There should be an online zombie game. Not an MMO. It need be a large world, but with only a few players. Realism would be key. The big hitters like WoW all reside in fantasy realms and have thousands of people running around and thousands of non-people standing around waiting to be spoken to. It is difficult to take anything serious there except for tedium. I cannot engross myself in such a place. A zombie game could take place in the modern world we recognize as our own. The only belief we would need to suspend is that of the walking dead, and that is a subject just a stone throw from contemporary bio-chemical warfare. Unlike wizardry and mythological beasts, the undead presents a fantasy that is much more intriguing to mankind as a whole because it dissolves the one static truth we have ever known: death. Death is the only constant that has ever been, and changing that changes everything.

The game would be about surviving rather than killing. Other games focus on you dealing out as much wrath as you possibly can; this would be about doing all you can to make it through another day. That is not to say you won’t be killing zombies; there will be plenty of that to go around; it will be a part of your survival. Choices will be hard and crucial. You will need to decide when to fortify, when to flee, when to search for other surviving players. Your chances will be much better with another person by your side, but can you trust him not to just kill you and take your supplies? Or were you planning the same thing? You would have to learn how to survive in this environment, how to scavenge for the materials you need, and how to fashion a weapon from what you find.

The world has to be meticulously created, every possible move thought out ahead of time by designers. If you wanted to tape a kitchen knife to a broom stick, the game would have to have already thought of that and calculated its effectiveness. Nothing a player could think to do cold be left unanswered, no matter how foolish or genius.

The game could combine all the shining factors of other genres into an awesome package. The skill and coordination of shooters, customization and story of role playing games, chills of survival horror, subtlety of stealth games, cooperation of MMOs, paranoia of espionage, critical thinking of strategy games, etc.

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