In 2005, Kevan Davis launched a real-time, text-based, massively multiplayer online game called Urban Dead where humans and zombies battled over the city of Malton. Humans could construct barricades, scavenge for resources, kill zombies, and craft weapons and tools, while zombies could shamble around and destroy things. So far, so simple.
There were three really interesting things about Urban Dead.
The first was that it basically didn’t evolve after the first year or two. There were no missions, no changes to the map, no new characters, and no new skills to unlock or things to craft. There was no win condition: rather, players made their own fun, with humans barricading malls and zombies forming hordes that rampaged across the city. Many of these events, like the Siege of Caiger Mall, are immortalised on the wiki. In practice, this involved players frantically clicking on buttons like “attack barricades”.
Naturally, these player-generated events were chaotic and often hard to discover, though the ability for humans to graffiti messages helped spread the word. Zombies, being dead, were not permitted to communicate as freely – they could only use the letters a, b, g, h, m, n, r, and z – but this was sufficient to lead to four different zombie languages including terms such as armah baz (army base), zmazh anh grab (smash and grab) and my personal favourite, barhah (roughly “a spirit of zombie warriors in brotherhood”).
The second interesting thing is that zombies could be “revivified” back into human form by means of an expensive revivification syringe, meaning there was no permadeath. These reversals forced players to improvise and experiment; also, knowing you could easily become part of the “other side” helped reduce griefing. This kind of asymmetric, fluid gameplay still feels very innovative, even twenty years on.
Finally, Urban Dead was completely free. The only thing you could pay for was a one-time $5 unlock that let you visit the website more than 160 times a day. Since players only got 48 action points per day, casual players never needed to pay, and for dedicated players, $5 for years of play is perhaps the best bargain you’ll ever find.
This was possible because Urban Dead was created by a solo developer and, I assume, required very little maintenance and had very low server costs over its lifetime. A different developer might have hired more staff, added more features and events, sold subscriptions and upgrades and, eventually, battle passes, but the audience for text-based MMOs is not massive (see also Kingdom of Loathing) so these things would make little sense for a game that was essentially an unchanging online playground.
I had a lot of fun in Urban Dead during the first couple of years. I levelled up my character quickly and took part in as many of the events as I could find. In fact, it’s probably the MMO I’ve spent the most time in. For a long time I wanted to make a location-based smartphone game inspired by it, and instead ended up making Zombies, Run!, which was obviously very different, but explored some of the same themes. I still wonder if its ideas could be adapted for larps.
Urban Dead is closing next week – forever. The UK’s new Online Safety Act requires online services of all sizes to monitor how their users communicate and interact, with the prospect of heavy fines as punishment. Regulators have been distinctly vague and unhelpful about operators’ obligations, a reflection of UK legislators’ laziness and ignorance. Larger companies have insurers who can advise on best practices; more importantly, they have limited liability. That’s not the case for solo operators doing smaller – but still impactful, still pro-social – projects, like the popular London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed (LFGSS) forum, which is also shutting down.
Urban Dead is not the kind of game that wins awards or is immortalised by industry bodies or community grandees. It doesn’t look like anything, it doesn’t use any new tech, it doesn’t make any money, it doesn’t have an overt uplifting message. But it remains one of the most innovative, anarchic games I’ve played, so I’m remembering it here. It’s the kind of ultra-specific, deeply independent game that we desperately need more of today.
One can see a service as something dangerous to be regulated and controlled. One can also see it as an act performed for the community out of generosity.
mssv 