Kill Ten Rats Interviews Jeff Strain About Undead Labs' Console Zombie MMOG

You might recall a while back we posted news that game industry veteran Jeff Strain formed Undead Labs with the intention of developing a console-based zombie MMOG. Since then we have been anxious to learn a few more details and this week we got a little insight into Jeff's thoughts on the design of Undead Labs' upcoming MMOG. Kill Ten Rats managed to catch up to Jeff and speak with him about several aspects of the the team's focus on development. One thing Jeff states is that the complexity of an MMOG should never be an excuse for lack of polish. He also goes on to discuss the why he dislikes the term MMO and the challenges of bringing a game such as this to a console such as the lack of a keyboard.

This is a huge issue, and probably the most significant risk to the design of the game. Keyboards don’t mix with consoles, and we’re not going to pretend that they do, or try to convince you that they do. Fortunately, voice communication is well entrenched in the console market, which can provide a partial solution, but I’m not convinced that it can fully replace the organic (and anonymous) nature of communication by keyboard. So yeah, we have some hard thinking and design work ahead of us to solve this issue.