Sony has just announced a free-to-play MMO called H1Z1 that I think I’d really like to play. It was shown off by Sony Online Entertainment president John “Smed” Smedley on a gaming show called Game Talk Live yesterday.

It has zombies in it, for starters, but more importantly it has player-based creation, meaning people can collect resources and make stuff out of them, a la Minecraft/7 Days to Die, including fortifications, houses, warehouses and weapons. Players will also be able to set things alight, and use fire to cook, destroy scenery and defend themselves.

The point is to let people build stuff that will help them survive just like they would in a real-world zombie apocalypse. Although if recent multiplayer zombie-survival games DayZ and Rust are anything to go by, people will likely just end up ganging up on newbies (with and without pants) and make survival less about beating the zombies and more about dodging real players.

There is hope that things like that won’t happen to people who aren’t into that sort of thing. Smed says they will have multiple servers up that have drastically different rule sets, which presumably means those that like making life difficult for others can play on their own servers, while people who want to make stuff and survive on their own ingenuity can play on others.

Interestingly, the things people make will be permanent, as Smed calls the game “a persistent MMO that can hold thousands of players on servers we host”. Sounds a bit like SOE’s other player-content-driven MMO, Everquest Next in that respect. Neat!

Curious yet? I must admit, it sounds quite intriguing. It’s good, then, that we won’t have to wait long to play it, as Smed said on Twitter that people will be able to play it “soon”. He also said that H1Z1 will launch on PC first, and if your gaming rig can run Planetside 2, it’ll run H1Z1 just fine.

If you’d like to see the game in action, you can watch the Game Talk Live video below which features Smed showing off the game for five minutes or so.