ArenaNet founder and former NCsoft president of product development Jeff Strain has formed a new studio called Undead Labs.

The Seattle, Washington-based studio is “on a mission to take online gaming in bold new directions”, beginning with its in development zombie MMO for consoles.

“Every time I see a good zombie movie with friends, we spend days debating our strategies for surviving the zombie apocalypse,” said Strain. “The police station, or the supermarket? Garden rake, or staple gun? Bach, or the White Stripes? I’m a game developer, so I’d probably be useless for anything other than ghoul bait, but I’m excited to have the opportunity to build an MMOZ that lets us put those strategies to the test and find out for sure.”

In the nineties Strain worked at Blizzard as a programmer on StarCraft, Diablo and World Of Warcraft, before setting up ArenaNet with fellow Blizzard leads Mike O’Brien and Patrick Wyatt in 2000. He was serving as programmer and executive producer for the Guild Wars franchise when ArenaNet was purchased by NCsoft in 2002.

In 2008 Strain was promoted to president of product development for NCsoft’s western operations, before departing the Korean firm this summer to form Undead Labs.