2020 has been quite the year so far. With the global COVID-19 pandemic, many offices have closed and those who are able to work from home are doing so for the time being. In particular, the effects of the pandemic have had a big impact on the video games industry.
In-person gaming conferences like E3, PAX, and Gamescom were all replaced with virtual events. Studios have expressed difficulty adjusting to the work from home environment, eventually leading to the delay of major titles such as Destiny 2: Beyond Light and Halo Infinite.
Additionally, with the new console generation looming on the horizon, both Sony and Microsoft have to take into consideration the global recession, unemployment numbers, and supply constraints when announcing the final retail price of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, respectively.
Although, one aspect that might be overlooked is the psychological effect of experiencing the pandemic. Scott Mitchell is the author of Playing at Apocalypse: Reading Plague Inc. in pandemic culture. He tells me that we’re living in a “pandemic culture”, a concept coined by Carleton University professors Neil Gerlach and Sheryl Hamilton, authors of Trafficking in the Zombie: The CDC Zombie Apocalypse Campaign, Diseaseability, and Pandemic Culture.
Pandemic culture is the idea that not only are we vulnerable to the spread of disease, but we’re also very aware of that vulnerability because there’s so much communication about pandemics through media, including news, TV shows, movies, and of course, video games.
He says that an older theory, the Hypodermic Needle Theory, suggested that media messages are just injected straight into the brains of passive audiences. However, this theory has been relatively phased out in modern times, and now we aren’t really as dramatic about how the media impacts public perceptions and behaviors.
When we interact with the concept of pandemics in video games, we’re often interacting with cultural anxieties as a bit of a coping strategy. We fear how such powerful and invisible threats could potentially wipe out our civilization. “So when we play something like The Last of Us or Plague Inc., it could be a way to work through some of those anxieties through simulation. We openly confront those fears by literally playing through them,” explains Dobson-Mitchell.
Coincidentally, two high profile game releases in 2020 involved pandemics: Resident Evil 3 Remake and The Last of Us Part II. They also both focus on zombies, which is a very popular theme in video games. In a YouTube clip of the intro in 2013’s The Last of Us, fans have recently posted in the comments section about how the franchise’s first game sounds eerily similar to what’s going on in the world right now regarding COVID-19.
One commenter wrote, “Kinda scary how realistic this is compared to our current situation. Different virus, same reactions.” Another just simply wrote, “Coronavirus.” Dahlia Schweitzer, author of Going Viral: Zombies, Viruses, and the End of the World and Associate Professor at Fashion Institute of Technology, tells me that the use of news footage is a frequent trope in zombie outbreak narratives.
“Unlike monster-based disaster movies such as Godzilla, outbreak narratives terrify because they seem ‘almost’ real. The irony, of course, is that we are living through one right now. But you’ll see a lot of ‘documentary elements’ in outbreak narratives. The more realistic, the more chilling.”
Mitchell seemed to echo a similar sentiment, noting that our experience with COVID-19 may lead to an increased demand for “viral realism”, portrayed in our media. The disease that ravaged the world in The Last of Us, the Cordyceps fungus, isn’t a likely scenario. However, the important part is that it feels more real and plausible than some of the other fantastical origins of diseases in zombie media.
He added, “So the game definitely has a sense of gritty realism, which extends from its narrative to the actual gameplay. The Last of Us obviously came out well before COVID-19, but it would be interesting if we saw more games trying for this kind of ‘realistic’ narrative.”
Another theme that Schweitzer says is familiar in zombie narratives is that people in positions of power have no idea what to do when an outbreak occurs. Similarly to the intro scene to The Last of Us, fans have also flocked to the YouTube comments section in a video of Dying Light’s opening scene, where it explains the situation in the game’s fictional city of Harran.
She says that a feeling of helplessness is felt throughout the opening. What we see happen over and over in these types of outbreak narratives, almost reflected what we saw in real life. “What played out like a bizarre episode of the Twilight Zone over the last few months, is that people in the medical community and the government always say ‘nothing like this has ever happened before!” and ‘we have no idea what to do!’”
Eugen Pfister, the author of Zombies Ate Democracy, explained to me that almost all zombie games presuppose a total collapse of society and government as we know it; there is no police, no military, and no fire brigade to save us. However, there is a practical reason for this kind of setting when it comes to the limits of game design, as it allows game designers to create open worlds without constraints.
He says that it’s easier to program AI for all-versus-all scenarios, rather than trying to account for different types of allies and factions. But he says that it comes with certain implications. When these types of similar narratives are being told over and over again, it’s being normalized.
“We just have to compare these fantastic scenarios with similar narratives in the daily news, especially from the political far-right. Our modern democracies today are not weaker than twenty to forty years before, and still, the belief in the democratic system is declining.”
Games can reflect some of these values or beliefs of the cultures that create them, and in particular, the theme of losing trust in institutions such as news, health authorities, and governments can be seen in franchises such as Resident Evil. It’s often discussed in relation to concepts like vaccine hesitancy, where some people may have doubts regarding the efficacy or safety of vaccines because of distrust.
“So with Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation, maybe what we’re seeing is a reflection of that institutional distrust. This idea that some of the more powerful elements of society aren’t looking out for our best interests”, explains Mitchell. It’s an established science fiction trope that can be traced back to works such as Frankenstein, where there’s a lone scientist who disrupts the natural order and crosses an ethical line. With Resident Evil, the trope has evolved, now involving a multinational corporation that only acts in self-interest.
One studio, Six to Start, had to pivot its content in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Six to Start is an independent studio based in London, and is the developer of the mobile fitness game, Zombies, Run! CEO Adrian Hon told me that it had been a challenge to adapt to the lockdown. Because Zombies Run! relies on users jogging outside, the studio developed a stay-at-home model series of workouts in the game called The Home Front, which doesn’t require any special equipment.
Hon noted that his staff and partners have been vital to the development of The Home Front, including Naomi Alderman and her writing team, as well as the studio’s Head of Production, Matt Wieteska. Alderman was able to write compelling scripts quickly in response to the situation worldwide, taking about two weeks. Obviously not the norm, as the studio had to write, edit, and publish on the fly compared to releasing new content in larger chunks, like they usually did with seasons.
According to Hon, The Home Front has been well-received. When confronting mortality, people have always found comfort in tackling those concepts through horror and zombie fiction. Hon explains that he understands that brands want to distance themselves from talking about infections and disease. However, he clarifies that he knows most grown adults can tell the difference between reality and fiction, and that everyone is going through this pandemic anyway.
“In our case, Zombies, Run! is not a depressing dystopian story, it’s one of people coming together to support each other, and we’ve had a lot of people write in to say how much they value what we do, not just from a physical but mental health standpoint.”
Unfortunately, real life doesn’t always have the same optimistic and hopeful tones as the stories we write. Schweitzer mentions that at the very least, we could have learned from these fictional narratives, instead of enacting them over and over again like Groundhog Day.
What’s particularly horrifying to her is that no fictional outbreak narrative imagined government incompetence on the level we’re currently dealing with: “Literally nothing is as bad as what we have playing out right now off-screen. A movie where the [United States] president accuses nurses of stealing personal protection equipment? I mean, it’s laughable.”
But maybe that’s the point of playing games. Plague Inc. isn’t the most accurate or educational game out there, and the creator had to put out a statement saying that the game itself isn’t a scientific model for how diseases spread. Additionally, while the game is about actively spreading a virus, the studio behind it is working on a mode that does the reverse: stopping an outbreak.
Mitchell again concludes that we’re most often afraid of the unknown and that simulating pandemic threats or playing through an apocalypse help us cope, saying, “Regardless, for some people, maybe playing a game like Plague Inc. is a way to make this unknowable, uncertain threat a little more visible and known.”