I absolutely love horror movies. Far more than is reasonable. And I run a website called Zombie Arcade. So it might seem a little odd for me to say this, but, seriously people, enough with the freaking zombies already!
But I still haven’t recovered from last time… (Source: Dayzmod.com
This is, in truth, an issue that isn’t exclusive to games. Popular fiction in general over the last four or five years seems to have had an oddly strong fascination with the undead, especially with vampires and, in gaming, particularly zombies. I initially thought it was just a fad and that soon people would move on to obsessing unreasonably over something else (dinosaurs?) but this has been going on for years and it only took a few months for it to get old.
It reminds me of the days when it seemed like every new game that came out was set in World War II, except with zombies this time; and, to be honest, I find this trope even more tiresome.
You get the picture…
DayZ, The War Z, Fortnite, Zafehouse: Diaries, undead-based DLC for Sleeping Dogs, the episodic The Walking Dead game… even if you only take into account recent releases or soon-to-be-released titles, you end up with a huge list of zombie-based games, and it seems that even games not based entirely around the shambling undead still find some way to work them in (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Dishonored, Black Ops II).
But what’s the problem, really? DayZ might be more than a little rough around the edges and it might not be exactly “fun” but it’s an interesting, unique game, and a realisation of a kind of game that many people have been dreaming of for a long time. And isn’t Zafehouse: Diaries focused right on one of the things that makes zombie films so great – the relationships between survivors? Fortnite is combining the appeal of Minecraft with some far more fleshed out gameplay and actual graphics; shouldn’t we be looking forward to that one too? Dishonored’s a great game and the inclusion of zombies is an important part of the world. In XCOM these enemies are legitimately disturbing and frightening, something that’s hard to realise in a turn-based game. Shouldn’t we happy? These are great games.
You again? (Source “The Walking Dead” game)
And yet… the unique, creative spirit of games like DayZ or Zafehouse is seriously undermined by the fact that we’ve seen so many zombie games already, especially recently. Yes, both games feature interesting mechanics and should be congratulated for taking risks and trying new things in gaming, but the mere fact that they’re based around a concept we’ve seen so much of recently makes them feel tired and derivative in ways that games with such unique play styles and mechanics shouldn’t.
In XCOM or Dishonored I wouldn’t have given a second thought to the inclusion of zombies – they fit the world, are well executed, and in most ways just feel like another part of the game in both cases (and both games are very good). But because of the absurd over-saturation of games featuring the undead on the market, I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Of course there were going to be zombies. Again.”
It’s tempting to blame developers for being unimaginative, but that’s not where the problem comes from: the problem is with gamers themselves. Publishers finance and developers create games that they think will sell, and right now, making a game about zombies is the safest bet in the book because gamers in general have become so fixated on them. But wouldn’t any of these games be just as good, and make their originality more strongly felt, if they took place in a fresh setting? These games don’t NEED to be about zombies to have the same creative mechanics.
Well, it could’ve been worse. (Source: Wikipedia “Dino Crisis”)
Why are we even so obsessed with the topic? It’s certainly not new and exciting; we’ve seen it done so many times that there’s not much left in terms of scare or shock value, and I, personally, can’t see how the themes that zombie-related fiction tends to push are any more or less relevant now than they were ten years ago, before this whole mess started. The fact is that all I see in zombie games now is a lifeless amalgamation of individuals devoid of free thought, carelessly devouring our wallets, attention, and shelf space. And as fun as zombies taking over the Earth might sometimes be in fiction, I don’t want to experience it for real.
