So I see it all the time. Somebody mentions that they’re interested in working on a zombie game, and there’s always a response long the lines of “OH NO NOT ANOTHER ZOMBIE GAME”.
and yet even mediocre zombie games (my opinion) such as Dead Linger and DayZ sell like hotcakes. Even the people who criticize someone for making or wanting to make a zombie game would buy that game.
Also, people who play one Zombie game often will play all other zombie games instead of limiting themselves to only one…unlike members of the MOBA or MMO communities.
What makes Zombie games so popular…yet unpopular at the same time?
I like zombie games. When developing a zombie game, you have a whole cultural history and understanding to draw from. People know what zombies are and what to expect from a zombie game. They know the tropes and the kind of experience to expect. People like familiar things. You just need to take the premise and do something interesting with it (but not too interesting or you might put people off).
It’s the same reason anyone makes any kind of genre game (or novel, movie, etc.).
Zombies are so popular for me because right now it’s scientifically not going to happen so as a result people fantasize about what those days would be like. It’s so unpopular for me because there’s only so many times and ways to depict a zombie before that idea gets old. Imo, there’s a lack of innovation in the zombie apocalyptic world right now.
Well, zombies are actually a very new thing. They aren’t some piece of folklore like vampires or werewolves in which no one even knows where or how the stories originated.
Hell, the guy who invented them is still alive today.
It just kinda seems like taking the zombie trope, then drastically altering the concepts to try to make it yours, would be just a bit of a slap in the face to Romero or something…
As to why they’re so popular, I can’t really say. That’s an extremely complicated subject. I can say why people hate them though; they’re popular and prolific. The zombie-haters are mostly just hipster D-bags.
I think people just like the survival elements and post apocalyptic atmosphere/ feel that zombie themed games, movies and shows give off. Its like this whole other life that is really dangerous to live in and you would probably never want to happen in real life but at the same time you think it would be really cool to be in a post apocalyptic environment and surviving.
There is a part of you that feels like its fun to be a survivor, living life with no rules and scavenging around in different places for food, weapons and such. I think this type of atmosphere or feeling the zombie genre gives off is really what draws people to it. Personally I am not big on zombies and think they have been way overused, but I like the things the zombie genre brings like survival and apocalyptic setting (what I just mentioned above) and thats what I find neat about it in games and movies.
My thing with romero is, yes he may be credited with originating the story but where did he get the idea from? He didn’t just pull it from his ass and there you go. I believe he took aspects of culture and combined them to create something else entirely. As for haters, I can tell you that you’d be surprised how many zombie-haters are NOT hipster D-bags. I have a friend that said the same thing, for every person he told me I found significantly more that have a good reason for hating them.
Remember that zombies are horror and horror is generally suppose to induce fear in some way but not a lot of people want to be scared like that. I know the popularity increases every day, but there’s what about 7 billion people in the world. I’d say that the zombie craze has a long way to go to top past fads.
PS: Zombies are an aspect of caribbean and some african folklore
Zombie-hatred is exaggerated by game-devs and these forums because for a while it was flavor of the month and people got sick of it. But the general public took a long time to receive those mega-hit zombie games and movies like Dawn of the Dead, World War Z, Left 4 Dead, Day Z, and The Last of Us. But in the last few years there isn’t much that could come out to top those, and most wise game-devs have already figured that one out and moved on. Anything that becomes popular is divisive. Even the most popular presidents only win with 53-60% of the vote, and have a large minority that hates them.
I think zombies are a genre that is hard to make unique, its basically the same story over and over. That means its a perfect genre to become a fad, because its naturally short lived.
Look up “Zombie” from Wikipedia, it is a very interesting read on the cultural background of the phenomenon, especially the part about Haiti…
“Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: “powder strike”), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a deathlike state in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor.”
You’ve got a background story for your next zombie game right there
I think zombies give a chilling form of antagonist: a group of beings that are out to consume the rest of humanity. They have no Evil Plan; they will never have a doomsday device. They will never imprison the party in the Worst Prison Ever. They will never make the mistakes that most ‘classic’ antagonists make (e.g. anything on the Evil Overlord List,) because they’re barely even sentient in the first place. They’re simply too primal to screw up, and they’ve got numbers.
That being said, merely surviving them seems to be a bit overused. Sure you have to scrounge for resources, but at some point it’d be interesting to see something like, say, a JRPG where the victory condition is either healing or killing every zombie on the planet, and re-establishing human dominance. (hmmm…I am working on a JRPG framework at the moment…that has possibilities…)
Zombies are actually an ancient concept, but I think they’re ripe for some innovation and advancement.
When zombies first became popular, there were some pretty good movies / games:
– 28 days (movie)
– Dawn of the Dead (movie)
– Walking Dead (series)
– Left for Dead (game)
– Plants vs Zombies (game)
But then everyone jumped on the bandwagon, and they became less special.
They’re used in a lot of games for a few reasons:
– They’re easy to program. They basically charge at you and attack until they die. They don’t need to take cover, or flank you, or exhibit any other complex behavior.
– You can kill lots of them. They move in packs, and bunch up well.
– They’re a nameless enemy that doesn’t require much of a story or explanation. They got bit, and now they’re a zombie, so now they want to eat your brains.
I’ve wanted to make a coop zombie survival horror game since I was a little kid. LONG LONG before Walking dead or DayZ or any modern zombie game was released. When I was young I worked in Hammer and Worldcraft on “mods” which were basically just brush based level design. From the start, I knew I wanted to focus on the atmospheric experience and the player/zombie interactions. I was actually prototyping things out in Unity for an open-world zombie survival game, when to my surprise, I hear about “THIS AWESOME NEW GAME” DayZ.
To put it bluntly…DayZ severely disappointed me. None of the visions I had for this game were carried out to my expectations. DayZ isn’t a Zombie game. DayZ is a pvp survival experience with basic zombies tacked on. Just watch any video for DayZ standalone and you won’t see pve at all.
So despite the recent zombie craze, I continued prototyping things off and on before realizing that “Open World” was far too complex to start off with. I’ve since streamlined down to a single area experience much like project Zomboid with the goal of having more engaging AI and a more engaging atmosphere. I cut out almost everything “fluff” i had planned and I started focusing hard on the enemy mechanics.
In two weeks of mostly after-work development, I have:
-Spawn Map system that creates interesting, diverse, and usable spawn patterns, with a spawn map generator planned to remove art load.
-Various Zombie personalities
-Code based Horde grouping/forming mechanics done without collision checking or objects/triggers
-Some minor AI performance optimizations
-Zombie target management
-Zombie target detection through vision (also code based)
-Item hierarchy
-Weapon hierarchy
-400~ Zombies running AI in realtime @ 30-40fps on a mid-range PC with one thread. Need pro A* to run more than one -_-
From my previous prototypes…
I have modified the UFPS module to run a primary/secondary weapon setup with any combination of weapons
Basic Inventory system
I’ll run into a point in 6-8 weeks where I’ll have something playable without art. I can model but that’s a whole separate design burden and I’m hoping some of my connections will hop on once I have something playable. I’m just doing this for fun but it would be awesome to put out a finished project at some point in the future…even if people will look at it as “JUST ANOTHER ZOMBIE GAME…”
^^^ but maybe that is why they are so popular. Because of how simple zombies are easy to understand in movies and games. You don’t need to come up with a long complicated back story to explain about them. there is usually no dialog exchanged in movies and games between the player/veiwer because zombies don’t really talk, or anything. You you just start a show or game off by sending a couple of zombies out at the player/veiwer and the person automatically understands “hey theres a zombie, I gotta do something”, or “theres zombies, I wonder what the survivors will do.”
and when there is a back story, its also usually really simple like “virus x started the zombie outbreak” and so on. Again, no need to come up with this crazy complicated story like inception was haha.
People like simple and zombies are simple. I mean you just understand what a zombie is very quickly when you see one in games and movies.
Every player is generally smarter than a Zombie and as long as they have a weapon then they can survive the encounters.
Are there any games that really do a good simulation of a zombie horde?
If World War Z is anything to go on then a city (millions) or town sized (10’s of thousands) horde would be like a tidal wave of Zombies breaking through or climbing over obstacles.
Probably the most interesting game I’ve seen is Atom Zombie Smasher for simulating the zombie problem from a military perspective.
I love the zombie theme when it is done well. I like it in movies. I like it in games…
I think you see the initial concept of zombies being born in The Last Man on Earth. They were called vampires, and you had to stake them. They only came out at night, and were repelled by mirrors and garlic… But they were very brain damaged and slow. They were the result of a virus. They stumbled around in hordes trying to infect or kill those who weren’t infected… It seems like they have a hive mind, where one of them speaks for all of them. Yes, they could speak, it was weird.
