Battle.net has fallen by the wayside since it's late nineties heyday but when Blizzard spoke to Kotaku back in June they were keen to stress that the new 'n' improved service would be a centerpiece of the Diablo III and StarCraft II experience.

The confirmed list is after the jump, but the rumors include an Achievements system, Accountability (to track cheaters and those who use hacks) and Voice Over IP in-game chat.

Multiplayer has come a long way since the turn of the century, of course. Do we still need something like Battle.net?

Features that DIII have been able to get Blizzard to confirm:

* Excellent Ping
* Channels and Chat in-game
* Ladders and Rankings, secured against cheating.
* Extended stats, with possibility to see who D/C etc
* AMM-type Matchmaking
* Avatars, Images and Icons to represent yourself
* Diablo III Hardcore mode
* Friends/Ignore Lists with advanced management
* Clan Support
* Automated Tournaments

Definite Battle.net 2.0 Features [DIII via Slashdot]

Anyway, this is hardly news, but AC has a control system that will take me a week to get comfortable manipulating. The game is a perfect example of how increasingly complex controllers will give rise to increasingly complex-to-control games. GamePro has a list of 5 suggestions for paring down the buttons and options.

• Reduce the number of face and shoulder buttons
• Merge "Start" and "Select" into one button
• Lose the D-pad
• Use motion-sensing controls (Newton, anyone?)
• Add attachment peripheral (Newt-chuk, anyone?)

Sounds good to me, but I think this is more a question of developer discipline in keeping character control lean and uncomplicated. A lot of extra buttons on a controller will eventually be used of course, so a redesign that strips out some of the lesser-employed options can't hurt. But the controller is not the game.

Five Easy Ways to Fix Complicated Controllers [GamePro]

By Florian Eckhardt.

That adorable, auburn-haired sprite with the exposed milky calves, hugging her violin? That's Hanah Stuart... teenage girl, classical violinist, and the pixy who casually pranced upon a high school auditorium stage and rocked the Halo 2 theme song so hard that Steve Vai started spitting up bloody chunks of lung.

A couple of weeks ago, I reported on this YouTube video of an unknown band, fronted by a blurry, undefined violinist. Everyone loved it. Marty O'Donnell, the audio director of Bungie himself, cooed in appreciation. But no one really knew who they were.

Well, wonder no longer. In this exclusive interview, Hanah sets the record straight on the origins of the Halo 2 performance, talks all about the band she's with, Corporeal, and the various gangly teenage geniuses behind it. She also totally smacks down Steve Vai and Yo Yo Ma.

By the end of the interview? I don't want to ruin it for you, but she agrees to go steady with me. Hit the jump for our passionate tale of love.

Florian: Okay, we're going to start. Are you ready?

Hanah: Eek. Okay!

Florian: I'm a little nervous. I'm a gamer. I'm not used to talking to girls. Alright, so why don't you start off by telling us who you are, besides a 20 pixel tall, beige-and-black colored blur in a popular YouTube video?

Hanah: My name is Hanah. I'm a freshman at The Juilliard School for violin performance. I've been playing since I was five. And this is my first AIM interview.

Florian: As such, it will be scathing, penetrating and utterly journalistic, to the highest standards of my Pulitzer winning field. Let's find out a bit more about you.

Because you have captured the gamer zeitgeist, many individuals have fallen madly in love with you, even though — as far as we can tell from the low resolution YouTube video — you might not even have a face. As you know, I myself wrote a particularly maudlin poem about how your performance of the Halo theme song made me feel. Can you give any of us poor suckers any leads on how to capture your heart? Second best thing would just be to tell us where your Amazon.com gift list is, so we can start buying you presents.

Hanah: Ha ha ha! Wow. I should go do that right now :-). Well honestly I'm pretty high maintenance. Not in a bad way (at least I know it!) but I like to spend a lot of money, Not necessarily on makeup or clothes but on food. I love food. Especially sushi and coffee. Not necessarily together, of course.

On a little more serious note (yeah, okay, that was cheesy... but I'm like that!) I obviously love music. I love all the arts. I'm really into theater and dance. I love going to shows and performances and concerts. Anything that can expand my artistry. I loved rocking out with Corporeal with the Halo theme. It was a great way to escape from the classical world.

But let's get back to buying me presents. I have no idea... no, wait! There's something I'd like. But I have no idea what it's technical name is. It's what Dave Ver Lee (guitarist of Corporeal) hooked me up to for the concert, it's a souped up "wawa" pedal. I'm such a... how do you say... "noob" in that area of rock.

Other than that, send me cash. I'm a musician!

Hanah's Self-Proclaimed 'Slutty' Picture, Andy Warhol Style. Like Ashcraft, Eliza and Florian, Hanah is a big Mac fan.

Florian: Okay, fellas. Write that down. Hanah loves cold fish, classical music, and money. A sensualist, in other words. But she also likes wa-wa pedals, which are god's gift to rock.

Hanah: Do they need an address?

Florian: You don't want to give them your address. Instead, give it to me. Unlike this undersexed rabble, I can be trusted not to perch naked in a tree outside your window. I will send on any presents.

Hanah: I was just kidding.

Florian: Me too. That's me outside your window right now. Let's talk about this performance. We've all seen it on YouTube. We all agree it rocks. But honestly, no one has any idea what's going on, except a bunch of high school students take the scene and knock the Halo theme song out of the park. Can you give
us a brief rundown on where it was held, when, and how it came about?

Hanah: Okay. I attended Libertyville High School, Illinois In May, there was a variety show at our school called "Collage". One day, Dave Ver Lee of Corporeal came up to me and said, "Hey, I need a violinist for an act. Are you interested?"

I immediately said yes, of course: I've known Dave since 5th grade. We went to the same church [editor's note: the Church of ROCK!] and high school. I know how awesome he is at guitar and percussion, so I knew if I said yes to anything that genius did, it would be awesome. So that's how I got into it.

Rehearsals were held in Dave's basement. First rehearsal was with just me Dave, and Dave (Bedell). Second rehearsal we added Rob Leu (bass) Third rehearsal was at the high school in the bad room and we added Pat, Artie, and Corey (percussionists). We did that a second time. Then we auditioned. Then we rehearsed for the dress, and then rehearsed again. And then we performed it. Hooray!

Florian: So Dave is the lead of Corporeal?

Hanah: Yes. Dave Ver Lee.

Florian: So you're not a member of Corporeal normally? What would Nelly say? You 'feated' with them?

Hanah: Beats me. I don't follow Nelly. So I'll have to take your word for it. But yeah. They were my window to playing rock, or at least some form of "rock". It was so much fun.

Florian: You've never heard of Nelly? That is another reason why we love you, Hanah. Her squealing voice sounds like a sow in mid -slaughter. But we're not interviewing you about Nelly Furtado and her hip-grinding music: we're talking about Halo 2 and your hip grinding music.

Hanah: Oh, THAT Nelly. Anyway, yeah. Halo 2.

Florian: So you are not a member of Corporal? Are they out of their minds? What sort of band turns down a cute violinist?

Hanah: Actually, I was officially added after Collage...

Florian: Damn right.

Hanah: ...Dave is writing parts for me on all of their songs now so they're re-recording everything. We're definitely recording our versions of Halo and Mario around Thanksgiving and hopefully... well, I don't know details yet but Thanksgiving we're working on some stuff that ought to be very fun and exciting.

Florian: Sanity prevails. So let's ask the big questions: had you ever played Halo before, or heard the music? Do you play games? Are you a gaming girl?

Hanah: Yes these are the big ones. Actually, I had not played Halo before our performance. But I had heard the soundtrack numerous times since my Dad actually plays it in our basement. But never fear, I started playing it this summer! Rob made me. And I am absolutely horrible at it.

But it is addicting. I can see why so many people get into it. But I'm horrible: I've never learnt how to use the joystick...thingy. I was looking at the sky while running around aimlessly and getting shot way too many times before I got the hang of it. But once I did it got fun. Just starting was kind of frustrating. Especially when you're playing with two addicted serious players.

[editor's note: Hear that? Her bandmates introduced her to Halo by using her for deathmatch target practice. Nice one, guys.]

I've also played Mario. But I have to say I don't really play video games. But I do like the music! But honestly, I just prefer watching people play. I'm better at that. Ha!

Corporeal Member Robb Leu rocks out Mjolnir in a paintball mask.

Florian: Yes, I can understand it. It's like how my girlfriend is better at driving when she's sitting in the backseat, incessantly nagging me about my technique. But it's okay not to be a gamer: you're obviously the daughter of one, and you did a powerful job interpreting Halo 2 for us.

Speaking of which, you guys performed the Mjolnir Mix of the Halo 2 Theme Song, which is different from the Halo version of the theme in that it has Steve Vai wanking off on the guitar. How do you think it made Steve feel when an 18 year old girl managed to outrock him? Do you think he started crying like one?

Hanah: Ha ha. I don't know. Hmmmm. I don't think I outrocked him. I evenly rocked him. We're all on the same playing field. He has a totally different quality to his sound than I do. I could learn from him, I'm sure. I don't think it's possible to be "the best" at something. People have their own personal qualities and it's fun to listen to someone, then incorporate that into your playing in your own personal way.

Anyway, Steve Vai should call me. We should get together and jam.

Florian: Look, this isn't the time for you to be asking Steve Vai out on a date. You're better than him. He was thoroughly outclassed, by a girl whom - by her own admission - has never played a lick of rock music in her life, and spends most of her time having rickety walking stick classical music professors instruct her upon the orthodoxy of her vibrato. Right now, he is sitting alone in his multi-million dollar mansion, filling his nine Grammies with tears as he watches your Halo 2 video over and over again.

Hanah: HA HA HA HA HA HA! Well, I wouldn't ask him out on a date. He's kind of... old. And gross. And he looks like he's done way too much pot.

Florian: OOOOOH! BURN! OH NO YOU DIDN'T!

Hanah: (long silence) I'm more into 20-something guys.

Florian (internal monologue): ... I'm a twenty-something guy! And I start puking when I smoke a magic jay bone. Do I have a chance? Dare I hope?

Florian (out loud): I already know the headline of this Kotaku interview. FEATURE: Hanah Stuart - "I Out-Haloed A Gross, Freaky Druggie."

Hanah: Ha ha ha! Oh gamers.... Now getting schooled by gamers as well as a violinist. Poor fellow.

Florian: Okay, I think we both agree that Steve Vai is disgusting. I find him musically repulsive; you find him sexually so. High five. We're in concurrment. So let me ask a follow up question.

If there's one thing that's clear now to gamers like Eliza and me (who speak for ALL gamers), it's that your group has made any other version of the Halo theme song completely irrelevant. Don't you think Bungie should fire Steve Vai and ask you guys to record Halo 3's theme song? The only correct answer to this question is "Yes, I jolly well do."

Hanah: Well. Okay. "Yes, I jolly well do!" Actually, that would be awesome. I wouldn't mind at all. A recording contract? Heck yes. Please sign me up. I mean, it was pretty awesome when Marty O'Donnell, the Audio Director of Bungie complimented us, I have to say. That's what a musician likes to hear.

And that I have fans... holy cow, when people appreciate what you do, and that they love what you're doing. That's just what it's all about.

Florian: Well, you were great. But you need to keep in mind the fact that gamers would applaud a man with a butt for a face if he managed to squirt out the works of Hip Tanaka on a kazoo. I say this only because we don't want fame to go to your head: that's what happened to Steve Vai, and look what happened to him.

Hanah: Oh, don't worry about that! There are plenty of people over here to keep me in check. But thank you for your concern. Hot headed musicians are no fun to deal with.

Florian: Nor hot headed gaming journalists.

Hanah: No kidding.

Florian: Whatever. Anyway, I think Steve Vai has probably hung himself from a doorknob by now, thus practically guaranteeing you his job. Who else are they gonna get? Yo Yo Ma?

Hanah: Actually, Yo Yo Ma was just here a couple of days ago. And they would let him in because he didn't have a Juilliard ID.

Florian: Wait a second here. Are you telling me that you have bested both Yo Yo Ma and Steve Vai? Steve Vai's a given, and granted Yo Yo Ma has been on a downward spiral ever since he did that duet with Condoleeza Rice. But still!

Hanah: No, no. I love his stuff - I actually heard his performance at Grant Park for the Silk Road Tour. Just awesome. What I'm saying is that he was at the school and they wouldn't let him in until another student vouched for him.

Florian: But he graduated from there. Class of Ving Rhames, right? And, I mean, Juilliard lets you in. And you play game music. Consequently, you are a greater musician than Yo Yo Ma.

Hanah: Fine. There's no arguing with you. Have it your way!

Florian: New Kotaku headline! FEATURE: Hanah Stuart: Yo Yo Is Ma Bitch!

Hanah: Oh my gosh... my poor classical reputation.

Florian: Juilliard to Hanah: You're FIRED!

Hanah: LOL!

Florian: What are you, Ashcraft? Anyway, here's your chance to redeem yourself. Can you tell us how the Halo theme makes you feel? How do you interpret it, emotionally? I realize that asking someone to actually qualify his or her emotional reaction to something as ephemerally moving as music is difficult, but I think many of us would like to hear you talk about it.

Hanah: It's a rush to perform. I'm on stage with lights and electric instruments and screaming people. It's a totally different kind of feeling then when you're playing Beethoven or Mozart.

Halo was just tons of fun for me. I could play with its intensity and energy. Halo is one of those pieces that if you're really into it, you can't mess it up no matter what you do. For me it wasn't about the notes, but energy. The excitement. The fun. You could improvise the movement and what exactly you wanted to bring out.

A lot of it was just following the line, building up to the climax, and then totally switching gears at the Mario part and then back to Halo. That was a little tricky. I was in four inch high heals for that performance... and I had to make sure I could press the different pedals within 1/2 a second so that the sound quality changed at the right point...

The difference between when I rehearse music and when I perform it is huge. I'm more of an analyst when I rehearse. But the performance? I just let out whatever I want. A lot of improvisation went on that night.

At the last minute we added some glow sticks to our instruments and a lot of choreography was improvised at the concert. Except the coming out at the end was planned which was so awesome. The whole thing was just a rush!

But those back bends... wow, I felt those in my thighs the next morning. Music like this...just...I don't know...takes you to another realm. I call it "performance high." It's like nothing else. You're all shaky afterwards and full of life and energy.

Florian: What was your favorite part to play? We're not plebs. Please reply in musical annotation. If AIM doesn't support that, words will be an inferior second.

Hanah: I really loved it when Dave and I were in unison and then we branch off into thirds. That was great. Also at the big head banging parts. Those were fun. I know, I know... that's really descriptive!

The whole thing was just fun. You can't compartmentalize it.

Another thing that really stands out to me is when we walked out and the confetti was flying everywhere. That moment when the streamers shot off and the audience went nuts. That was probably my favorite part, It was like: "Yes, I'm on stage. I'm totally rocking out. This is just awesome!"

Florian: That really must beat the polite, ascetic clep-clepping of those classical music snobs. It's not like they ever stand up in the concert hall, rip their panties off and start just hooting.

Hanah: That would not be a pretty sight, lemme tell you.

Florian: Yeah. Old Mrs. Rockefeller, patron of the symphony, probably couldn't keep her genitals above her buckling knees if she took 'em off. I think we can count our blessings.

Hanah: Absolutely.

Florian: Let me ask you some specifics about the concert. In the back, prancing mysteriously about, there are some teenage homuncular Blue Men. What's that about? Who are they? Do they serve any purpose besides aquamarine eye candy?

Hanah: Ha ha ha! They were Pat, Corey, and Artie (the percussionists) and they thought it'd be fun to be blue men and incorporate the Blue Men Group act that into our little shindig. It was just a fun thing we decided to do, along with spray painting my face with green and sparkles, along with Dave and Rob's hair.

I went to a movie afterwards with my friends....got the weirdest looks. I was still green at that point

Florian: It's not easy being green.

Kotaku Readers: YOU SUCK, FLORIAN!

Florian: SHUT THE HELL UP!

Hanah: Who are you talking to?

Florian: No one. Ignore them. Back to the Blue Men. A few minutes before the Mario interlude, the Blue Men wandered out and appeared to touch toilet plungers. What was that about?

Hanah: Um. What?

Florian: Did they just not have anything to do at that point?

Hanah: Do you mean the paintball guns?

Florian: Is that what they were?

Hanah: Ha ha ha ha! Yes. They had paintball guns during Mario and we had two boards on either side. They shot at them. It was cheesy, but they had to do something. Before, they were going to do a little dance... but that was just bad.

Florian: Blue Men Can't Dance.

Kotaku Readers: BLOW ME, FLORIAN!

Florian: ShuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupshuttupSHUTTUP! ASSHOLES!

Hanah: ...

Florian: ...

Hanah: ....

Florian: ... Wait a second. Your high school let you bring guns into the building?

Hanah: We had an awesome performing arts director. He let us bring them in. We explained what we were going to do.

Florian: Do you know who Jack Thompson is?

Hanah: Nope.

Florian: Oh. Okay. Well, to briefly explain, he's an idiot.

Hanah: OH! One of those.

Florian: Exactly. But he'd be very upset that a high school allowed you remorseless killers-in-training to bring loaded guns onto school premises while brainwashing the audience audiophonically with a video game tune.

Hanah: I... see.

Florian: We won't tell him.

Hanah: Let's not.

Florian: Okay, now I'm going to delve into some harsh criticism.

Hanah: Sweet.

Florian: Are you prepared?

Hanah: Always.

Florian: Most of us interpreted the discordant Mario interlude as an appeal to the proles. It was like a sexy female Paganini suddenly stopping La Campanella to toss off the Looney Tunes theme song on her Cannone Guarnerius. Predictably, it seems like you got your greatest applause when you did the Mario tune. What's wrong with those people? This wasn't performed at a vocational school, was it?

Hanah: HA HA HA HA HA HA! Man, I love La Campanella. It's ridiculously hard.

Ummmm... jeez. Ha ha! That's the perfect analogy.

Alright, look, we're at a public high school and the audience obviously didn't have many Halo players. We can see why people online weren't to thrilled about it. But people like what they know and they obviously knew Mario.

When we record in Thanksgiving (we had some fans and we had some people that didn't like it so we're doing it a couple ways) we'll have the version that we did onstage and we'll have a version that's just simply Mario and then simply Halo. To appease all.

Florian: But overall, people seemed to love it.

Hanah: Yeah, they did.

Florian: You know, when I was in high school, I actually entered the talent show. All through rehearsals, I dramatically recited The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, only to change my act on show day to an obscenity-laced, hip-hop style roll call of all the teachers who had ever shown me disrespect (all of them, as it happened).

The entire audience of gangly teenagers actually rose as one to start chanting my name in unison; never the less, the winner that year was a kid from the football team who walked on stage and did a 'Pumping Iron' style muscle man show. The school was torn apart by riots for the next three days.

Hanah: Okay.

Florian: ?

Hanah: ...

Florian: ????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hanah: ?

Florian: ... Okay. My question is: did you guys win your show? If not, were there riots? There damn well should have been.

Hanah: Actually it wasn't really a contest. We closed the show though. So we were the 'finale' act I guess implying that we were the best of the night. Or at least the most interesting of the night.

Florian: You know how sometimes, you're at a concert or a play or a ballet, and some dreamy, somewhat hazy vision under the spotlights captures your heart, and all you want to do is get to know them? Did you get any dates out of your Halo performance?

Hanah: Ha ha! No. I get some people that are "requesting friends" on Facebook, but I have no idea who these people are. Other than that, most of the guys who message me are like, "Please don't think I'm a creep, I just loved the Halo 2 performance."

Florian: You're better off. One of our writers at Kotaku is a girl. She's grotesquely disfigured, but she shares the same name as a dollsome Seattle model. Consequently, she gets skeevy love letters every week, that are distributed to hilarious effect amongst her fellow Kotaku writers. One reader messaged her the other day. His AIM pic was a picture of a stick figure holding a screw, under which was the caption "Wanna screw?

Hanah: Yes, I'm better off.

Florian: However, an alternative presents itself. Since I know you like sushi, and I know you like twenty something guys, I want to give you adequate forewarning that I may one day send you a dead fish through international post and ask you on a date, because you've captured my heart... all 20 pixels of you. I've never asked out a girl before, because I'm a gamer, but my understanding is that this will mean we're going steady. So your Halo performance won't be a complete loss, romantically.

Hanah: Oh, awesome! And I'm single! So you're in luck!

Florian: Me too! You know how I mentioned a girlfriend earlier?

Hanah: Yes.

Florian: That was just a lie to get you jealous. And I can see you fell into my trap.

Hanah: You had me at Canone Guarerius.

Florian: If we agree we're now engaged to go steady, we can finish up this interview.

Hanah: Only if you fly me out to Ireland! I've always wanted to go there.

Florian: Because I write for a games blog, I'm a millionaire. Naturally, I'll fly you out. But our readers aren't interested in our mutual passion, no matter how lustful and throbbing.

So tell me, Hanah. You've started off a promising musical career by making Steve Vai look foolish and hopefully getting him fired. You've captured the heart of millions of gamers and helped me get paid for creepily flirting with you. You've also dissed and dismissed Yo Yo Ma. What's next?

Hanah: I'm trying to figure that out here. I want to do a couple of international competitions in the next few years, My dream would be to travel internationally with a quartet. I'd also love to get into the movie recording business. I think that would be tons of fun. Who knows? Maybe teach, maybe get into an orchestra, maybe rock out. The sky's the limit!

Florian: Okay. Anyone you want to suck up to?

Hanah: Much much much thanks and love to Dave Verlee who arranged everything. You're my hero.

Thanks and love to the rest of my Halo boys, ROB (you have perfect pitch in my book :P), Dave Bedell (ridiculously amazing drummer with the best smile), Artie, Corey, and Pat (Oh, you blue men!)

Extreme thanks and gratitude to bungie.com (especially Marty for his support and recognition, and the fact that he composed the music so it was possible for us to do this).

Thanks to the support from Kotaku, Digg, and Youtube, and everywhere else.

My parents for always encouraging me to follow my dreams. To my best friend Sean who couldn't watch the whole thing because he couldn't see me as a rocker and thought it was all just awesomely hilarious. But he's always been there for me!

I also want to thank all my buddies back home and all my friends here at Juilliard, as well as my new teacher Mr. Smirnoff who thought it was just awesome that I was part of a rock band.

And last but not least, thanks to all my fans out there! Yay!

Oh... and to Florian, who conducted this interview and has totally made my day.

Florian: Damn right. Final question: has any classical strings player ever performed in high heels and a bikini?

Hanah: No. And I don't think they'll be starting any time soon.

Florian: Maybe that's another way you can stick it to Yo Yo Ma!

Thanks again to Hanah for the interview! Go check out Corporeal's web site and give 'em your support.

By John Brownlee

Editor's Note: Welcome to an experimental Kotaku feature: Armchair Designer. In it, we're going to try to put together a tactical, squad-level turn-based strategy game that takes place in a George Romero-esque zombie apocalypse. The game will largely be randomly generated, which — combined with chooseable player goals — will allow the player to extrapolate their own story from the game. There is no boss zombie; deaths are permanent. It's all about using your wits against an inexorable, flesh-hungry horde.

Let's get one thing out of the way: this isn't meant to be an implausible, multi-page wank job about that one game idea someone's got that would just be the best game ever if someone would hand them infinite technology and a hundred million dollars. In other words, this isn't an armchair design article for Paris Hilton: The Sex Tape: The Game. The design has to be as plausible as possible, because we'd actually like some designer looking for a new project to read this and walk away with it.

Go on, designers, have it! The idea's yours! Just make the game and make it good.

Every geeky twelve year old, rolling sexless in his bed at night, is convinced that the mere happenstance of the cannibalistic dead rising from their graves would be enough to galvanize him into the greatest badass the world has ever known.

After all, the Romero zombie mythology (and, by that, I mean the undead horde, slowly lumbering, insatiable and inexorable) appeals to every facet of the nerdy pre-teen's formative psychosis: a sort of egotistical solipsism fueled from loneliness and isolation that plays itself out through a make-believe orgy of gore drenched violence.

The world that's against them — parents, teachers, the farting, braying school yard alpha male — become mindless, flesh-slavering ghouls. Better yet, all these assholes can now be displaced with a minimum of moral self-examination: a machete to the brain, or a screwdriver jammed into an ear canal, or a single blast of sawed-off shotgun exploding a putrescent, hamburger-stuffed melon. Zombies are actually p-zombies: big lumbering blister bags of gore that can be satisfyingly popped without any qualms. At least within the confines of the fantasy, Jack Thompson be damned.

And just who survives when the dead walk the earth? The ability to toss a football, endowment of bulging biceps and clear complexions — none of that matters in a zombie apocalypse. What matters is being crafty and well-prepared. The medium of zombie movies encourages the feverishly dreaming geek to cast himself as the hero, because in zombie films everyone is a fucking idiot, well-deserving a fate of having their intestines scooped like ropes of dripping playdough into the mouth of a corpse. Who hasn't watched a zombie movie and thought "Pfft! I can do better than that idiot."

If you were anything like me as a kid (and, if you're reading this, you probably were, and — maybe less probably — still are), the appeal of such a fantasy is pretty obvious. It puts into tangible conflict the geek's feeling of isolation from the outside world and lets him work it out in a berzerker's orgy of cathartic physical violence. It rewards evenings spent feverishly scrawling underground zombie bunkers on graph paper, of going over in your mind necessary supplies to fight off the horde, or prioritizing the hot babes in your high school who you'll save first... for the good of the species, natch. Hey, planning this stuff out now is going to make all the difference. The zombie movie fantasy allows even the pudgiest, wimpiest, most honestly self-appraising kid to plausibly cast himself as a hero.

We're gamers. We're all sexless twelve year old nerds at heart. So why hasn't anyone ever made a game that really understands what's just so goddamn compelling about surviving in a world where there's no more room in hell?

Well, no matter. We'll design it for 'em.

Zombie Killing's Fun In Any Genre

So what's our zombie game going to be like?

We're going to start with the controversial decision to make it a strategy game. This alone is going to lose some people who just want an action game that lets them rip through brainless hordes with a chainsaw for a few hours. For many players, strategy games do not have the visceral thrill of FPSes. Worse yet, we're going to make it largely a turn-based strategy game.

Rest assured, our game's going to let you disembowel, decapitate, gelatinize, pulverize, crush, mutilate. Ideally, we're gonna have so many arterial sprays and spilling entrails Havok's going to have to come up with a new physics engine just to capture their steaming ooginess. But surviving a zombie apocalypse is all about resourcefulness, craftiness. Strategy, in short. If you just want to blow the heads off some zombies, Resident Evil 4's as good as it gets. We're not going to try to compete.

So the model for our zombie game is largely going to be the turn-based combat engine of X-Com, Fallout or Silent Storm, interspersed with the real-time base building engine of a game like Stronghold. We'll get to how both of these figure into the game in a second.

But first, what's the plot? What super zombie is the grand foozle? How do you win? Who's the protagonist?

Make Your Own Zombie Killer

Well, you're the protagonist - after all, this is your zombie apocalypse fantasy simulator. You're the hero and, being the hero, you'll need to determine your own goals: the qualifiers of your own victory in a world where society has broken down and the only real aspiration in life is 'don't be eaten.' Our game's going to be designed in such a way that beating it doesn't involve blowing up a super-zombie with a bazooka and living happily ever after. Victories will be small in the scheme of things: human, but no less noble. And you'll choose what those victories will be.

To make this clearer, when you start the game, you will create a protagonist. During the character creation process, you will specify the character's skills (and, therefore, the character's background) and the character's goals (which will, in turn, establish the game's plot and victory scenarios). For example, you could create a character named Ben, who is good at carpentry, hand-to-hand fighting and truck driving. His goal is to get to his girlfriend in Pittsburgh. Or you could create a character named John, who can pilot a helicopter and is decent with small firearms. His goal is to escape to an unpopulated Carribean island. You could design a left-wing guerilla, who wants to kill the zombified President of the United States. And so on.

We will give the player as many different victory scenarios as possible, because we want them to make this their own zombie fantasy. But we've got a logistical problem here: how can we make a game that doesn't require infinite development resources but still allows players to specify their own goals?

Extrapolating Your Own Zombie Apocalypse

We're going to deal with this problem by dynamically randomizing as much of the damn game as possible.

Think X-Com: the player largely extrapolated their own plot based upon random enemy encounters and becoming attached to their NPC squad. There were very few "plot" missions. But talk to a player about that game today and almost all of them ca excitedly tell you the plot of their very first game.

We can use the same technique: with some cleverness on our part, a good random map generator and a handful of designed plot point missions, we can make our game specifically vague enough to allow players to create their own story in their minds as they go along... all with a minimum of hard-coded scripting. Or that's the theory, anyway.

Pantheon of Zombies?

And what kind of enemies are we going to have? Zombies, obviously. But games usually have a roster of enemies, escalating in difficulty. We want to escape that and be true to the source material, largely culled from the works of George Romero and various Italian spaghetti horror directors of the 1970s: our only monsters are going to be dead humans, in various states of decay.

Still, there's some clever things we can do to differentiate our zombie m nage. We can increase a zombie's threat by their physical fitness when that zombie was still alive. It stands to reason that someone who was relatively fit when alive will be quicker, stronger and more agile even in the throes of rigor mortis. We can also decrease a zombie's threat level by how decomposed or injured they are in death. With enough zombie models and clothing styles, this'll give us a range of zombie types and difficulties to keep things interesting.

But there aren't going to be any single zombies that are much of a threat. Zombies aren't much threat on-on-one. The threat comes from when they gang up and surround you. Overall, the strategic layer isn't going to be about emptying the map, it's going to be about controlling crowds long enough to survive a mission's objectives. If we need more traditional enemies or missions, we'll make fellow humans our enemies, in the form of fellow scavengers. This will also allow us to have some interesting (and more traditional) gun battles.

Talking about it's all well and good, but it's easier to show than to tell. So let's start playing our zombie game already.

Playing Our Zombie Game: Bob Fights In A Farmhouse

We're going to create a character named Bob. Bob's going to be a farmer — good at carpentry, a mean hand with a rifle, but not particularly intelligent or charismatic. Still, he's going to be smart enough to realize that, in a zombie apocalypse, being as far away from unpredictably dying people as possible is pretty much ideal. His goal is going to be to reach an island.

The problem? Getting to the sea. What Bob will need to do as a minimum in our game to 'win' is, a) survive, b) get to a large lake or ocean, c) get intelligence on a suitable deserted island (as you see at the end of the Dawn of the Dead remake, deserted islands are pretty rare), d) stock up with enough supplies to survive indefinitely on the island, e) find a working boat, f) find someone who can drive the boat. Each of these meta-goals roughly corresponds to plot missions, either static (designed) or instigated as objects into randomly designed maps.

Bob starts off in a randomly generated farmhouse, where he's busy trying to find supplies to fight his way clear. Alternatively, he could barricade the farmhouse and wait for help. Whatever option I choose will dynamically spawn the scenario of the next mission. If I barricade the farmhouse while fighting off the zombies, I might be picked up by a redneck posse in the next mission. If I decide to fight off zombies while barricading the house, the mission will play-out in real-time, where every second not hammering shut a door or barring shutters will bring more zombies into the farmhouse for me to have to deal with.

The intent of occasional real-time missions is to keep the game panicky and frenetic, especially in maps where there aren't too many zombies. Real-time missions will always be missions in which a viable strategy (maybe the only strategy) is to barricade yourself in to a fixed position and regroup.

But Bob's not going to barricade himself; he's going to scavenge for supplies and escape. He weaves through the house, searching closets for supplies, dodging lurching zombies when he can, initiating battle only when he has to. These zombies are relatively trivial to kill one-on-one; the danger is being cornered or letting them build up into a group, something that becomes more and more likely every second I stand still. I find a shotgun and a half-box of ammo in a closet and manage to break free of the farmhouse, escaping in a truck. The mission ends.

The ZombieScape. Bob Hits His First City. A Hot Nurse.

We'll again take a cue from X-Com or Fallout and bring the player to a Geoscape-like screen: an overhead map of heartland America indicating places that Bob has been and nearby locations of interest, as well as known landmarks. This screen is where we will pick our next meta-goal. The options we're given are a) Reconnoiter for supplies/survivors, b) Start driving towards the nearest large body of water, c) Hole Up And Rest, etc. Bob chooses to reconnoiter for supplies and survivors.

At this point, a random mission is given to Bob, in a randomly generated town or city block, with randomly generated items and zombie-types (in terms of physical fitness and number) that are appropriate to my character level. Combat in this mission will be handled-with turn-based tactics. In our game, zombies can always be killed with a bullet to the brain... but headshots are hard to get. Turn-based combat will give us time to mull over our decisions. Do we go for an easier torso shot of that zombie advancing towards us and finish him off at close range with a hand-to-hand weapon, but giving him a chance to bite us? Or do we risk the headshot, potentially losing a bullet and giving the zombie more time to get close to us? Ammunition will always be a limited commodity in our game: these decisions are meant to be agonized over. The sounds of gunshots will also attract more zombies.

In this mission, Bob doesn't see any survivors immediately. Bob does, however, find a megaphone in a police car, which gives him the option of using it to call out to survivors. However, the drawback to this is that while it may bring out a recruitable NPC, it will also draw zombies or gangs to Bob's location, which he will have to fight off.

Bob uses the megaphone, and after fighting a few zombies drawn to his location, an NPC shows up. She is also randomly generated, with a random set of skills. In our game's case, she is a nurse with very limited fighting skills, but she does have medical training. This can be used to extend the life of bitten characters and patch up shot characters.

The nurse also has her own random goals which can be optionally added to Bob's pool. She tells Bob that she has a marine boyfriend upstate, and now this (if we want it to be) can become a player goal. In other words, the randomized personal goals of NPCs can be added to your character's pool of meta-goals at the ZombieScape to expand our mission options and extend gameplay.

Scavengers, I Hate 'Em

When the mission is over, Bob can choose his next mission at the ZombieScape. The nurse's personal goal of finding her boyfriend has been added to Bob's list of meta-goals. We could disregard her boyfriend if we'd like, but we decide to head upstate to find this marine boyfriend. We could use a capable fighter as an NPC.

On the way to find him, though, a gang of scavengers randomly waylays Bob, and he has to fight them off because he fails a charisma check. If Bob had enough charisma, he might have been able to trade with these scavengers; as it is, his only option is to kill them all.

Scavenger missions will mix-up the gameplay by giving the player some more traditional turn-based tactics combat fighting against a small number of capable, armed enemies. Additionally, we will have to control any zombies that may be present on the same map (although scavengers will obviously shoot at zombies as well).

Hello, Soldier! What's With All The Disembowelment?

While fighting the scavengers off, Bob get more experience and XP, as well as supplies. He continues upstate. The boyfriend, as it turns out, is dead, but his AK47 is still at his side. In other words, the mission isn't a waste of time for the player. This is an important design decision: although the game's vague plot points may be random, each mission has to move the player closer to his ultimate goal and be a reward in and of itself.

We go back to ZombieScape and decide to make our way to a large body of water. We think we have enough supplies and there's been enough dicking around. As Bob makes his way to the nearest marina, his group fights its way through the occasional random encounter of zombies/scavengers.

Bob also passes an airport, and we are given the option of reconnoitering for vehicles/pilots. We decide to do this, because a working helicopter will reduce our trip time. Luckily, it's not for naught: we find both a working helicopter and a pilot!

But there's a problem. He's infected. According to the logic of zombie movies, that means he'll turn to a zombie within three days. The nurse can treat him, potentially expanding his period of usefulness, but this makes the pilot and the helicopter a limited commodity. There is also a random chance that the pilot will turn on us in the middle of combat and potentially infect us.

This gives us an opportunity to talk about mortality in our zombie game. I've made some mention of gaining XP, but what I haven't mentioned is that, in our game, humans are naturally frail. A single bite from a zombie is enough to kill an NPC. So what I really mean by gaining experience is that a character will grow more skilled, but no less fragile; toughening up a character will be handled by dressing them in leather and other types of armor.

And what happens if our main character dies? Well, you could, of course, reload. But another option is to continue the game by taking control over one of your NPCs. At this point, you would have the option of either choosing that NPCs personal goal as your end game goal, or continuing with your original character's.

Assault on K-ZOM. Training Your Zombie Killers.

Back on the ZombieScape, we're given the option of finding gas or just flying the helicopter as far as it will go. We choose to find gas. While in the gas station, Bob turns on the radio and we're surprised that, instead of dead radio static, we hear someone from a local radio station pleading for help.

We decide to go there. We fight our way in. The gambit pays off: we find three NPCs (!) — again, this is all randomly determined. We are lucky in that we get two beefy security guards with arms training and a more useless radio technician (who can, however, fix broken radios in the game, getting important clues to side missions and additional meta-goals). Assume, again, that like the Nurse, they all have randomly generated personal goals that can be added to your goal list as optional missions.

When recruiting the more useless radio technician, we discover that she has enough intelligence that she can learn to fly a helicopter, if someone who knows the skill will teach her. NPCs in our game will be able to teach skills to other characters, as long as they have the intelligence to do so, and the player is willing to sit stationary long enough to transfer knowledge from one character to another.

We decide to have the helicopter pilot train the radio technician in the rudimentary arts of flying. We are told it will take two days for the pilot to train the radio technician as a remedial pilot. But the pilot is two days infected. Three days is the minimum it takes for a character to succumb to the zombie infection, so there is an x% chance that, during that extra day, the pilot will turn, try to kill Bob and his gang of survivors and leave the training undone. Making the choice more complicated, the longer we stay in any one occasion, the greater the chances that zombies will break into our barricaded location and we will have to fight them off in a dangerous real-time mission. It will also use an amount of Bob's dwindling supply of fuel to train the technician as a pilot.

We decide to take the chance. We hole up in the radio station and have our pilot teach the technician piloting on the roof. Miraculously, our infected pilots doesn't turn and transfers his piloting skill to the technician... good, we'll have the helicopter for more than two more days.

But during that time, zombies break into the radio station and we have to fend them off in real-time. We successfully manage to do this, but not before one of the security guards is torn apart by the zombie horde and we use up almost all of our ammunition fighting them off. We then choose to put the helicopter pilot out of his misery, since he has no more usefulness. Bob and his crew continues on in the helicopter's scant amount of fuel.

Fast Forwarding To The End Game

Just to fast forward all this a little, in the course of our game, we will fight off many more random zombie/survivor encounters. We will both gain and lose multiple NPCs.

A marine character Bob recruits takes us to a military base, where we will substantially up our arsenal, including getting a bazooka and a couple rounds for it.

Bob finds a friendly tribe of survivors who will trade with my group, but instead, we decided to just kill them all and take their stuff. Bob tames and recruits a Dogmeat like dog, to the cheers of any Fallout 2 fan.

Eventually, our helicopter runs out of fuel in a major city and we have to fight my way out. Afterwards, Bob manages reach a small marina on a small lake which has no abandoned isles, but there, we find a boat captain and spend a hard-pressed week there with him, learning to drive a boat. He's otherwise useless, so we leave him behind.

Finally, we make our way to the ocean, and Bob is finally presented with this "end game" mission. The marina has been surrounded by flaming hulks, debris, and razor wire. Around the perimeter, thousands of zombies are mulling around. On the other side of the razorwire, the marina has been taken over as a safe haven by a group of apocalyptic scavengers, who are headquartered on the only working boat.

No time to lose. Our group cuts its way through the horde of zombies, uses the bazooka on the razor wire, and fights its way onto the ship. There, we fight the 'boss' - the leader of the rival biker gang - and succeed in killing him, while the rest of our team holds the zombies at bay on the dock. With only a couple of survivors from the end fight, Bob manages to pull away from the dock in the ship, headed for his deserted island.

The End. Bob wins. His triumph is small; he does not save the world. He just saves himself.

Summary of a Zombie Apocalypse

Although the "story" of Bob's adventure looks oddly specific, most of it is randomly generated. A smart random generator coupled with a dynamically generated pool of meta-goals allows the player to extrapolate his own story with a minimum of scripted exposition. The vast majority of levels are put together from random level templates. If a plot point needs to happen during a level, we can usually just insert an object into the level that relates to that plot-point: for example, the radio in the gas station, or an NPC.

NPCs are also randomly generated, but when being generated they draw from a large pool of their own wants and goals, which the player can then choose to follow as he sees fit. NPCs may also be linked to other NPCs, like the nurse to the soldier. Although the soldier turned out to be dead when we got there, even that outcome was random: the game "rolls" to see if he survives until the player gets there. If the NPC doesn't survive, the game still rewards the player with equipment, follow-up leads or missions.

Although most of the game's content is, in fact, determined by a number generator, the player is offered a combination of interesting choices and player rewards that allows him to follow his own distinct agenda (or 'story'). Based upon these choices, the player becomes extremely attached to his character; by being allowed to explore the goals of NPCs, coupled with the fragility of team members, he will also become attached to his team.

Most games, even open-ended ones, spend a great deal of time and resources trying to get across story. But games don't have to be cinema. By encouraging players to interact, you encourage them to imagine. By giving players a small number of interesting choices throughout the game and allowing them to specify their own goals in a vibrant, dynamic world, players can put together their own plot like Magnetic Poetry, and designers can focus on making the player dynamic as vibrant as possible.

Ultimately, our zombie game lets you live out your zombie apocalypse the way you, the player, want. And sitting enraptured near the bumper of a rocking Chevrolet as the dead lumbered across the drive-in screen, isn't that what every kid stricken by the zombie zeitgeist since 1968's Night of the Living Dead has always wanted?

... Without the threat of being actually devoured alive, of course.

Editor's Note: What do you think, Kotakuites? Does this game have any appeal? Is it a plausible design? Do you have any further ideas to suggest? Is this the sort of feature you'd like to see more of? Let us know in the comments. Remember that if you don't have a commenting account, you can type your comment in anyway, and it'll be published when we approve it.