Maybe before we all die in 2012, Gearbox Software will say something about Z-Day, the possible name of a game that may not ever see the light of day. According to the US Patents and Trademark Office (via Siliconera), the Borderlands creators have trademarked the catchy, yet gloomy name for use with games software. But as to what the possible game is, well, that's a mystery--the trademark doesn't have any useful details, and Gearbox of course hasn't said anything about the possible project.
As Siliconera notes, Z-Day kinda sounds like a name for a zombie shooter. Arrowhead Games--not that Arrowhead--would agree. The collection of developers, as of a post dated March 26th this year, has been making a zombie MMOFPS under the Z-Day name. It's an unpaid indie kind of project, but we'll assume for the moment (I've asked) that Arrowhead didn't jump on the trademark before Gearbox did.
According to Urban Dictionary (of all the places) Z-Day was maybe coined by author Max Brooks, who also wrote the following classic zombie novels: The Zombie Survival Guide or World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The term apparently marks the day a zombie invasion--or outbreak, apocalypse, etcetera--begins.Gearbox and the undead? That seems like a match made in heaven, oddly enough. What say you?