The Xbox 360 has clearly become one of the central fronts in the battle against Anti-Zombie media, with its continued exclusives and early releases of Anti-Zombie games. As previously discussed, however, the Marketplace for Xbox downloadable games is a hotbed of Anti-Zombie media, and Microsoft seemingly has no problem letting legions of Living Supremacist developers hawk their wares on the system. If anything, they encourage it.

Case in point, the Xbox is soon to get two big downloadable Anti-Zom titles:

Undead Labs has a deal with Microsoft Studios for two XBLA exclusive zombie titles. In ode to Max Brooke’s top-seller Zombie Survival Guide, these two titles are being code named Class3 and Class4. Class3, the first title scheduled for release, will be an open world, story driven game that can be played in single player or co-op. Class4, though part of the same world as Class3, is more of the massive-multiplayer online (MMO) nature.

Gamasutra recently interviewed Jeff Strain, Undead’s founder and Executive Producer, about the direction and goals of thes games. He says that Class3 is definitely the “most ambitious XBLA title to date” and will utilize a “cutting edge, high caliber 3D engine”, but that they will have to do a lot of tweaking to achieve the open-world environment they’re looking for. They want these worlds to be very much like MMO worlds that you’re used to, with every part feeling unique and different, as well as each decision having a dynamic effect instead of being all pre-scripted.

(Thanks again, Max Brooks)

Yes, Microsoft is actively complicit in this latest wave of Zombie-bashing game development, and that is extremely troubling for the ZRC. The prospect of a multi-billion dollar megacorporation pushing the distrust and fear of, not to mention active hatred for our clients is daunting. ‘World War Z’ the Movie (not to be confused with World War Z: The Placemat) only has a hundred million and change to play around with after all – Microsoft has billions. How devoted are they to the evil cause of spreading fear? Is this just an attempt to cash in on the hate in a mercenary fashion? We can’t say, as yet.

The games themselves sound pretty awful, and we’ve talked about how the multiplayer bonding over virtual Zombie slaughter disturbs the ZRC in the context of games like ‘Left 4 Dead’; these two new titles appear to be angling for a similar experience.

The ZRC will of course continue to monitor this situation and keep you apprised as more details emerge.

Tags: Max Brooks is a Jerk, Social Justice, Videogames

This entry was posted by John Sears on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.