Shinji Mikami dared to say no to Hideo Kojima’s very bold plan, which never came to fruition.
Kojima once had an idea for a zombie MMO that sounded completely insane – the kind of extravagant concept only he could come up with. The 1978 film Dawn of the Dead served as inspiration for several of his works. His love for the film, and for the zombie genre in general, pushed Kojima to imagine an MMO built around the undead. The idea was so ambitious that he wanted to enlist the legendary creator of the Resident Evil saga, Shinji Mikami, to help bring it to life.
According to Kojima’s public statements, the game would have required servers filled entirely with zombies. Players, acting as survivors, would need to carefully eliminate all infected enemies, because if an undead creature bit them, their character would become infected and lose all movement control. To return to the game, players would have to create a new account and, if possible, hunt down and kill their former avatar in its zombified form.
“I’m not so interested in the undead themselves, but in the fact that with a single bite you can turn others – that would be a great game system! I know games like this already exist, but I want to offer a true online version. Imagine a large city where half the population are zombies. Users could sign up, enter the city, and get bitten. They would then become undead and lose control of their character – they could only adjust the camera angle. They’d watch as their character attacks other people, and they’d have to pay just to watch! The only way to stop it would be to open another account, find yourself, and kill yourself. Of course, the problem is that your second character can also get bitten,” Kojima explained in the March 2007 issue of Edge magazine.
At the time, Kojima did not see an urgent need to develop this strange MMO. He had already seen too many zombie games and believed that, when the time was right, he would seriously pursue such a project. Still, he continued to refine the idea: “The online fee would continue to be deducted while the zombies roam the virtual streets. If players don’t like it, they can create a new zombie hunter character. They can kill their old zombified character. But if the zombies bite the new character, it will also become zombified. The number of zombies tied to the player’s paid account will increase, and the fee will also be deducted for the second character. This would be a true zombie simulator! One day, I want to make this game,” Kojima added.
Kojima even pitched the idea to Mikami. Despite being one of the greatest masters of the genre, Mikami had no interest in helping realize the concept. This became clear in episode 94 of The 1Up Show in 2007. Kojima told Mikami about the online Resident Evil idea, prompting Mikami to ask if Kojima had really said such a thing. Kojima replied that he had brought up the concept during the development of Boktai for the GBA in 2003. Mikami did not remember this and believed it was the first time he had heard about it, while Kojima recalled mentioning it many times to his colleague.
Kojima never went on to develop his own zombie MMO. As a result, we will never know whether fans of the genre would have embraced this unusual idea of paying to track down and kill their previously infected character.
Source: Eurogamer
