State of Decay's Lifeline DLC is just the start of Undead Labs' 'long-term ambitions'

State of Decay: Lifeline, the second expansion and the first story-based add-on for Undead Labs' hit Xbox Live Arcade title, turns the tables on State of Decay by putting the player on the military side of humanity's efforts to repel the zombie outbreak. 

"We have long-term ambitions for the franchise," said Strain in an interview following the demo, referring to the deal with Microsoft. "Wherever we take this, in terms of sequels, multiplayer will be built in from the beginning."

Strain has been very positive about his company's relationship with Microsoft, and he told Polygon that Undead Labs went with Microsoft for the original State of Decay and followed up with the long-term agreement for a number of reasons.

"My experience with our team and Microsoft has been that it is built from very passionate, very smart people whose hearts are in the right place," said Strain. He pointed out that State of Decay was a risky proposition to invest in, partly because Undead Labs "did violate game dev 101" with several of its design choices, like the inclusion of permadeath in a role-playing game.

"When you look at some of the things we want to do going forward, if you want to be on the console platform, it takes some different thinking about the console business model, about the live infrastructure and network infrastructure that traditionally you associate with the console experience," he said. "We're going to have to have somebody who's a partner working with us on the technology to make all that happen. And so working directly with Microsoft is going to be a huge win going forward for that."