There are rumors that the end of the world is coming in December 2012. Amongst the youth of today, the common theory for the end times is the zombie apocalypse. This scenario is definitely prevalent in popular gaming culture today to the point where even flash and IOS games feature zombies as either the enemy or the player themselves. These IOS or flash games fall within two categories under the simulation genre; satire and serious. On Kongregate there is a series called “Last Stand” wherein the simulation is grim in its gameplay while on IOS there is a game called Zombie Life where its gameplay is morbidly cheery.
There are games like the RPG action in the game Last Stand: Union City on Kongregate where the player fights the zombies in order to survive and gathers supplies such as ammo, food, and medical supplies whilst journeying to Union City to evacuate the infected area of the world. It’s basically a simulation in other words where the player makes decisions that affect the game play immensely as one can lose other survivors or supplies based on the player’s decisions. Depending on what difficultly the player chooses they may need to eat and sleep whilst killing zombies at the same time. Other games in that same saga of Last Stand are more FPS styled and focus less on story or those other in game features.
On the other side of the spectrum on the IOS there is Zombie life where in the player is a zombie trying to survive in a human world. In the game you find a job to make money to buy things that disguise you as human such as deodorant in order to hide that awful decay smell or clothes that aren’t also rotting. The humor and bright colors mock the whole kill the zombie mentality of the Last Stand game but is in itself a simple simulation game that can stand on its own in its well organized game play.
The apocalypse has become an obsession in gaming culture whether for bad or for worse. With games like Nazi Zombies in Call of Duty and even to IOS / Flash games as the aforementioned our culture consumes the myth of the rumored “inevitable” scenario of our world coming to an end. The world is changing and so is the world of video gaming. With new revolutionary technology could we possibly reach a moral dilemma in gaming where simulation becomes too real? Is there a point where the virtual becomes all too real when one pulls the trigger in Call of Duty?
