The Zombie Apocalypse has become a vey popular backdrop for video games and other media lately, and as a writer I think I know why. Let me say that from the standpoint of the author, the zombie apocalypse is the last safe conflict that doesn't offend anyone. You can't have humans versus humans without it being about irrational prejudice and xeophobia, fighting animals tends toward animal cruelty and even other monsters have a grey area with people getting soft spots for dragons, vampires, werewolves, even demons have gotten sympathetic stories. This leaves robots and zombies, but many people are on the fence about robots (Are they human on the inside? Is it destruction of propery and vandalism?) so that is often not an option either. Zombies are a safe bet, they are mindless flesh eating creatures and you can't feel guilty about killing them because they are already dead, or, depending on the setting they are so close they would prefer you put them out of their misery.
For video games this has been an issue especially considering how some people claim video games are too violent. The fact is, vidoe games are fun because of the fact that you get to kill the bad guy. It was one thing when we werre just jumping on turtles and mushrooms and shooting lasers at spiders, but as graphics got better and more realistic, we have become more attached to our characters. Playstation sarted making them more photorealistic and by PS2 voice overs became a standard. RPGs have been getting us in depth with dialogue and morality as far back as Ultima Quest of the Avatar, the first game where the object actually wasn't to fight a villain. The best example of how far we've come is the companion cube sceario in Portal. While I haven't played the game, it has become a big enough deal that I am still aware of the phenomena of players becoming emotionally attached to the only thing they have to protect in the game. It is simply a cube with no purpose except to test players to get through the level without letting it be destroyed, a task that is difficult enough that when you are ultimately asked to "euthanize" it you feel guilt. But you shouldn't it's just a cube. Then you reflect and realize how you felt when Aerith died in FF7 or one of many other heart wrenching moments in other video games, and then it hits you, none of them were any more real than the companion cube. Ultimately video games have proven that we become atttached emotionally to anything we invest time into, whether that is actual people, a career, a hobby, a craft, or even just these imaginary characters in a video game. The flip side is, if we can care that much about something that isn't real, what does that say when we let ourselves kill several enemies in a First Person Shooter? There was a game called Postal in which the player character is a man who "goes postal" and shoots up everyone and the goal is to kill as many people as possible. What possessed anyone to think that was a good idea? Possibly the same person who decided to build the Mortal Kombat franchise around bloody, gory death scenes. And let's not even get started on Grand Theft Auto.
But zombies are safe. In a zombie apocalypse, you are fighting for survival, everyone you kill is already dead. There is no moral confusion, in fact you're making the world a better place by removing the worst part of it. It's pretty much the last safe refuge to make a video game as horrifyingly action packed as possible without actually sending the message that mass murder is a good idea.
Or maybe we just messed up in the head.
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