look forward to the challenge.

Reid

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

Earlier this year we posted an open position for a talented animator to join Team Zed. A few short weeks later, we deleted it. Since it was rare for us to post a position on our website in the first place — most of us at the Lab have been working together for years — we immediately received questions about why we had removed the job post.

Simple: Reid Johnson had found us, and we’d found Reid Johnson.

Reid is a talented industry veteran who has been animating top-tier video games for more than a decade. Reid is most well-known as the animator responsible for animating Sly Cooper in Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper and the Theivius Raccoonus, for which he won a “Best Animation” award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Before joining us at the Lab, Reid was at Zipper Interactive for six years creating the more realistic animation for the SOCOM and MAG franchises

Creating  motion-captured — or “mocap” — human animation for military shooters like SOCOM and MAG is one thing, but Reid made a freaking raccoon look fluid, graceful, and full of larcenous intention. And he did it all by hand. Turns out, they don’t make mocap suits for raccoons. They do make mocap suits for zombies — and we’ll be putting them to good use in Class3 — but Reid’s got the talent to inject that just-over-the-top coolness you get from hand-built key-framed animation, so we’ll get the best of both worlds.

I can’t wait to see what he can do with a zed horde, a desperate survivor, a lead pipe, and a proper dismemberment system.

One final note: Reid is the coolest character I’ve ever met. I don’t mean cool like celebrity-snowboard-god cool, or hipster-coffee-snob cool, either. I mean cool as in, well, chill. I just don’t think the guy can be rattled, stressed out, or even surprised. He just exudes a sense of “Relax people, I got this shit.”

When Z-Day comes, I’m with Reid.

Jeff

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

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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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…

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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.

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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

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(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.)

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!