Nie każdy zombie wychodzi z grobu: różne genezy zombie w grach komputerowych i wideo

Markocki, Miłosz

Nie każdy zombie wychodzi z grobu: różne genezy zombie w grach komputerowych i wideo

Abstract

Over the last few years, the popularity of zombies has been rising in both popular cul-ture and mass media—the living dead have spread from cinemas to TV series and nov-els as well as computer and video games. In the 2000s alone more than eighty games referring to zombies either in the title or in the content were published. Since zombies have become so common in the game industry, game developers strive to make their games different from others, so that their title does not end up as “just another zombie game.” In order to remain recognisable and to be readily associated with the threat that zombies create, game developers cannot change the representation of the zombie in any significant manner. Thus they reach for originality and innovation in their games—not in the character of the zombie itself, but in the depiction of its origins. In the case of the living dead, most variations do not come from the physical appearance or behaviour of zombies but from the reasons for which they came to be: what caused the gameworld to be full of mindless and tenacious creatures that are thirsty for the blood and flesh of the living humans? Miłosz Markocki’s goal in the chapter Not Every Zombie Rises from Its Grave: On Different Origins of Zombies in Video and Computer Games is to present a number of general patterns used by game developers to explain the origins of the zombies in gameworlds, as well as to present more inter-esting variations of these schemas and hybrid variants. Comparing various types of zombie origins presented in games, the diversity of paths taken by game developers is depicted—even though they all have the same goal that is establishing the character of the zombie in the gameworld.