Binary Swan

I was a child with a vivid imagination. I spent many hours in my backyard tree, defending my kingdom from invading nasties. My custom-built Lego spaceship took me far into the galaxy and back again, always with many stories to tell of battles with aliens and treasures uncovered. These fantastical adventures spawned from a special place inside my head, a place of joy and comfort but also a place where I was the winner. I controlled the fantasy and thus I knew that no matter how dire the circumstances, I would come out on top. I would win the day. I do not believe that such an experience is uncommon during our lost childhood years and I think this is why many videogames take a certain form.

Playing as Faith I will save my sister.

Playing as Mario I will defeat Bowser.

Playing as Darsil, the stealthy Dunmer mage I will fulfill the prophecies and defeat Dagoth Ur to save all of Morrowind from his cult-like Sixth House.

Or maybe I won’t but that is because I have made my own quest, that will be fulfilled on the streets of Liberty City.

There are so many points when we play videogames that we know we will win. They exist to make us feel good, to get lost in a world like our childhood fantasies. To end in victory. If games are an extension of our imagination then they will carry that assumption of success unless deliberately exorcised by conscious thought. It is because of this that I feel the game industry as yet cannot bring itself to make a good piece of horror gaming. The escapism that so many gamers find is equivalent to the catharsis provided by classic moments of horror cinema where the audience might just scream out loud. We have no need to be cast adrift like the audience after Psycho’s shower scene no matter how many times Infinity Ward designed AI kills your floating gun portal to it’s world. We will be back in that world, connected and fighting on to eventual victory. There might be some twist, we might even die. But we will not lose.

Horror is about feeling out of control, accepting that the world might be a place where you cannot win and where you might not be able to escape. By referencing the many audio and visual artifacts of the cinematic traditions games can create unnerving moment after unnerving moment, repeated over and over. But this ends with your escape, alive and successful, no less empowered than the triumphant return of Abe to Rapture Farms to liberate his fellow Mudokan. We need to source another segment of our conscious experience in order to create true pieces of horror gaming. If games come from our imagination where we are in control then maybe we need to search our experience for something altogether different. Maybe we need to remember our nightmares and what it means to have one. Those moments of our dreams we are out of control and yet still on an amazing journey.

Zombies are the new World War II of gaming. You have the juggernaut that is Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2, indie titles such as Zombie Apocalypse among others, re-releases, and even DLC for other titles that have little or no reason to include zombies in their game world. I could go on but suffice to say there is alot on offer for fans of the walking dead. Amongst all these titles there are definitely some great games worthy of attention, but thus far there has not been a good zombie game. Across all these titles the zombies merely serve as the AI opponent, the antagonistic force to be overcome, they hint at the horror of the cinematic source material only through the blood splatters and flying limbs.  Zombie games draw heavily from film but do so without ever replicating what it is that makes the movies horrific.

Anyone well versed in this particular film subgenre would be aware that it is not the zombies that are the greatest horror. Zombies may produce the most ’shocking’ moments, but it is the degenerative humanity in the survivors that is most horrific. Sure, there are moments of cooperation but invariably it is the selfishness or inhumanity of a survivor that leads to the groups eventual downfall. I cannot recall any game in recent years that has successfully replicated this. The Survivors in all these games are players or npc’s that are alligned with the you from the start, they never betray you to save their own skin.

As gamers we are not exposed to what makes Zombie films so interesting. The Boss Battles in Dead Rising show that people can abandon humanity in the event of a zombie apocalypse but it doesn’t go far enough. The ‘bosses’ are always antagonistic, there is never a suggestion that they might work with the player. Left 4 Dead is designed carefully to reward cooperation and survival, it wants the players to win and to feel like a team. If you have seen George A. Romero’s “…of the Dead” films then you might be aware that Cooperation and Survival are themes presented alongside Selfishness and Heartlessness. I would love to see betrayal as a realistic option for particular moments in Left 4 Dead games but that is not the direction Valve is going.

These titles can be great action games, but they represent a missed opportunity. Zombies have become the World War II of gaming because they are the thematic filter that allows for the action genre to advance in mechanics and design.  All I can do is hope that game designers  recognize the full range of experiences possible in the material they are using.