MMORgue

I’m totally fascinated by the development of these massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs or MMORPGs, for role paying games). There’s a bunch out there: Everquest, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes to name just a few.

And people are doing some really interesting things with them – using the frameworks of the games to create new kinds of entertainment, like talkshows (thanks to John Pavlus for pointing this one out to me), and building offline economies from in-game play.

But screw all that theoretical, I-wanna-write-for-Wired-circa-1994 stuff (but I do! Wired editors, if you’re reading, I’ll write for ya). Here’s an MMOG with zombies: Urban Dead.

Urban Dead looks pretty basic right now – it’s not a graphical game, but more like one of those old-style text adventure video games from the 1970s and early 1980s. It’s charming in that sense and frustrating, too. Moving block to block through a zombie-infested city, typing your statements into a box, etc., to make things happen. And it’s probably never going to be very scary, what with the lack of graphics, music, or much text besides the basics of what’s happening.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun. I’ve only been on it for a few hours and am liking it enough that I’m looking forward to my next session.

Go, check it out. And look for me, my character’s name is Cincinnatus. Let’s kill some zombies together.

Edit: Well, my first character died. Lame! I’m now TakeTwo.