Tea Leaves

Lately, some friends and I have been playing a web-based massively multiplayer online game called Urban Dead.

The basic concept behind the game is that you are in a town that is infested by zombies. You either play a survivor (one of various different “classes” — policeman, soldier, fireman, scientist — or you play a recently animated corpse.

The thing about this game is: it isn’t any fun. Not even a little. Nearly everything about the game is bad. The user interface is bad. The graphic design is bad. The game is paced super-slowly. Most of your time is spent waiting for “action points” to accrue. Or spending action points trying to hit someone, and missing. Earning a level can take a week. As we play it, everyone involved is complaining vocally about how almost every aspect of the game sucks.

But we’re still playing it.

The only explanation I can come up with is: “Wow, we sure do love us some zombies!” This leads me ineluctably to the conclusion that the first company to deploy a zombie-based MMORPG that is actually fun will become rich beyond their wildest dreams.