Blog - On Zombies in Games

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

It's somewhat of an unofficial rule in SCAD's game development major to not make games based off of topics that... well, game development students typically use.
This includes zombies and ninjas and that sort of thing.

The reason behind this is that when you invest all that time in, say, your zombie shooter game... you are then competing with hundreds of other generic zombie shooters just like yours.
I'll agree with that.


But one problem with, say, a zombie game is that shooting zombies is probably the least interesting part of the genre of George Romero brand zombie-lore.
On the surface level zombie films are violence and gore, but it's not a very good surface level.

Based on my love of the post-apocalyptic genre, someone recommended to me the comic/graphic novel series The Walking Dead.
The friend knew just the way to sell it to me, and the introduction by the author at the beginning of book one confirmed that the series was at least attempting to be exactly what I wanted.
I unfortunately leant my copy to a friend, so I can't quote it verbatim, but basically the author described just what I said above about how zombie movies aren't about the violence and gore. Like all horror genres, they're about something deeper. They're about our very psyche.

An afterward in book two covered a few great points on how zombies represent our fear of death. They are literally death personified, death in people-form. The metaphor is not just in their visual appearance, but in behavior: they are slow, and you can easily outrun them... but not forever, and you cannot hide from them for long. The classic George Romero zombie always gets you eventually. No matter how well protected you think you have made yourself, they will overpower your defenses, break through and you too join the ranks of the dead. They are the personification of our knowledge that we will inevitably die. Great stuff.

It also added, however, that they're compelling because they're so inept that it gives us hope of escaping our fate nevertheless. Anyone and everyone can easily outrun, hide from, or defeat a zombie or two. They're slow, dumb, weak, and can be defeated with just about anything you can get your hands on. But yet, they will never stop coming for you and that is why they're terrifying.

The forward of book one continued though, saying that more than that, the best zombie films hold up the mirror and show that we (humankind) is the monster. Admittedly that is not the most mind-blowingly original revelation and zombie stories not alone in using it, but there you are. The post-apocalyptic nature of much contemporary zombie-lore reflects this man-as-monster idea all the more. In post-apocalyptic worlds, desperation and lawlessness leads men to do awful, monstrous things.

I posted earlier my interest in designing games where the primary motivations are based around fear and the desire to just survive. Post-apocalyptic fare works beautifully for that.

In The Walking Dead the undead mainly serve as only a catalyst to make sure the main characters are never comfortable. They're always around to be that much-needed conflict that drives narrative. But the narrative is about the living, not the dead.

Therein, I think, is a major failing of many zombie-based games, particularly amateur student ones. Being games, an active medium, they go too much for the action. In the heat of the graphics war, they go for splatter. Both elements are the superficial gloss over something much more fascinating. We get the frosting without the cake.

Instead, a game that took some of the principals the author used to craft The Walking Dead, if done right, could be really amazing.
A game that lets you safely explore moments where you must decide exactly who and what you're willing to risk in order to save yourself and people you love.

Even if it's not the happiest fantasy, there'd still be a great power-fantasy to be had in playing someone like The Walking Dead's protagonist, Rick Grimes, acting as the tribe leader of a small band of survivors and trying to figure out how to keep your people alive the longest. In general I find myself drawn to the negative fantasy of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. A friend of mine once said heist movies make you associate with the protagonist so you can feel deviously clever as though it was you who pulled the heist. For me, post-apocalyptic fiction is the same. I really love thinking about how cleverly I could scrape together resources to live as one of the cowboys of the new lawless land. You will never fully understand exactly how many such thoughts I have to suppress when I'm near canned food or other useful supplies. ;)




And now I'm further fueling this interest/passion brewing inside my head by reading World War Z, thanks to my former design partner David McDonough's review of it.

So, one of my side projects this year is a zombie game. I'm just hoping I can make one that defies the SCAD "no zombies" policy and make one that stands out ahead of the rest. After all, it won't be a "zombie-shooter"...

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 11:11 PM  0 Comments Links to this post



Blog - On Survival

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Something I read somewhere was talking about getting more women into games and gaming (a topic I'm interested in, given my full support of WIGI) and it was mentioned how back in its day Frogger was very popular with, well, everyone. Women weren't just interested, it argued, because you were playing a cute little frog rather than some kind of weird male power-fantasy or sex object (thought that probably helped.) They argued its popularity was also based on the game's non-aggressive nature.

(I don't mean to come across as having the prejudice that women don't like violent games, by the way. I've certainly known women who didn't fit that mold. In fact, at the lecture just given last week at the Boston Postmortem there were findings reported that the GTA series were listed as one of the top games among teenage girls.)

Now, you can't quite say there's no violence in Frogger. You can be crushed under a truck, or eaten by alligators. Neither is all that violent, no. I've seen worse in Disney movies. But I'll still count it.
The difference is that the player character, our protagonist, isn't the violent one.
The player is not forced to commit (virtual) acts of violence.

I like that.
I once played through (and beat) Fallout without engaging in a single round of combat, because I argued that most people avoid fights at all cost. I tried to play the game making decisions I would actually make in real life if I were placed in the same situations. If faced with evil forces I would run away, hide, sneak around if I had to. Playing that cunning and adaptable coward character was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had.

I also was completely blown away by some of the "chase scenes" in Half-Life 2, where the character is being pursued by some terrifying and at the time unstoppable force. Such situations in games, where fleeing is the only option, are risky as the player must KNOW that making a stand and fighting isn't possible. I think HL2 did a good job at providing such feedback. In the Ant-Lion chase sequence, the fact that for every Ant-Lion you kill, more appear makes it quickly apparent that staying and fighting is a bad, bad plan. When chased by the Helicopter-thing through the waterways on your boat, you don't have a gun that seems powerful enough to put a dent in that thing's armor. After unloading a clip into the machine and the bullets seemed to ping uselessly off it's hide, I got the picture. So, in both cases, I ran. Knowing that these deadly forces that I couldn't possibly stop were just behind me in full pursuit made for an intense emotional experience. It was powerful.

So, I've often had an extreme attraction to game experiences where I'm NOT the hero, where I'm fragile and scared. Why?
Well first of all, relative to video games, because it's DIFFERENT. Not many games give you that feeling. Most games are male power-fantasies after all.
But in real life, I'm no hero, and have no plans to be. So as cool as it would be to be one, I still feel that it doesn't resonate as well with me.

Most people don't have experience with actually firing a gun and killing someone. It's kind of abstract to most people. Survival, however, is something we do every day. Many people HAVE experienced a moment of terror where they thought they might die.
Shouldn't that resonate with more people?

Being a hero is a good fantasy, and my entry from yesterday should demonstrate that I don't mean to knock that fantasy as a great one to base a game around. Hell, it's certainly been a successful formula in the past. That's why when it's reversed on me it totally takes me by surprise and blows me away. It may not be as strong of a fantasy to be fragile, or a coward, but as long as I'm risk-free doing exciting things under heavy fire, there is still a thrill there.

I love post-apocalyptic works because something I take for granted every day, like finding something to eat, becomes a new, compelling emotional experience. I'd like to see more games that let me experience that.

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 9:27 AM  1 Comments Links to this post