Zombies are also simpler to play. "You don't need to worry about careful resource management or internecine politics," as human players struggling to survive do, "you just follow the feeding groans, smash at the barricades and eat people." That's not to say being a zombie is all about brainless carnage. Zombies have some freedom in the game itself, allowing them to make choices, such as being able "to single out one survivor over another, to try to lead a horde to a particular building, to get bored of [easy kills] and drift away from the mall, [which] makes them a much more interesting, and genuinely terrifying, opponent. As every connoisseur of zombie movies knows, there's nothing worse than finding out that the terrifying horde of undead is thinking.
From a storytelling perspective, Urban Dead's simple interface and deep gameplay allows each player to tell his own particular tale. Despite Davis' interest in telling stories and designing games, he's pleased with the hands-off approach he's taking with his game. "I think it's good that every player has a chance to build their own story," he says. "By avoiding any big, official, ongoing plot, players have been able to project their own ideas onto the game without being contradicted by everything. Because everything outside of the official plot is reduced to survivor dialogue and graffiti, anything that doesn't fit with your perception of the game - perhaps your safe house has been invaded by a squad claiming to be time-traveling robot vampire hunters - can be just dismissed as another sadly deluded survivor cult."
The central story of this massively multiplayer game is, essentially, individual. The rise and fall of a player character can be safely ignored, if it doesn't fit within another player's sandbox, a freedom it extends to all who sign up to play. While Mister Tophat is a fascinating fallen socialite struggling to survive in the wake of the zombie apocalypse to me, to the unfortunates he stumbles across and devours, he's just another well-dressed nut in search of brains.
[em]Shannon Drake is a Contributing Editor for The Escapist and changed his name when he became a citizen. It used to be Merkw
