Irrational Pitch For A Zombie Shooter Was Well Ahead Of Its Time

Irrational Games had this idea for – hang with me here – a zombie shooter. Only thing was, it was back in 2005, and the studio’s creative director said its pitches were met with the sound of crickets.

“I remember going around pitching it and the person would be ‘Zombies? Who wants to play a zombie game?’” Ken Levine, the creative director for Irrational, told Game Informer.

“Someone said to me, ‘We don’t think zombies will be big in 2005,’” added Irrational’s Joe McDonagh.

The premise sounds familiar but in 2005 was very original, because, “there was really only Resident Evil at that time,” Levine explained. The game, called Division 9, would pit survivors against infected, but instead of blasting through the hordes, “You’d have to take on risks to get more supplies, ammo and people. You sort of build up your group of survivors,” Levine said.

Irrational released a concept trailer for the game, which you can see with the rest of the interview on GI’s site. It’s interesting to think what would have happened had Irrational in fact kickstarted this sub-genre of the FPS and made a ton of money in the process, what would have happened with a game like BioShock. Would we just now be seeing it?

Trailer for Irrational’s Scrapped Zombie Game [IGN]