State of Decay 2 developer Undead Labs has announced that they are opening a "broad-discipline game development studio" in New Orleans to seek out new talent and expand the pool of game developers out there in the world.
If you happen to be unfamiliar with Undead Labs, they're the fine folks behind State of Decay and the upcoming State of Decay 2. These zombie survival games are a wee bit different from what's out there on the market, putting their own unique spin on the genre.
While they're currently working on State of Decay 2, the company's Studio Head and Founder Jeff Strain is also launching a new initiative in New Orleans to get more people involved in Game Development.
Undead Labs Heads to New Orleans
The announcement of Undead Labs' new project was made on a news post on the company's official website. It's rather short, so here's the whole thing in a nutshell (with a slight edit for readability):
Today we are excited to announce that the Undead Labs Studio Head and Founder, Jeff Strain, is launching an exciting new initiative. As anyone who has played State of Decay knows, big ideas don’t always come from the biggest cities or the flashiest neighborhoods. Sometimes the heroes come from places like Marshall or Spencer’s Mill. That’s why game development needs a bigger base, where the know-how, grit, and ideas of even more people can find their way to the public.
As a small town guy himself, Jeff is dedicated to opening a new studio and a partnered broad-discipline game development academy in New Orleans, Louisiana. With the support of Xbox and Microsoft, Jeff’s going to continue in his role as studio head at Undead Labs while also building opportunities to bring in people who might not otherwise consider a career in the game industry. Maybe even someone with the vision for the next State of Decay is out there just waiting for the right opportunity! That’s all we can say for now, but we’ll share more information as soon as we can.
It's not entirely clear what this new initiative will be. From what I can read above, it seems like it will be a low cost or no cost game development school that's going to try to bring in people who might have not even thought about being game developers.
It certainly sounds pretty cool, so keep your eyes open for more details. In the meantime, you should go ahead and add State of Decay 2 to your wishlist on Steam as we wait for its Early 2020 release date — or you could just buy it for the Xbox One right now.
What do you think of this new Undead Labs initiative? Do you wish you had more access to game development tools in your youth? Let us know in the comments below!
