The following post is an excerpt from Zombies, again? A qualitative analysis of the zombie antagonist’s appeal in game design, a chapter that appears in The Playful Undead and Video Games: Critical Analyses of Zombies and Gameplay, edited by Stephen J. Webley and Peter Zackariasson.
In the chapter, assumptions about the ludic appeal of the undead are discarded and a fresh qualitative approach taken to determine why game designers continue to create games centred on zombie antagonists. Interviews were conducted with twenty game designers who have worked on high-profile zombie titles, both indie and triple-A, and content analysis performed on the resulting material. Three dominant themes emerged from the data: storytelling, gameplay, and utility. The chapter discusses these themes in turn, before considering some of the less significant, but still notable, themes that emerged.
In this excerpt, however, the question of the undead’s enduring appeal as video game antagonists is explored.
Zombies – or zombie-like entities – are a ubiquitous enemy in modern video games, from the infected victims featured in Left 4 Dead (Valve Corporation, 2008) and The Last of Us (Sony Computer Entertainment, 2013), to the more traditional zombies that plague the residents of Raccoon City in the original Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996). Perennial sales behemoth, Call of Duty, has featured a zombie-based mode in instalments released since World at War (Activision, 2008), while the indie scene is similarly infested, with titles including DayZ (Bohemia Interactive, 2013), Zombie Night Terror (Gambitious Digital Entertainment, 2016) and Project Zomboid (The Indie Stone, 2013).
Assumptions are made about the continued popularity of zombies as video game antagonists, many of which are framed in terms of design-driven or technological concerns. For example, zombies’ impaired mental and physical function means that they are readily re-created using even limited in-game artificial intelligence (AI). As Dill (2013, p.5) notes, zombie games are an example of where sub-par AI may suffice because “the characters are deliberately made to be a little bit stupid or wonky, so that their strangeness will be more acceptable.” It is also assumed that something of zombies’ appeal lies in their ‘otherness’. As Backe & Aarseth (2013) suggest, enemies that lack any shred of human consciousness, that represent an “alien, post-human Other” (p. 1), might be considered ideal targets for indiscriminate on-screen execution.
However, the undead – not least because of their resemblance to the living – remain somewhat problematic as disposable, morally-acceptable cannon (or chainsaw) fodder. Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009) faced accusations of racism in its depiction of African zombies (Brock, 2011; Pham, 2009; Goldstein, 2009), suggesting that the undead are not quite ‘other’ enough to alleviate moral and social concerns. This is an ironic turn in zombies’ popular culture history, perhaps, given the satirical intentions of George A. Romero’s original zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead (The Walter Reade Organization, 1968). Released just six months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Romero sought to cast non-white actors in significant roles and went so far as to depict the lynching and murder of a key black character at the film’s conclusion. Furthermore, following decades of battling the relentless digital undead, there may be a certain sense of zombie fatigue that hangs over games which continue to rely upon this trope, not unlike the fetid stench of the antagonists’ rotting flesh. The question arises, then, as to why game designers continue to appropriate the undead in their games, despite the potentially problematic or increasingly well-worn nature of such adversaries. Might zombies’ ludic appeal eventually begin to wane?
In response to this question, interviewees were cautiously optimistic that the undead antagonist would never truly die. As we have already seen, this enduring appeal may be connected with zombies’ versatility as a foe. Piotr Mistygacz (Dead Island and Dying Light series) elaborates:
Looking at their evolution over the years – from the classical, slow “voodoo”, to charging hordes, there are certainly new ones appearing. I don’t think they will disappear. They will continue evolving, changing.
Simon Pegg, co-writer and star of modern zombie classic, Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004), is adamant that zombies – in film and television, at least – should be slow moving, going so far as to suggest that zombies capable of running are “a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster” (Pegg, 2008). Despite enduring affection for Romero’s slow and shuffling variety of undead, however, the horde of zombie-savvy game designers interviewed here overwhelmingly believed that games may feature zombies that are both fast and slow. Ben Wanat (Dead Space series) explains the advantages:
My favorite zombies in movies are the fast ones, like in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Zach Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. But in gamesI prefer a mix of both. Resident Evil 4 did a great zombie, mixing the fast and slow traits together which really kept players on their toes. Dying Light effectively mixes the two as separate enemy types to create more layered challenges and player strategies.
There was broad agreement that a mixture of fast and slow zombies presented welcome opportunities for varied and unpredictable gameplay: “it’s more fun to mix types of zombies to vary gameplay and provide more complex scenarios” (Benson Russell – The Last of Us); “Ideally your level designer would have access to both and then could mix them up to give your player varied gameplay” (Paul Mathus – Dead Space series, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier). However, there was also a feeling that exclusively fast or slow zombies might be used, depending on the nature of the game, as the “tone and balance of a particular game may call for either” (Joel Burgess – The Elder Scrolls and Fallout). Harrison Pink (The Walking Dead series) provides examples:
If you’re trying to make a game about humanity, like the Telltale Walking Dead games, I think you need them to be slower, like the traditional zombies. Because they force human beings to deal with each other and that’s what I think zombies are also really good at. […] And fast zombies are really good for just really good action scenes, like in Left 4 Dead, and you just get some really intense, incredible moments with fast zombies.
Hugo Blanc (Zombie Night Terror) agrees that the inventive evolution of zombies – whether to embrace both fast and slow varieties, or, perhaps to reflect evolving societal fears – is key to their continued recurrence:
I think it’s a cyclic trend, if you look at their history, they have come back multiple times since the early 20th century. From the voodoo-controlled corpses to Romero’s slow-paced zombies and the fast paced infected of 28 Days Later, creators managed to inject new ideas into the genre to keep it relatively fresh. Left 4 Dead and The Last of Us are, for me, the perfect example of how to evolve zombies in the right direction, the first one for [the] introduction of infected with special abilities and the second one for representing them in a different way. So, if games continue to be innovative with the genre, I don’t think over-using them is a problem.
The cyclical nature of zombies’ popularity was noted by several other interviewees, including Richard Foge (State of Decay):
It’s got to be cyclical but, I mean, we’ve been talking about getting burned out on zombies for years now and people have been saying like ‘no, there’s no way that this is gonna sustain’ and every time somebody announces another game with zombies as the particular focus people kind of groan and moan about it and then go buy it.
Andy Hodgetts (Project Zomboid) relates zombies’ endurance to his previous observation about discovering our advanced human society is vulnerable:
It’s certainly not impossible that zombies will fall out of favour for a time, but I don’t think they’ll ever go away. Much like the zombies themselves, the idea won’t ever die. If anything, the more we advance as societies, the more aware we’ll become of the fragility of that society and the more horrifying the fear of its collapse will become.
The archetypal nature of zombies as an enemy, and the timelessness of the stories they may be used to tell, are also cited as factors in their longevity. Hodgetts continues:
All the most enduring stories are founded on very basic concepts – heroic and villainous character archetypes show themselves within myths and stories across all cultures time and time again. The story of Prometheus in Greek myth, again in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, again and again sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. I would argue that zombies are a similar archetype.
Meanwhile, Chris Avellone (Fallout series), also highlights the undead’s archetypal appeal: “As it stands, zombies represent a primal fear much like vampires and ghosts and other classic horror archetypes, so I don’t think they’re going anywhere”.
Looking beyond games, Tymon Smektała (Dying Light series) suggests we should consider the evergreen genres that populate film, literature and television:
“Zombies” are a pop-cultural theme or genre, and they have proven themselves in time – if White Zombie [the 1932 film] is still considered the first piece of art about them, then it’s 85 years old this year. What’s even more important is that within that genre we have a lot of defining works – from Night of the Living Dead, through World War Z (the book) and 28 Days Later to The Walking Dead – and these works carry deep meaning, complex commentaries on society and the human condition. It’s not only pulp.
Even the more cautious responses to this question acknowledged the cyclical nature of zombies’ appeal, and suggested that, provided game designers continue to innovate, the undead would continue to rise:
I think there’s like a sine curve, like there’s a coming and a going of zombies, just like any sort of pop culture thing. I think you can definitely have too much of it. I think that’s why we’re seeing more interesting and more diverse zombie games.
Harrison Pink
It might be argued that advances in games development technology – particularly in relation to artificial intelligence – have rendered obsolete the more utilitarian reasons for employing zombies as in-game enemies. However, as the interviews documented here reveal, zombies’ utility remains a relevant consideration for game designers – it’s just that less pragmatic advantages, such as those discussed here in terms of storytelling and representation, have grown in importance. It is also clear that the undead support a range of compelling game mechanics and satisfying, varied gameplay, if deployed with flair.
The stories we tell reflect our understanding of the world and the society in which we live, even if such tales appear firmly rooted in the fantastic. The late, great George A. Romero, for example, used his ground-breaking zombie movies to hold a mirror to society and to reflect its ills, from racism to consumerism. These are issues that persist – perhaps even thrive – today, and form the basis of many quite legitimate fears about the decay of human society. As the interviews here reveal, zombie games can tap into contemporary fears just as their cinematic counterparts have done since Romero first unleashed Night of the Living Dead on a post-MLK America in 1968.
Zombie games also draw from the same primordial well as fairy tales and myth. Not only do the undead represent a classic antagonist, onto which we may project a host of fears, the associated zombie lore supports a range of compelling gameplay scenarios. Whether built around familiar tropes such as resource management or survival in the face of a relentless horde, the emergent possibilities such scenarios provide continue to captivate players.
It seems, then, that a propensity for great stories and engaging gameplay – rather than voodoo magic or rampant infection – will ensure that zombies will continue to rise from their game-based graves for the foreseeable future.
Barr, M. (2019) Zombies, again? A qualitative analysis of the zombie antagonist’s appeal in game design. In: Webley, S. J. and Zackariasson, P. (eds.) The Playful Undead and Video Games: Critical Analyses of Zombies and Gameplay. Series: Routledge Advances in Game Studies. Routledge: New York. ISBN 9781138895461
Works cited
Aarseth, E., & Backe, H.-J. (2014). Ludic Zombies: An Examination of Zombieism in Games. Presented at the Digital Games Research Association 2013: DeFragging Games Studies. Retrieved from http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/paper_405.pdf
Boon, K. (2011). The Zombie as Other: Mortality and the Monstrous in the Post-Nuclear Age. In D. Christie & S. J. Lauro (Eds.), Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-human (pp. 50–60). Fordham University Press.
Brock, A. (2011). ‘“When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong”’: Resident Evil 5, Racial Representation, and Gamers. Games and Culture, 6(5), 429–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412011402676
Dill, K. (2013). What Is Game AI? In S. Rabin (Ed.), Game AI Pro: Collected Wisdom of Game AI Professionals (p. 5). CRC Press.
Goldstein, H. (2009, February 10). Editorial: Is Resident Evil 5 Racist? Retrieved 31 January 2017, from http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/02/10/editorial-is-resident-evil-5-racist
Pegg, S. (2008, November 4). The dead and the quick. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/nov/04/television-simon-pegg-dead-set
Pham, A. (2009, February 12). Racism in Resident Evil 5? Capcom, two black actors respond. Retrieved from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/resident-evil-5.html
Wright, E. (2004). Shaun of the Dead. Universal Pictures.