Dead State Interview
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RPS: Zombies have been up to loads since we last spoke. The Walking Dead is a TV show now, Project Zomboid is a thing that people play and Day Z is Jim's favourite thing ever. How do Dead State's zombies differ? Or is it Dead State's living people who matter more?
Annie: Living people. In a heartbeat. There are points where I actually kind of forget that there are zombies in our game, that it's not just a tense survival situation against your fellow man.
Brian: We don't even say the word (zombie) in our game. The writing is all about the humans, the major conflicts are all human, and the zombies really are just this background noise in the story and combat. Putting normal people under pressure and seeing the ways the player can manipulate or encourage them that's fun. Zombies aren't really that fun to write we've got some really sharp zombie moans in there, don't get me wrong but 95% of the game is about the humans.
Annie: Reading stuff Brian's written for characters who are dealing with being infected, or having a loved one be infected that's the distilled essence of the zombie genre to me, that gnawing tension and that constant fear, and just figuring out how to deal with that day after day. I think that's really been brought across well in the game, even this early on, so I really honestly don't feel that people who are sick of standard zombie games will be sick of Dead State. It just feels too different from what's out there right now.
RPS: Do you feel as if '˜zombie fatigue', the sense that there have been too many zombies in too many things, is misplaced? What do you reckon makes zombies more than enemies that are vulnerable to headshots?
Brian: I think zombies are overdone, and if we weren't making an RPG and focusing more on the crisis/survival aspect, I would ask myself (why are we making this?) I think that they get slapped into everything because, well, people keep buying games with zombies in them. I think what people like about them is the (reboot) the world aspect that is, the zombie scenario taps into this innate desire in people to imagine the ways they would pull through societal collapse and remake the world in their image. Well, that or you can put a zombie in a wood chipper and not feel guilty about laughing.
Annie: It's really easy to hand-wave zombies as just monsters that move slowly and crave brains, but I think I'd point out to people who are sick of the idea have you ever actually been around a dead person? Especially if it was someone you knew. There's a weight there, there's a pressure, all your memories about them hanging on you. Then imagine they're walking towards you, and it's clearly someone you remember, but somehow everything about them is gone, and you know they want to kill you. The worst part, somehow, is they don't want to do it because they're evil, or angry, or hungry. They feel nothing. And you're nothing to them.
RPS: I reckon gaming treatment of zombies is actually becoming more interesting though do you think the time is right to study the themes and the metaphors as well as the innards?
Brian: I think there's going to be a lot of shifting over to the survival aspect as people get bored of the same old shoot/burn/rototill a whole mess of zombies gameplay. You've seen that with the Day Z mod, Project Zomboid, and a couple of other games. There's definitely a lot of room to explore those themes with different types of gameplay, just as there's a lot of different approaches that zombie movies/fiction take. It's definitely hitting a certain spot for a lot of gamers. I think that there's going to be some burnout, and rightfully so (I am burnt out on generic (kill zombies) games) but if you're designing a game around an aspect that hasn't been explored, I think you'll get even the (not another zombie game) crowd to give your game a look. But we are making a game rather than a treatise on zombies and the human psyche, so things like the RPG systems, characters and dialogue, and combat balance all have much higher priorities than trying to redefine the zombie metaphor.
There will be some subtle prodding and examination of the zombie phenomenon, but the player is really going to have to dig deep to get some of that I really don't want to throw themes in people's faces and yell, (isn't this shit deep and tragic and the human condition, and yeah?!) Spoilers, but in our game, we're not trying to hook people by slowly revealing this mystery of what caused the zombie apocalypse it happened, nobody knows why, now deal with it.
