303: How Games Get Zombies Wrong

[Azuaron]

snip

Nope.

Thorndike (1874-1949), when sticking cats in escapable cages, noticed that the cats were able to escape the cages faster with each try. He determined that actions leading to escape were "satisfying" and were "stamped in", versus actions that were "annoying" and "stamped out". This is called the Law of Effect. This is essentially what you are saying, but uses very different terminology. Further, there's only one dimension to the theory: actions are either "satisfying" and "stamped in" or they're "annoying" and "stamped out".

Skinner (1904-1990) (the pioneer of formal operant conditioning) rejected many of Thorndike's ideas and formulated the ideas of positive/negative reinforcement/punishment, and the terminology hasn't changed since. Further, Skinner's theory has 2 dimensions to it (positive/negative and reinforcement/punishment) giving it twice the descriptive power of Thorndike's (Thorndike can describe two conditions, Skinner four). That extra dimension is where people tend to screw up.

The problem is that when people hear "positive", they think "good" instead of "addition", and when they hear "negative", they think "bad" instead of "remove". Positive reinforcement is something people can understand; it's not difficult at all. Add good to keep behavior going. What could be simpler? The "positive" in this can works as either "add" (as it's supposed to) and "good" (as people think it is).

This understanding of positive reinforcement has led people to believe they understand negative reinforcement as well (add bad to stop behavior). They do not. Most people don't even know about the opposite of reinforcement: punishment. And even when they do, it still takes most people years of classes before they really get it down. Four years of psych classes, and some of my classmates still couldn't keep it straight. Hell, I still draw the grid to keep it straight when I need to explain it.

This has, ultimately, led to the popular belief that "negative reinforcement" as the addition of punishment is part of a formal psychological theory. It isn't.

Regardless, even thinking about "negative" as "bad", it's obvious that "negative reinforcement" is not what you want. Negative reinforcement, in that context, would be the addition of something bad to reinforce a behavior, and that's not what you're after (or what you're likely to get). That's like shocking someone (painfully) when they press a lever in the hope that they will continue to press the lever (pro-tip: they won't).

SO, instead of using "negative reinforcement" erroneously, use the proper term: "positive punishment". It sounds more badass, anyway.

tl;dr Skinner formulated the operant conditioning theory of positive/negative reinforcement/punishment and the terms haven't changed since. If you want to use Thorndike's ideas ("satisfying", "stamped in", "annoying", "stamped out"), then you have to use Thorndike's terminology. If you want to use Skinner's terminology, you have to use Skinner's ideas. They do not mix and match.

Azuaron: Educating the internet about psychology since 2006.

PS. Out of curiosity, Caliostro, what is your exact field of study? I've go a BS in psych (with a focus on information processing), an MS in engineering psych (with a focus on human-computer interaction), and I'm a freelance web dev now. Always good to meet fellow psychologists.

 

[Awexsome]

Would be fun to see a zombie game that does take "survival" as more than kill them before they kill you.

But that little blub at the end was distracting. Here's your whole article that did rip on games life L4D but had to throw in that little ending so not to insult Valve. You can call them out on it. You don't have to pander to the fanboys y'know.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

@J03Bot

Three words: Zombie. Panic. Source.

And of course, a good group of friends and regulars to play with. You can do much of what you're asking for there.

Bitten by the Carrier (first zombie player)? You're at risk of being infected, and you won't know for a bit. Sure, you can say you aren't ... but you might be lying. Your teammates can opt to wax you on the spot, but then you respawn as a zombie ... and if you weren't infected, a very angry one.

Or you can say that you never got hit; if no one was around (or survived) to witness you get bit. Sneak into your group of friends. Then suddenly zombify amidst them and watch the chaos unfold. Particularly amusing if your former teammate throws a grenade or mows down half of his friends in a spray of rifle fire trying to get you.

 

[Woodsey]

3 lines into the meat of the article and I can sort of see that there's going to be so much I'm going to disagree on it'll hurt to read.

(Something to the effect of): "What's that? Zombies are scary because they're cannibalistic monsters ready to eat your dick off? Wrong."

Well, no, actually, that's exactly why I would find zombies fucking scary. Not for you maybe.

 

[Netrigan]

Zombies aren't scary, which is probably why most modern zombies feature the "fast zombie" (or more accurately, the Infected), because going up against an enemy that you get away from by simply walking away isn't at all frightening. The only way they can even hope to make the concept even remotely scary is by stacking the deck by introducing giant hordes of the undead... and even that requires a certain amount of "look over there" and having a huge mob show up while the main character is distracted (the coma plot device being the most recent example of it). It's no accident that Shaun Of The Dead manages to be a comedy without subverting the basic formula of the zombie movie... because the basic formula of a zombie movie is already quite silly.

The only frightening aspect of a zombie movie is that one bite or scratch and it's game over... which is something a video game will never bother to replicate in today's market.

 

[Baldry]

I want to make a zombie game. I want it to be if a zombie bites you you're pretty much screwed, so this means when you actually see zombies there's a real sense of fear, it could start out somewhere pretty abandoned, like a village in the country side or whatever. You make choices, where do you want to go, shall you look for a cure, or wait it out, find more survivors or stay with who you've got already...What I wouldn't do for my mind to make games, anyway good article!

 

[sergnb]

If in a game you got bitten by a zombie and that made the AI survivors shoot you, everyone would think the game is fucking horrible.

Games are a different medium, you can't expect them to have the same rules novels or films have. Zombies fear is basicly that 1. You don't know if the entire earth is doomed. 2. One scratch and you are done. 3. I'm running out of resources.

You can't put that into games. You see, in games, there's always a helicopter waiting for you. There's always scape. There's always a base in Canada where the zombie's can't survive.

There's always a health bar. You get hit? no problemo, grabbing pills, grabbing pills!

You don't have to eat. LoL who would even think of putting food into consideration to survive? Oh wait, fallout does. And it's hella annoying. Yep, people actually hate having to eat to survive. It's not fun. And videogames are all about having fun, because, you know, they are games.

In the other hand I DO think you make very good points. The moment I saw the Dead Island trailer I was pumped. I was specting a very dark and gritty game. An actual SURVIVAL-horror. A game in which you had to move undetected, scavenge your way through the day, and hopefully wait to see more survivors and help them. A game in which each zombie is a challenge, as a civian you don't know how to bear a weapon so your aim is terrible, a game in which bullets are as rare as diamond is in minecraft.

Instead we are getting what seems to be another dead rising. D'ohwell, let's shoot some zombies and forget about the game in a couple years.

 

[Sabinfrost]

Some good points, survive as long as you can zombies exists as many people have already pointed out but they tend to be more arcade based. Personally I'd love to see a psychological horror of a zombie title with loads of character interaction and a sad ending. There have been plenty of zombie comedies lately in the games industry, time for something grittier.

 

[Lenin211]

Me, for one, would like a game where zombies are presented "realistically" but it will always be fun to mow down the undead hordes with an assault rife.

 

[etherlance]

See this is why I'm hoping the Dead island game will be good, I'm holding out hope that it's not another:


"What's this?......Zombies have arrived and ruined my holiday......Sweetheart hand me the shotgun.......whats that, we don't have one?.......well This may be a holiday resort on a secluded island but there's bound to be a shotgun....or at least a mini-gun somewhere on this island".

 

[FranckN]

nice article!

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Zombies are goddamned ridiculous anyways. Heat, moisture, cold, insects, predators and people kill them; they can't heal day to day wounds and biting is generally a horrible way to spread a disease.

There's no such thing as a "realistic" zombie invasion.

Decent article though

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

I think the problem here is that you (the article writer) are missing some rather important points.

A lot of Zombie movies are designed as art pieces with zombies being a metaphor for something like consumerism. A point admitted by the people creating the movies. As such, common sense and a realistic reaction to the threat does not apply.

What's more being MOVIES the director has the option of things like scene transitions as a storytelling device. He doesn't have to worry about creating a constant play enviroment, and actually exploring the threat. He can find ways of moving from one relevent scene to another as well, or gloss over events like how certain people can remain totally oblivious to what should be the painfully obvious.

Then of course there is the issue of the player, you'll notice that among genere fans and nerds nobody's hypothetical "zombie survival plan" involves "hey, I think I'll go find the most obnoxious people possible, and then isolate myself with them".

The point being that in the terms of a video game, you both have differant tools and expectations, differant storytelling requirements, and of course an audience of nerds who are engaged in a sort of warped wish fulfillment fantasy.

The thing to understand is that "shoot zombies with guns" is a perfectly rational solution, and it's what real people would actually do. Most people not being the morons used to make an artistic point in a film. What's more, even those films tend to show that the characters being focused on *ARE* a group of idiots. You see scenes on the news or whatever of people engaged in more rational responses wiping zombies out, the Sheriff on TV talking about "twitchers" in day of the dead, or the posse that is involved at the end of "Night Of The Living Dead".

What's more it's also important to note that reasonable people are also going to note that zombies are by their nature finite. They are not going to be an inexorable tide of nature. in the overall scheme of things. Humans reproduce sexually, zombies rely on infectiong people. Assuming people can avoid getting infected once they know the threat, every zombie they take down is one that is permanantly gone. What's more there are finite numbers of people in any given area. In say a town of 2,000 people that seems like quite the horde, but four dudes with guns could actually clear that out pretty quickly given the capabilities of zombies, assuming they had enough ammo.

The bottom line here is that your pretty much argueing for a complete lack of common sense, and also not considering the differances between movie storytelling, and game storytelling, as well as the audience. Not to mention actually playing the game. Watching a bunch of morons get what's coming to them in a movie can be darkly entertaining, a lot of horror movies, especially Zombie movies, being morality plays of a sort. The thing is though that in a video game people need to interact with the enviroment, and simply walking around talking to obnoxious people isn't really going to be more than a bad interactive movie to begin with, and really that's what 99% of a game trying to recapture the feel of a zombie movie would actually do, and it would kin dof suck because people would figure "why am I playing this game, I could be watching a zombie movie for a lot less money, and have it done better!".


Now, to be honest there is one bit that works for video games to some extent, and that is if you isolate the protaganist. A scenario with a character stuck out in a cabin in the woods that limits resources and such works better for this kind of genere, because at least as far as that character is concerned resources are very limited, and what solutions might apply to people elsewhere do not nessicarly apply to him or her. Removing the factors one can use to make a movie interesting, things with people being in urban areas, shopping malls, and similar things where common sense dictates there are TONS of resources that can be used to radically alter the situation with a minimum of ingenuity, can create a degree of tension, but then again it can also be argued this doesn't fulfill the zombie survival vision of the person who is likely to buy a game like this.

Overall the upcoming "Dead Island" game seems to be a good compromise on the idea, because it is an action game by all accounts, but it used the isolation idea by putting the character(s) on a resort island. Resort islands by their nature not having actual weapons lying around, and of course if sa 99% of the people get turned by surprise, that remaining 1% is in trouble no matter what they do. The option of "well, I'll load up on guns and start thinning them out" doesn't apply even if the numbers of zombies are fairly limited. It's not like you can go salvage the local hunting shop, or a department store gun counter. Even if you personally collect guns or have a sidearm, chances are you weren't allowed to bring that on your vacation, the guys on the cruise ship/plane won't let you carry it, nor would the people on the island.

Joy,now I've got to get Zombie Island.Thank you person,thanks a lot.(You should be writing these instead)

 

[RA92]

But I like shooting zombies with my - BZZZT!

 

[Skunkrocker]

Did the author forget to play Dead Rising? Because it has all of these elements except one.
A. Ammo is scarce, and guns are hard to use because you're playing as a reporter, not a combat veteran.
B. Other humans are just as detrimental as the zombies.
C. The zombies are scary because there are thousands of them and you can't kill them all and they just keep coming.
D. You cannot win "survival" mode. Like pinball, it ends when you lose your balls.
E. Even in the story mode, you didn't win. Until Dead Rising 2 retconned it, Frank West was slowly dying on top of a tank, surrounded by the undead. You were fucked.

The one thing this game is missing is the threat of zombie infection. Even if you die you can just restart from your last save, or start the game over at your current level allowing you to start at full health, tons of special attacks, and more item slots than when you first started.

So, Dead Rising is a great zombie game in this guy's opinion. Trade that off with Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

A. Guns with unlimited ammo combined with non military types that seem to have military precision shooting.
B. Zombies come in waves, so you get breathers inbetween.
C. If you die, you're not dead period end of story. You get to wait in a broom closet until someone saves you, so there is no fear there.
D. Special infected are retarded.

The only thing this game has going for it is the fact you can't win, story wise. You can win individual levels and complete the game, getting from safehouse to safehouse, but the actual story ends with the survivors being stranded and never getting anywhere. Hell even one of the DLCs requires literally a player to sacrifice themselves for the others to continue. Yeah, shitty zombie game comparatively.

Dead Rising and Dead Rising 2: B+
Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2: D-

Sorry author, you need to check out the Dead Rising games.

Also, on a related note, The Clock Tower series was the only series to get survival horror RIGHT, but I'll wait for one of the Escapist writers to do an article on that rather then complain here in the forums.

 

[The Random One]

Wow, I just wrote a nice response to this article in response to another article. Whoops.

Here's a summary, though:

Yup. Pretty much.

(Oh okay there's also the whole zombies = society angle, which takes a more metaphorical approach, and equates zombies not so much to a force of nature but to a - let's call it a zeitgeist. But I also already wrote about it, in response to the editor's note. So let's leave it at that and say that yes, zombie apocalypse should be about the people and not about the zombies, or it's not zombie apocalypse, it's a disaster movie.)

EDIT:

SO, instead of using "negative reinforcement" erroneously, use the proper term: "positive punishment". It sounds more badass, anyway.

I now have a name if I ever start a band.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

It's absurd to me that so many people are so self assured about what would really happen in such a fantastical scenario. I think tis article makes far too many assumptions on the nature of such an event to be so smug about what survival would really be like. How would an infection that is transmitted through blood, easily infect 99 percent of the population? And what about the commentary on the nature of zombies themselves. They are "unthinking?" That's ridiculous.

 

[xengk]

Someone need to make a zombie mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Limited the availability of gun and ammo, make hardcore rule(food, rest, time) part of the game.
The factions can be enclave of survivors, food and other resource(respawn every few game day) need to be raid from ruins in the wild or from other enclave.

In the game, you can either try to convince the enclave to let you join them or go solo and hole out in said ruins, however risking not only wandering zombie but also raiding survivors.

Upon death, you are scored base on how many game days you survived and supplies you have. And don't forget the achievements! Like avoiding fights for 7 days, manage to hoard supply, generosity to NPC and stuff like that.

 

[Dhatz]

I can't imagine anyone doing the STALKER of zombie games.

 

[whattheblub]

To my mind both dead rising games implemented the points in the article. In both games the zombie outbreak is caused by humans. In the beginning of the first game the survivors are doing fine until the old lady tries to get to her poodle. And in the second game there are multiple points where survivors and not psychopaths are a thread.
Both games feature the need to fight of infection. The first game had overtime mode, which was all about finding a cure. The second game you are constantly trying to keep Katey from turning.
Plus the zombies are a force that can't be stopped since they autospawn.