Today, Jeff Strain (who left NCsoft back in August) announced that he has founded a new company in Seattle called Undead Labs. Strain is a veteran of both Blizzard and ArenaNet, having worked on franchises like World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo and Guild Wars. In fact, back in 1999 Strain formed the initial team and started development on World of Warcraft, so he knows a thing or two about creating MMOs.
“Every time I see a good zombie movie with friends, we spend days debating our strategies for surviving the zombie apocalypse,” said Strain. “The police station or the supermarket? Garden rake or staple gun? Bach or The White Stripes? I’m a game developer, so I’d probably be useless for anything other than ghoul bait, but I’m excited to have the opportunity to build an MMOZ that lets us put those strategies to the test and find out for sure.”
Strain is making his first MMO about zombies for consoles, bucking convention where most MMO games release on PC in a fantasy setting.
"I think an existing MMO company is very hesitant to abandon its loyal PC base,” said Strain to Destructiod. “By starting a new company... I don't have to worry about those issues, and I think its the best way to have a singular focus on console gaming. I think it's time to shake (the industry) up a little bit and go in a different direction.”
"When I say MMO or RPG to you right now, you probably think fantasy. You probably have certain expectations for how the mechanics work... there's this overwhelming template for how you play these games," he added. "I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but by changing platforms and changing genre and having a fresh perspective you can go shake up some of the fundamentals of how the game is played.
We can’t fault Undead Labs for trying something new and Strain’s pedigree would suggest that he might be able to pull it off; we wish him the best of luck.
