Why We Love Zombies

[MegzHartie]

This article actually makes a good point. I've always found zombies to be easy to kill because:

1) They're already dead (even though they're walking around because of some parasite/virus/bee/SCIENCE)

2) I feel like if something is trying to kill me and there's no way to reason with it or it has no control over it's actions/won't have control over them ever again, it's fair play to end it so that it may rest in piece and give me piece of mind (or keep the whole thing seeing as that's the point)

3) While if I were able to save a person from becoming zombified (i.e. Zombrex or something), if the process of saving them put everyone/anyone else in danger (i.e. taking all the bone marrow of the only person immune to the virus to make a vaccine) I don't think I could do it. Sure, taking a blood sample is fine but ending the life of another person so someone else can be zombie free doesn't seem fair and defeats the purpose of preserving human life.

While I do see how zombies make great enemies in video games, I have to disagree that putting them in so many games right now is a good idea (I know Yahtzee didn't say that, just making a point). We need to look beyond the norm and find new ways of storytelling in games and new kinds of games to play.

 

[The Harkinator]

Zombies becoming an arcade mode is getting boring. Friend of mine only bought Cod Blops because it had zombies in it. In fact yesterday we ran through a list of the people we know and decided if we would let them come with us in a zombie apocalypse. Decided by such things as if they would be prone to 'Cut and run' in a dangerous situation or if they just lack the 'Z' factor. But anyway a zombie game should have less zombies, not more. The game should not be set in America where guns are more common and accessible forcing the player to use the situation, making fleeing or avoiding zombies more appealing than killing them. Forcing the players to use melee weapons and whatever comes to hand, zombies would scratch and grapple the player so they pull them in and bite them. In Nazi Zombies and games such as Left 4 Dead, zombies are no longer scary because theres just too many of them and they die too easily. The shambling hordes in Nazi Zombies can down you in a couple of hits but if you and your friends get shotguns and SMGs then you can just sit in the teleporter until they overwhelm you, the one with the most money buys the trip. Eventually everybody has enough to Pack a punch their weapons and can just repeat.

Sorry about the rant but you get the point, a swamp isnt going to have 3,000 people just milling about in it.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Normally there are only two reasons this many costumed people get together - charity or for weird sex reasons.

...and furries, you forgot the furries. Because they don't get together for either of those reasons. (Well, maybe the first one occassionally)

OT: I'd agree with pretty much all of those points. Then again I think the reason zombies can be placed into pretty much any game now is because no one actually questions it... World at War... ok fair enough, Black Ops... ok well they did it once, Red Dead Redeption... ok wtf, well alright, more RDR is only a good thing, right?

The reason they're USED so much is because they're an easy money spinner but I think Yahtzee just about summed up the reasons why we continue to lap it up. If you can make a good game centred around the concept of zombies (L4D, the older Resi games) then fine, I'll play it happily (especially if you can give me an intelligent reason for their existance), but please developers, stop sticking them randomly in everything... please!

It's not the end of the world, Umbrella hasn't released the T-Virus and as for Wesker... well I doubt we'll be seeing his global saturation any time soon.

 

[mogensmissekat]

Your right! I have never posted on a forum before, but your focus on zombies made me feel like I had to do it!

 

[Odegauger]

I've always seen the appeal of the zombie apocalypse to be much simpler than some of these suggestions. I don't think it has much to do with them being proxy shadow-puppets for things we don't like, or some manifestation of our instinctive fears or anything like that.

They're just weak. They're slow, stupid, rotting hunks of meat, looking at a mob of them from behind your impromptu gas mask, Remington 12-gauge held firmly in your hands, you think to yourself - "These are the inhuman menaces who brought society to it's knees? I can take these fuckers on any day! The shambling ranks of Beelzebub don't got nothing on me!"

 

[Hyperactiveman]

That's a much nicer way of putting it than...

We love zombies because we're too antisocial with people in this world that we gotta imagine one where all the people we hate are zombies which at that point we love to acquire weapons to beat their faces in time and time again.

It's like saying we're more sane when we're the only ones left in the world.

 

[Giest4life]

"Truth is a folly without which certain species can't survive." This, I guess, applies in the case of Zombies, too.

I find zombies entertaining: they can be a quiet a relaxing distraction, but I can't play a whole game based around them. Which is why I found L4D and L4D2 quiet bland.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Tons of great points all around but I'd just like to comment on the burial/cremation comment.

There is a practical reason for those actions, particularly cremation. Corpses are not the kinds of things you want laying around, decaying, smelling, and spreading disease. We need to get rid of them somehow. Burying them works but cremation is very efficient as it doesn't waste ground that could otherwise be used for things like buildings. Its a necessary thing to do, burying or cremation that is.

That is a problem largely relegated to European nations and other places with a high population density. In many parts of the world, a permanent burial site is all but unheard of - the best you'll get is a few generations. In the US on the other hand, this is less of an issue in many places thanks to relatively low population density.

 

[COLIN BOWELL]

Yahtzee missed a big one here. One of the reasons we all love zombie entertainment is because we can easily place ourselves inside the shoes of the zombie-killing hero. Even if you are slow, overweight, or scrawny, you're still one up on a shambling semi-conscious beast. We all can easily envision that "what I would do if the zombies came for me" scenario and it sucks us right in to the story.

 

[5mj7R7yf4Dwr3gdZyyu9PeGNwYjlNrjzuh3iTXQG]

I didn't read through all the commentary, pro'lly because I'm just a fuckwad, but for the moment, I have the excuse of being one day off NaNoWriMo [http://www.nanowrimo.org/]. That means I dunno if this has been covered. I'd also add:

(Contemporary) Zombies represent a virus we can battle directly. Normally, when a pandemic goes through our region, our only option is to isolate ourselves, often from loved ones, until everything dies. In the zombie-virus paradigm, the infection doesn't travel by air (through touch is often enough). Usually you have to be bitten before it's a problem. But still, as the virus tries to get you, you can fight it with real weapons, from shotguns to pointed sticks, and not just cower like a little child. (Given enough resources, interestingly, cowering like a little child, that is, hiding from the menace, seems to work until supplies run out.)

 

[scbunchy]

A few of these points were already kinda covered by Moviebob in his Zombieland review. I'm slightly surprised Yahtzee didn't toss a link in there.

 

[Fatal-X]

I killed 4 k zombies today. And the best part is, that the day is not over yet!

 

[IanBrazen]

Extra Punctuation: Why We Love Zombies

Yahtzee's got four good reasons why we love any book, movie or game that has zombies in it.

Read Full Article

awww Yahtzee that last part made me sad, go and sew some wild oats man, and teach your generation of children terrible dick jokes and make them ware sweet hats too.
[HEADING=2]The Yahtzee clan must live on, its the only hope against the space puritans![/HEADING]

 

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

I feel strangely compelled by the presence of the word "Zombies" in the title to post in this thread.

 

[tamerman]

If your scared about not leaveing any marc on society Yatzee, you could always donate to a sperm bank and hope someone comes along to bare your children minus the sex.

or you know, their is Rebeca mays...

 

[MrJohnson]

And we have yet to see a zombie survival game. I would love a zombie survival game oh so much, but no. That is apparently the most money-wasting project on Earth despite combining two of the most favorite subjects in todays society.

 

[TWRule]

I have to say I disagree with most of your blanket statements about human nature, Yahtzee (for example, hating each other). You could make a valid case for humans generally becoming uncomfortable with the alterity of others, but that doesn't necessarily have to translate into hatred.

It's not necessarily a universal thing to find the idea of an afterlife comforting either. For example, any Buddhist or scientifically-minded, empiricist-leaning individual apparently find a return to nothingness more appealing (and that includes a relatively substantial portion of more recent generations).

You also committed a fallacy of 'appeal to ignorance' with your comment about how doomsayers are always wrong so this generations' will be too.

Otherwise, I enjoyed the article.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, well I see the points being made, but I (like usual) don't entirely agree.

I think there is no reason to over analyze Zombies and their popularity other than they are a "sanitary" enemy to be fought. If you bother to look at issues with war games nowadays and how it's not politically correct for anyone, except maybe the Nazis, to be the bad guys, your left pretty much with extranational terrorists, zombies, and mutants for games you want to place on earth. I don't think there is any deep rooted psycological connection to this part of things.

I think the appeal of 'end times' scenarios is not so much depression over people realizing their irrelevence in the cosmic scheme of things, but because being one of the few survivors would make you inherantly important no matter how irrelevent you were beforehand. A lot of people hold onto the belief (justified or not) that if society wasn't holding them back,
they could be a lot more than they are now.

Of course an important thing to realize is that we're by and large discussing nerds here. Your typical zombie apocolypse fanboy is going to be some dweeb who has little in the way of money, no respect from other people, no girlfriend, and the most unsatisfying sort of life that leads to a constant desire for escapism. Rare exceptions are going to exist but we're talking on average here.

An apocolypse happens and Nerd-Boy is one of those survivors. Well he figures this means without society he can pretty much head out and loot whatever he wansts, build the ultimate nerd lair, and if he meets a girl he can finally score due to virtually being the last man on earth. It's unrealistic, but you'll notice that a goodly portion of the zombie stories out there largely deal with dweebs who 'rise to the call' and become important and empowered. The successful people who have everything, or are wll liked beforehand, are typically the biggest jerks and come to bad ends (again with rare exceptions).

Some people might not care for my analysis, it's very similar to what this article is saying, but differant on a few points... namely I think the issues involved have more to do with the fandom, and less to do with a humanity-wide existential crisis.

 

[beema]

Pretty good points, although I don't know about this:

I guarantee you, in a zombie apocalypse scenario, relationships within the human strongholds will be considerably more courteous than they are now. We'll reserve our hate for those rotting punks outside.

In every zombie scenario I've seen, it's often your fellow humans you have to worry about more than the zombies. People will always find something to disagree about.

I'm getting pretty tired of the infatuation with zombies though, to the point where I roll my eyes every time I hear about a new zombie thing. I love Left 4 Dead, but I don't want zombies in EVERY DAMN GAME. Now it's spreading to TV too with The Walking Dead being everyone's favorite show ever (I think it's just OK).