Why Do We Love Survival Games?

[Ryleh]

It seems hardly fair questioning the escapism of survival games, when you could be playing, say, papers please.
Playing papers please actually feels like a real job I once had. The memorizing, the 'oh-shit-I-hope-I-didn't-fuck-that-up' feeling... Plus once you start playing you can't get away for several hours. At least after 8 hours of Terraria I feel like I've accomplished something,

 

[Gerishnakov]

I've always thought the idea of a nuclear apocalypse more plausible. Even if, going on Yahtzee's definition of apocalypse, it wouldn't necessarily wipe out the majority of the population. What it would do however is destroy all the institutions of modern society.

Back when I lived in a village I had it all planned out but now, living in a city on the south-east coast of the UK... I don't have much of a chance any more.

 

[Azrael the Cat]

While we are at the feasibility of "zombie virus" spread...

The "Walking Dead" series actually introduced a workaround, which is basically that the virus is airborne and everyone is already infected, the virus just waits until you are actually dead to make you, well, be less dead and more sorta move around getting all hungry for human flash. What bugs me about this "solution" is that the "bite" infections make no sense anymore, meaning that they should be no less dangerous than a bullet wound or any semi-serious injury yet everyone still treats the zombie bites as a death (ok, "undeath") sentence.

They did at one point offer some bullshit explanation, like the zombie bite has a large concentration of bacteria which greatly reduces your chance of surviving the bite which technically makes it turn you into a zombie faster, but this a) actually muddles things a bit too much kinda hurting the issue more than it helps it and b) still doesn't explain why a bite is an automatic death sentence since the "bacteria cocktail" will have different ingredients for each zombie that manages to bite you. If you are the very first victim of a new zombie who up until the zombification had a great dental hygiene than a small nibble should be approximately as dangerous as a tiny papercut. But try explaining *that* to the crazy ***** adamant to put a knife into your brain ASAP.

TWD didn't invent that, it was the basic staple of the original Romero films (prior to which 'zombie' referred to the Haitan voodoo legend, not the present concept of zombies - even in the 1st of the Romero series, Night of the Dead, the shooting script says 'ghoul' instead of 'zombie').

In the old Romero films, nobody knows what's causing the dead to rise - the 'virus' idea is one hypothesis that some characters consider, but it's just one of many ideas that different characters come up with, ranging from the scientific (e.g. the virus idea) to the claim that it's a divine curse, and ultimately nobody actually knows (and nobody ever finds out) in any of the films.

If I recall correctly, early in Dawn of the Dead (Romero's original 1970 version, not Snyder's remake), after the military raid at the start, it's mentioned that they've already cleared all the zombies from the city several times over. Romero's central idea is that society is already on the verge of collapse under the weight of humanities worst attributes (he was a rather angry disillusioned Vietnam veteran writing towards the end of the 60s) - the zombies aren't supposed to be a threat to any well-functioning society. They're just the slight push that topples the already rotten social structure (also why in each of his films, the characters would survive easily if they could actually trust and work together (Night of the Dead, Day), suppress their tribalism and greed instead of going to war over resources when there's plenty for both sides (Dawn), or are pitted against each other in a conflict only tangentially related to the zombies (Land).

TWD (both the comic and the tv series) is a tribute to the Romero films - they're basically just taking the Romero setting, but putting it in modern time instead of having the dead start rising in the late 1960s (the time of the first film in Romero's series). The first edition of the comic has a foreword by the writer where he says that's why none of the characters will use the word 'zombie' - as it's a tribute to the Romero-verse, and in the Romero films nobody calls them zombies for the excellent reason that prior to the Romero films, the word 'zombie' had a different meaning.

 

[LadyRhian]

I read the World War Z Comic "A History of Recorded Attacks", and they actually have outbreaks with survivors (There is one involving a Roman Legion somewhere on the edge of the Empire and one set in North Africa with the Foreign Legion where an isolated outpost survives a Zombie Outbreak for well over a year, but the survivors are not believed, and it is assumed that they lied about why they were out of contact for the time and assumed to be making up a story to get out of punishment). But the last story just blew the whole thing out of the water for me as far as believability went. The comic (I never read the book) has shown Zombies to be mindless and essentially interested only in eating living humans, to the point where instead of seeking out easier targets when they have some humans treed/holed up in a military fortress, they will continue to throw themselves at the living, inaccessible humans until they die and/or are killed. So, the last story in the comic has a zombie outbreak in Joshua Tree National Park. And one of the Zombies, the same mindless zombies the book has shown all throughout these 10+ stories set throughout history? somehow ends up driving a car from Joshua Tree National Park to Los Angeles to set off the worldwide Zombie Apocalypse that underlies the original book. And I was like "How is a mindless Zombie supposed to drive an offing car that far without being stopped or crashing?" It was stupid and didn't work and while I found that the earlier stories worked as Horror and were fairly effective, that last story killed the entire concept for me. It made no sense, and the stuff required to somehow make that whole scenario work made my brain hurt.

Even regular humans have accidents or the car runs out of gas (Good luck having a mindless zombie stopping at a gas station to pump gas or thumbing a ride from an unsuspecting driver?) but this Zombie somehow manages to do so because? the story needs him to. Whoop dee dee.

 

[SiskoBlue]

I believe there's a comedy show coming out soon where zombies are a mild everyday occurence. Life carries on as normal but some people become zombies? Found it "Death Valley" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_%28TV_series%29

I think things like Jericho, Stephen King's The Stand, are more likely. Economic collapse, breakdown of infrastructures. At that point it'll be all about local communities banding together to survive. Realistic but not as fun and exciting as a game blasting zombies (just ask Kevin Costner about The Postman).

But why do we like survival games? Actually I don't think they're as popular as people think. They're popular in gaming culture, a predominately male consumer group when talking about PC and console games. So why do men like survival games? Because evolution demands us to. We're still carrying around masses of behavioural traits purely evolved to feel good about doing things that help us survive. Think about how pleasing it is to throw a rock at something and hit it. Your brain likes you doing things that we help you survive. Most games actually lean on these positive challenges. Shooting/throwing things, exploration and mapping, item acquisition, jumping/physical demands (see a Theory of Fun for video games by Raph Koster). A survival game has all those.

I also have a theory we like post-apocalyptic games because it gives us a space without societal bounds to explore our principals and motivations. I think it's hard to determine your identity and personality when constrained by societal expectation. Don't get too angry, but don't be too cowardly, don't be selfish, always help people, but don't get suckered in by others. A post-apocalyptic scenario lets us test our boundaries.

 

[IVIX1]

This article says all that I think/feel/can't stand about the whole overplayed zombie genre. Thanks Yahtzee for the first reading(first I've read at least) related or relating to zombies that was not a total waste of my time and brain. Much appreciate a real perspective.