Zombies are the new Nazis, says Strain

By Robert Purchese Published 24 November, 2009

Enjoy your new "guilt-free meat-puppet".

Guild Wars creator and Undead Labs founder Jeff Strain has told Eurogamer that zombies are to videogames what Nazis, communists and terrorists once were: "a guilt-free meat-puppet" to blow chunks out of with wild abandon.

"The reason zombies are so powerful and transcend fantasy is because right now they are the modern, societal guilt-free meat-puppet," said Strain in an interview.

"We've been through the Nazi phase, we've been through the communist phase, we've been through the terrorist phase. Those were all at various times in history fair game in the gaming culture. Right now zombies are fulfilling that need for us.

"That no-rules, no-guilt mentality is something that people really resonate with," he added.

Strain's preoccupation with zombies has resulted in the formation of Undead Labs, a developer focusing solely on the creation of a mature, massively-multiplayer online zombie game for consoles.

"I wouldn't say I believe zombies are more popular than elves. Zombies have a larger penetration in society but there's no question that fantasy has been an enduring and very powerful genre," he explained. "My concern about making a fantasy game at this point is that it's been done; it's been done a hundred times. We've told those stories, we've explored those universes, we've spun variations off of core Tolkien canon so many times.

"What's happening is that the more we try to come up with new fantasy universes, the more we're having to be esoteric about how they work and what the mechanics are. The great thing about the zombie universe for an MMO is that it's largely unexplored territory."

The project, called MMOZ for now, won't be released before 2012, but Strain wants all zombie-enthused developers to shamble his way.

Moan your way over to our brain-laden interview with Jeff Strain for the concepts, ideals and goals of his ambitious MMOZ.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (22) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Skurmedel #1 2 years ago

    BraaAaainnzz... also he's working on a Zombie game and is called Strain. Cool.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #2 2 years ago

    Strain? As in what you do before you push out a turd?

    I like Left 4 Dead as much as the next man, but Zombies have gone way past cliche in videogames these days.

  • Skurmedel #3 2 years ago

    Thinking more about Andromeda strain or a strain of disease... but whatever floats (bwahaha) your boat.
    Edited by 1 at 24/11/09 @ 10:04

  • Toothball #4 2 years ago

    I read the same thing a couple of months back in this article: [link url=http://kotaku .com/5374610/ive-been-shot
    ]http://kotaku .com/5374610/ive-been-shot
    [/link]

    Not that shooting zombies is a bad thing. I'm quite keen on it on the whole. Definitely more keen that shooting Nazis actually.

  • Shinetop #5 2 years ago

    Zombies are the new nazis in terms of being the first subject game designers with no imagination fall back on.

  • Schiraman #6 2 years ago

    @Shinetop:

    Too fucking right.

    I'm looking at you Gearbox.

  • smoothpete #7 2 years ago

    I've been saying this for a while. Zombies are the minor league sociopath's victim of choice

  • optimusprym8 #8 2 years ago

    question is, will zombies still be "in" in 3 years time? I get the feeling this game will come far too late. If it was coming out next year then maybe would still be interested but how many other zombies games/add-ons will have been and gone by then? Probably too many
    Edited by 1 at 24/11/09 @ 10:41

  • AaronTurner #9 2 years ago

    I just wonder why you actually read this site. You only ever seem to complain about it. Surely you would have better luck finding a new site ratger than trying to change how this one reports news stories?

  • MiniAmin #10 2 years ago

    I think the next step is human hybrids. Gears of War and Killzone have fantastic enemies. They're human enough to hate but they're also quite dehumanised - so it's guilt free.

    Enemies like Helghast and Locust are much more imaginative and fun than Zombies imo.

  • KDR_11k #11 2 years ago

    I wonder how long it'll be until Jews fill that role...

  • kingmong #12 2 years ago

    zombie oh zombie. zombie no go-go unless you tell him to go...

    great, another zombie story. every news story since yesterday lunch has got fela kuti permanently stuck in my head.

    actually that is pretty great

    /listens to zombie again

  • Doctor_What #13 2 years ago

    Yep, he really just said: zombies are massively overdone... And now we're doing a game about them too!

  • DutchDemons #14 2 years ago

    Is it totally psychopathic to say i don't feel any guilt when killing 'any' type of videogame character?

  • Evolution #15 2 years ago

    Rights for zombies!

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #16 2 years ago

    I wonder how long it'll be until Jews fill that role...

    About as long as it takes a group of Zionist extremists to perpetrate a successful attack against the United States (plus 1 year's production time). It worked for the Muslims. And the Japanese and their Nazi allies (though they had to wait 50 years or so until the tech caught up).

  • jonfon #17 2 years ago

    [link url=http://www.class3outbreak.com/zombie-outbreak-simulator/
    ]http://ww w.class3outbreak.com/zombie-out...[/link]

    All the fun of a Zombie Apoclypse, none of the guilt (unless you feel sorry for wee Bullfrog-esque style sprites).

  • RumpyStumpy #18 2 years ago

    EarlBassett is a prick

  • YourMessageHere #19 2 years ago

    He forgot orcs, aliens and mutant body-horrors.

    The zombie craze may be over by the time this sees release but that doesn't mean it won't find an audience. It's not as if there are no games with enemy Nazis, Communists, terrorists, orcs, aliens, mutant body-horrors or giant crabs coming out nowadays, after all; nor is it right to say zombies in games are new - remember Carmageddon? Quake? Zombies are, sadly, just flavour of the month.

    Personally I like enemies to generally be the equal, or potential equal, of the player character, which is part of why zombies and aliens are rubbish enemies IMO.

  • PlugMonkey #20 2 years ago

    /Agrees with yourmessagehere

    What is it with all the zombie hate? It's not even if there are THAT many zombie games, and the zombie games that there are are infinitely more varied in how they play than the latest car-racey-game or war-goes-BANG game or orcs-elves-and-magic game or connect-the-three-coloured-crystals game, and I never hear people complaining about them being 'chronically over done'.

    The problem isn't that there are too many zombie games now, it's that zombies have been criminally under-represented in games for the last 20 years. It's good to see some brave developers finally redressing the balance! ;)

  • Nephirion #21 2 years ago

    You could mod L4D2 replacing the skins with Nazi ones, yeah that would be cool ...

  • funkateer #22 2 years ago

    Remembering the zombies in Romero's Dawn of the Dead wandering around in shopping malls as a biting social commentary, a zombie MMO suddenly feels totally appropriate :)