Q: What was it about Dead Island specifically that made you want to publish it?[/B]

A: It’s certainly unique, the combination of zombies and a paradise gone wrong and the whole open-world make up of the game. It was really that uniqueness about it that made us excited to get onboard.

Q: Zombies are quite a popular theme in videogames right now. Do you worry that Dead Island is going to be released into a market that has become saturated and has had enough of zombies?[/B]

A: The good ol’ zombie fatigue? No, I don’t think so. I think zombies are something that have been around for many years and it’s something that resonates with human beings as it brings our fear of what is actually ‘inside’ of us to the surface.

In this case, because we’re doing something unique with the zombies and the location I think that there is a niche for this game.

Q: Do you ever worry about how explicit the content of the game is and how it will go down with various ratings boards? The trailer shows a kid administering and receiving violence (something games traditionally stay well away from) and the Dead Island logo itself has already been censored by the ESRB.[/B]

A: In terms of the child and the violence, if it makes sense in terms of gameplay then I don’t think it’s something you should be shying away from because it’s not about murdering children it’s about defending yourself against zombies; a zombie apocalypse/infection is not going to stop itself from infecting a child.

In the first episode of the Walking Dead TV show you see this happening, the main character encounters a dead child attacking him but it’s not a child, it’s a zombie at that point. In this particular game I don’t think we would shy away from it but, saying that, we’re not going to have children that you will fight against – it’s more about there being families in the game that have lost children and you witnessing the emotional reaction to that, rather than just providing something for you to fight against.


Q: What about Dead Island’s story? What caused this zombie outbreak?

A: I can’t say anything about that at this point because that’s something we want players to discover themselves. When you start the game you’re just a normal guy that doesn’t know anything about zombies but, at some point early on, you’re going to learn that you’re immune to becoming a zombie and then your goal becomes how to survive, how to get off the island, how to help the other survivors and trying to find out what is actually happening.

Q: We know that the game gives you the option of playing as four different characters, do they have unique stories?

A: They have unique background stories but the game story itself is going to be the same across the characters. One of the reasons for this is the four player co-op multiplayer so, if everyone had a different storyline, it would be difficult to drop into another game and for it to still make sense.

Q: So how exactly does the multiplayer work?

A: It’s a drop-in system which allows a friend to enter your game and follow your storyline for however long they like and then drop out again. We just want to make sure if one player is 75% of the way through the story and you’ve only just started then you’ll be warned that you may be ‘spoiled’. You can play with up to four players, playing through the same story as single player.

Q: The players that drop in will be using the character they’ve been using in single player?

A: Yes.

Q: And they can level up in someone else’s multiplayer game?

A: Yes.

Q: And that levelling up will carry back over when they return to single player?

A: Yes.

Q: And what about the zombies themselves? What kind of variations can we expect there?

A: There are going to be different variations of zombies in there but there’s not going to be, like, dog-zombies or shark-zombies or anything like that. They’re all humanoid zombies. We want to make sure that, when it comes to fighting, you’re using different tactics and strategies – so there will be melee zombies, ranged-attack zombies and things like that.