Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Death of Zombies: The Next Theme Meme?

By Jim Rossignol on December 1st, 2009 at 9:39 am.


Are we at the end of gaming history? Is it just zombies from here on out? Or will there be something else that will seize the imagination of game designers and give us a new theme? I’d say that post-apocalypse and zombies have dominated the last couple of years, but is it possible to predict the end of the undead? Some thoughts below.

Zombies are definitely symptomatic of the times. On the surface they’re apolitical, because anyone could be a zombie, and zombies are the creation of mechanical processes – disease, supernatural effects – rather than social or political effects that create Nazis or terrorists. Undead Labs’ (and formerly Guild Wars’) Jeff Strain told Eurogamer they were a “guilt-free meat puppet”. He went on to explain that “That no-rules, no-guilt mentality is something that people really resonate with.” But there’s plenty of analysis that argues the interest in zombies runs deeper, and as zombie movie-maker George Romero points out, they’re a useful vehicle “to criticize real-world social ills—such as government ineptitude, bioengineering, slavery, greed and exploitation.” As such, the zombie is a kind of universally useful antagonist, well-suited to both mindless splatter, and deeper commentary.

So does that mean they’re set to dominate gaming for the foreseeable future? I say no. I suspect that zombies are in fact an imaginative resources that is going to seem depleted way faster than the traditionally maligned fantasy, world war II, and space marine vs aliens themes. My issue with the zombie archetype is that it is largely without a villain, and we need specific villains beyond the nebulous problems which Romero points to. Zombie fiction might comment on elements of human existence, but zombie gaming is about survival, and as such is only ever a story about the protagonists. The games which focus on the drama of staying alive are the ones which are making the most of the zombie ideal, and reward us with the most visceral thrills. The “guilt-free” slaughter might hold us for a while, but ultimately neither kind of zombie game is going to provide us with the same interesting choices that a game with an intelligence working against us will. We need more from our simulatory enemies than bad skin and a hunger for brains.

Like the zombie movie boom, I think we will soon see a slump. This meme can only shamble so far.

So what will come next? Giant robots plz.

My childhood daydreams re-enacted…

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133 Comments »

  1. 01/12/2009 at 09:44 StalinsGhost says:

    Giant robots aren’t quite so ambiguous. Someone has to take the fall for creating them. Unless they’re from space – then they’re fair game.

  2. 01/12/2009 at 09:55 Jockie says:

    Well, the Resident Evil games (although they’re now moving away from ‘zombies’) have always had villains. From evil corporations responsible for the outbreak to specific horribly acted villains like Albert Wesker.

    That said the Resident Evil games rarely give any deeper insight or commentary, the stories have always been a load of ludicrous nonsense to justify slaughtering a load of zombie types and big monsters with tentacles. But without it’s villainous antagonists there would have been much less of the standing around and chatting and they’d have been very different games I suspect.

    I’m not worn out on zombies yet, I’m interested in the Zombie RPG that Doublebear are making, because there still isn’t a game that lets you live out the “What would you do in a zombie apocalypse?” scenario.

    • 01/12/2009 at 10:06 Lilliput King says:

      “I’m not worn out on zombies yet, I’m interested in the Zombie RPG that Doublebear are making, because there still isn’t a game that lets you live out the “What would you do in a zombie apocalypse?” scenario.”

      Exactly. Seems like even though the zombie theme is a popular one these days, no-one has really used them to their full potential.

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:12 AndrewC says:

      Which is to put them on treadmills for a truly renewable source of power. Seriously – the zombie invasion is the solution to all our society’s problems.

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:24 Davee says:

      And that’s exactly why I am interested in DB’s ZRPG too.

  3. 01/12/2009 at 09:57 diebroken says:

    Mutant zombies? Well either that or monkeys…

  4. 01/12/2009 at 09:59 monkeybreadman says:

    Movements in the force. Zombies are the current vogue, aliens, monsters and robots are the other flavours with Nazi sprinklings. They’re an easy way of making games, and making it past censors.

    No difficult moral questions have to be asked blowing the head off a zombie.

    • 01/12/2009 at 10:11 monkeybreadman says:

      Maybe a game where nature turns on mankind for all the damage its caused. End of level bosses could be the last surviving Bengal Tiger, Polar Bear, Orangutans, could even have a boat chase with a crazed blue whale that spawns leatherback turtles!

      The front cover of the DVD case would have the question ‘Would you kill to survive?” on the back it could have “SHIT YEAH!!!!!!!” with some guy shooting a wild eyed Panda

    • 01/12/2009 at 11:28 pimorte says:

      I live in Australia, and zombies definitely didn’t make it past censors here.

  5. 01/12/2009 at 10:01 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:

    I’m TIRED of killing zombies…in fact, I’ve been pretty much tired of it back in the days of Resident Evil II. GImme more games with the reversed perspective, I say. Stubbs The Zombie was ace. Braaaaaaaaaaains…

    *waiting for L4D2 to hit the 20 euros pricetag, so he can get some more versus*

    • 01/12/2009 at 10:09 Lilliput King says:

      You missed out! The recent steam deal had the four pack going for £17 per copy.

      Actually what with steams peculiar pricing for those on the continent that might not have been the case for you.

    • 01/12/2009 at 10:15 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:

      dunno… the early holiday one was 28 euro’s and I didn’t check the 4-pack as I probably wouldn’t find 3 other people willing to pay their share. It’s ok, I’m not in a particular rush – Eve Online, just finishing Champions Online download (13 pounds from D2D), Torchlight, Wolfenstein etc. :D

  6. 01/12/2009 at 10:03 skalpadda says:

    Isn’t it mostly just the games that focus on the “film zombies” that are without a proper villain? I mean, Half Life has a good mechanic around zombification and big bad guys to boot, Fallout has the feral ghouls, STALKER also had the irradiated/brain scorcher zombies, hell even Mass Effect had the Husks. Then again STALKER and Fallout 3 are mostly survival games, so I suppose those fit the idea.

  7. 01/12/2009 at 10:03 CMaster says:

    Careful what you wish for there, Jim – making Giant Robot movies/games big might mean they ressurect the Neon Genesis Evangelion movie.

  8. 01/12/2009 at 10:05 Moni says:

    I think games missed out on the super-hero movie boom (now entering the post-boom satirical stage, see: Kick-Ass).

    I’d like to see someone combine the absurd destruction of Red Faction Guerilla with the meaty-punchyness of Batman. Damn it, I want to punch a man through a wall.

  9. 01/12/2009 at 10:08 Gnoupi says:

    In a way, we have had same with WW2. A few games started on this theme, it was more or less fresh then, the idea was nice, “reliving the war like if you were there”, with games like Medal of Honor or Call of Duty. But following this trend, plenty of other games went into this direction, leading to the overdose that everyone knows.

    I guess simply that in a few years we will have the same overdose, seeing that most of games now include zombies just for the sake of it (one of latest CoD, Borderlands soon, any *something* shooter now is zombie shooter, etc). I wonder indeed what will come to replace it, when everyone will have enough.

  10. 01/12/2009 at 10:14 phil says:

    Giant Robots? A little Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow isn’t it? In any case EDF is already the Citizen Kane of Robot shooters, anything else would be an insult to it’s majesty.

    I’d say Werewolves are the new meme. I give it two years before silver bullets and were-morphing abilities replace shotguns and aiming for the head as our default gamer responses.

  11. 01/12/2009 at 10:15 Taillefer says:

    Would you like to be running from giant robots as they tear up your city?
    Or be the giant robot tearing up the city?

    Either way, scale is something really underused in games (in my experience). Everything is so human-sized vs human-sized.

    • 01/12/2009 at 10:17 Taillefer says:

      Or, well, contrast of scale. If you are playing a big robot thing, you tend to be pitted against other big robot-things so don’t feel like a big robot thing.

  12. 01/12/2009 at 10:17 Drag D says:

    I want Nazi robots (not necessarily made by Nazi , the robots could be Nazi because they decided to ) and also Nazi aliens.

  13. 01/12/2009 at 10:18 bookworm8at says:

    A believable Zombie AI is easy to code, yet they look like humans.

  14. 01/12/2009 at 10:21 Igor Hardy says:

    Neat little movie this Panic Attack! Although after a great, suspensful start it just gets more and more silly.

  15. 01/12/2009 at 10:22 Broken says:

    Shogo sequel please Monolith.

  16. 01/12/2009 at 10:23 Sagan says:

    Well zombies are pretty boring enemies. After you have shot some, the only thing that can come next, is that you shoot some more. It’s like you once said, that Left 4 Dead really is a sequel to Doom. Even the environments in zombie games have to be boring.

    Also I don’t think robots will ever come back. If they do it has to be now. Because soon everyone will know enough about robots to realize that fighting them is totally unrealistic, as illustrated by this xkcd comic.

    I think what might happen is, that we get a nice balance of aliens, zombies and humans to fight. So unless someone comes up with something new, I don’t think there will be a new wave of games about one kind of enemies like we get with zombies right now and got with nazis before.

  17. 01/12/2009 at 10:26 Lobotomist says:

    I think the next thing odd to be: MUTANTS

  18. 01/12/2009 at 10:28 Jockie says:

    Well, it was a bit of a disappointment in terms of the gameplay, but I did enjoy that in Spore the ‘enemies’ were basically horrific mutants created by yourself or other people. In the second phase of the game I did love the fact that one of the Epic monsters was a horrific abomination I’d created in about 5 minutes in the creator. Would be interesting to see that kind of user generated content in another game.

  19. 01/12/2009 at 10:29 pignoli says:

    I predict the next gaming meme to be:

    MONSTROOOO!

  20. 01/12/2009 at 10:35 Dan Sunderland says:

    A few people have mentioned the lack of a proper zombie MMO- I’ve had lengthy discussions with some of my gamer mates about how this would play out, and it still fascinates me. I got a taste of it when during the pre-launch event for Wrath Of The Lich King there was a (flakey, but hilarious) zombie outbreak among the player population.

    Feeding directly into the player’s “griefing” lobe was a genuine idea, as it created a tireless ravenous horde of zombies, trying desperately to spread their disease. I remember I’d finally got the materials for a belt I’d been after for ages, and after spamming chat for a while, myself and another random had to try and find a quiet enough spot in Orgimmar to craft this belt (takes about 30 seconds without interuption). I ended up holding the door blowing away zombies while this guy crafted away, it really stuck out as a standout moment for me, so epic yet so trivial.

  21. 01/12/2009 at 10:39 Dinger says:

    Don’t knock zombies out just yet. The Meme exists because of the technology. The Aliens/supersoldiers of the last decade were there because games couldn’t support more than a couple AI entities. With more AI entities, you can make threats in numbers, not in quality, of opponents, but as long as they’re run by AI, they’re not going to be believably human. Hence Zombies.

    Then you can go figure out what commentary you want to make.

    In an ontological sense, all computer-controlled human entities are Zombies.

  22. 01/12/2009 at 10:49 Ragnar says:

    More steampunk please.

  23. 01/12/2009 at 10:51 Jason Moyer says:

    I could go for a transformers game that doesn’t suck. Preferably using the original toys/comic/toon rather than the Michael Bay reboot stuff.

  24. 01/12/2009 at 10:54 Raven says:

    A deluge of games like Armoured Core and Mech Warrior, et al.?
    Yes please!

  25. 01/12/2009 at 10:57 Richard Beer says:

    Zombies, giant robots or aliens, it’s not actually that different.

    We are living in apocalyptic times. The capitalist system we know and thought we loved has turned out to be a vampire squid, and we’re still paying massive bonuses to the people thrusting its blood funnel into anything that looks like money. Climate catastrophe is almost irrevocably upon us, but we’re still led by people who put short-term business interests and their own national interests first. We’re fighting an eternal war against an abstract noun (‘terrorism’) that is used to justify an incessant military build-up, invasion of foreign countries and flagrant shredding of civil liberties.

    In short, the world is fucked, and we all know it. That’s why any kind of theme that involves survival against the odds is in vogue, be it aliens, zombies, giant robots, killer viruses or cyber-attack pandas. And it’ll stay in vogue until something changes for the better (i.e. a really long time).

    • 01/12/2009 at 11:07 Ybfelix says:

      I heard that in WWII and Cold War people felt pretty grim too.

    • 01/12/2009 at 11:31 Richard Beer says:

      Oh yeah. I grew up with the threat of nuclear war hanging over my childhood. I’m sure it’s a large factor in my fascination with anything post-apocalyptic, from Mad Max to When The Wind Blows to anything written by John Wyndham.

      Actually there’s an idea. Triffids!

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:21 golden_worm says:

      Plants vs. Zombies? Hmmm. might just work.

  26. 01/12/2009 at 10:58 MultiVaC says:

    I don’t see why zombie games are incapable of having villains. Anywhere there are people you are bound to find bad people, especially when society has collapsed from a zombie outbreak. 28 Days Later had villains in the form of the desperate soldiers, and Land Of The Dead had the rich people living in the tower as antagonists.

  27. 01/12/2009 at 10:59 AndrewC says:

    Well, zombies are ultimately about staving off inevitable entropy and, as such, the genre being a success is reflective of a social shift towards depression and the removal of the belief that ‘things are getting better’. Having single ‘big bads’ makes defeating the evil a really specific, and thus mangeable, achievement after which the world is really good again. In the ‘big bad’ model of games the world is a good place with a removable bad thing in. The ‘zombie’ model suggests that the world itself is bad and the only solution is to remove ourselves from it. Conclusion – we need a specific enemy to feel better about ourselves, and the bigger and more powerful the enemy is the better we feel about ourselves.

    It makes you think!

    Anyway, if not that then processors being able to handle large and complex crowds have only been available during ‘this’ generation of hardware, and so games involving ‘hordes’ become popular. What is the next development hardware advances will allow us?

    Worlds complex and responsive enough to make simply interacting with them (rather than having them be a static backdrop to exploding things) entertaining, maybe? Leading to proper and real explore-em-ups?

    Friendly AI good enough to make escort missions fun? I think that might be neck and neck with the heat death of the universe, though.

    Or giant robots.

    Giant robots!

  28. 01/12/2009 at 11:05 Lu-Tze says:

    Supernatural tells us that shooting at ghosts with rock salt shotguns whilst listening to AC/DC is the new black.

  29. 01/12/2009 at 11:05 Ybfelix says:

    Maybe it’s being content with zombies that hampered the progress of AI in games.
    And players are guilty of this too, some people just never get over 3D space invaders.

    • 01/12/2009 at 11:51 Tei says:

      This discussion about AI and zombies is old. AI is tons of different things. AI could be the flock movement of some birds. How a zombie navigate a level, jump obstacles (fast zombies jump over everything) and manage to look real. People have this weird idea that AI serve to make NPC’s look smart. If you want to make NPC’s look smart, add small snips of Kant philosophy to his dyiing cry.

  30. 01/12/2009 at 11:13 plugmonkey says:

    I can’t last much longer simply because, despite zombie games representing a tiny fraction compared to sword and sorcery, or car racing, or generic warefare, and despite games featuring zombies being infinitely more varied in the way they play than most other video game scenarios, the internets are swamped with people bitching about them as if you couldn’t buy a game without a zombie in if you tried.

    Zombies aren’t the latest meme. Bitching about zombies is. It’s right up there “Fuck you Activision/EA/Atari/.

  31. 01/12/2009 at 11:17 gulag says:

    Bring back Shodan.

    What games are really missing at the moment are decent villians. Zombies reduce everything to ‘Use gun on head’ gaming, without ever giving you a good reason to want them dead(er) other than the simple equation of ‘it’s us or them’. A good villian is like good sauce, you’ll clean it up with gusto.

  32. 01/12/2009 at 11:19 Captain Haplo says:

    The next big theme:

    Sentient, organic giant robot zombies.

  33. 01/12/2009 at 11:37 Schmung says:

    Vampires are due a comeback of some sort, aren’t they?

  34. 01/12/2009 at 11:54 l1ddl3monkey says:

    So. Bored. Of. Zombies.

  35. 01/12/2009 at 11:55 Gap Gen says:

    If we’re going by current FPS tropes, a legitimate question for any villain is: “Can I conceivably kill a million of them without dying?” I’m not sure giant robots fall into that category, unless you’re a gianter robot.

  36. 01/12/2009 at 11:57 kafka7 says:

    How about a game with human beings in it?

  37. 01/12/2009 at 12:00 Carra says:

    If the Giant Robot movies suck as much as the Transformers franchise then I’ll pass.

    We need more western games!

  38. 01/12/2009 at 12:03 Tei says:

    There can be a transition from a old tired meme to a new old tired meme.
    Like the Borg or Strogs, we can have zombies with tecnological enhancements (see Killing Floor), or Zombies that are part.. .I don’t know… fungus, or big blobs the player has to burn with a flametrower. You can always kill “Stormtroppers”.. people behind a shield, so you don’t see his face, and this make it easy to dehumanize him.
    Our catarsys need dehumanized humanoids. If zombies are really old, we can easily change to a new tired meme. People are already suggesting old tired new memes as new meme, like robots and vampires of wheredogs or mutant aliens or demonic vikings or tchulu ghouls.

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:31 AndrewC says:

      The world really would be better if there were confused dogs with no sense of direction. Also monsters with the sniffles. I want them.

    • 01/12/2009 at 14:39 Tei says:

      Sorry, I mean wherewolfs. You can make anything awesome putting where in the name (whereworld, wherecows, wheredogs )

  39. 01/12/2009 at 12:04 Lilliput King says:

    In terms of games as fantasy fulfillment, a zombie apocalypse was always top of the list.

    Next is being an astronaut. We need more games like Shattered Horizon, basically. Single player preferably, and not too high-tech either – clunky space suits is the way to go.

    I’m imagining something like that 1953 Journey Into Space radio series. Or 2001, that might actually be more achievable.

  40. 01/12/2009 at 12:05 Solario says:

    Bring. back. Cthulhu.

    I want insane fishmen followers and swarms of shifting flesh creatures with multiple, horrible, insanity-inducing eyes and tentacles that stretch out from its horrible visages and an end-boss that is so huge and unknowable, that you wouldn’t be able to see its entire body on your screen.

  41. 01/12/2009 at 12:06 Schmung says:

    Someone earlier said something about steampunk I believe. A genre ripe for gamification if ever there was one. Sure there’s an engine out there capable of doing really , really pretty steam by now and that’s about all the motiviation some devs need.

  42. 01/12/2009 at 12:06 Solario says:

    Oh yeah, and a well-designed shooter with a 50′s Sci-fi aesthetic. Fuck spaceships, I want rockets!

  43. 01/12/2009 at 12:08 Redd says:

    How is this not automaton apocalypse survival?

    And the next trend comes from whatever movie themes were hot after zombies (as consuming kids grow into producing adults) , so time travel and werewolves.

  44. 01/12/2009 at 12:15 Taillefer says:

    Somebody should make an MMO which is all about surviving the first few days/weeks of a disaster, after which the server is reset. Start off by randomly generating a city for people to populate, let them get accustomed to the layout, buy supplies, prepare for what is to come.

    But the players don’t know what kind of disaster will hit the city. It could be a zombie outbreak, earthquake, inter-dimensional monster invasion, War of the Worlds, Tsunami, or giant stompy robots! But they basically live out the event as it happens and see how long they can survive during/afterwards.

    Server resets, new city, new disaster.

  45. 01/12/2009 at 12:16 shiggz says:

    like fashion once they run out of ideas they’ll just start looping back and with minor variations.

  46. 01/12/2009 at 12:19 Richard Beer says:

    Red Dawn.

    The “Wolverines!” level in MW2 reminded me of how much I Ioved Red Dawn when I was a kid. We totally need a game where you’re a member of some indigenous resistance movement fighting an asymmetric guerilla war against a ruthless, powerful invader. It doesn’t have to be the Russians, it could be the Nazis in France or Norway, or… well, Iraq or Afghanistan I suppose, although that might offend too many Western Sensibilities to be commercially viable.

    Maybe just turn the invaders into aliens and dehumanise them, like V or Battlefield “Travolta is a giant penis” Earth.

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:21 Richard Beer says:

      Incidentally, I don’t mean “Half Life 2″, I mean an open-ended RPG or FPS/RPG that involves careful strategy and missions to blow up trains, sabotage bridges etc.

    • 01/12/2009 at 12:50 Clovis says:

      I just watched Che Part I and II, so I was thinking the same thing. 80 dudes land in Cuba and a few years later they’ve overthrown a government that had thousands of well armed soldiers and were backed by the US. I want to play that game.

      It’d be nice if it played on the most important aspect of that kind of warfare: the low morale of the soldiers. It’d be nice to see soldiers actually surrender or run away in games, since that’s how most battles are won.

  47. 01/12/2009 at 12:29 leenull says:

    talking about zombies and WWII. Shame this movie never got made:
    Worst Case Scenario – trailer1
    Worst Case Scenario – trailer2
    Great trailers though :)

  48. 01/12/2009 at 12:33 Captain Bland says:

    http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/06/neither-a-contract-nor-a-promise-five-movements-to-watch-out-for.html

    Great article by China Mieville from earlier this year, about potential new literary movements..the first of which is called ‘Zombiefail ’09-ism’. It’s a great list really, funny and exciting. I really think Jim is right on this one.

  49. 01/12/2009 at 12:39 Akimbo says:

    Zombies All The Way Down

  50. 01/12/2009 at 12:46 Vitamin Powered says:

    I’m going to agree with AndrewC and Dinger that the zombie genre has seen such a take off recently due to the technological capabilities of our PCs allowing for it. Instancing has reduced the bottleneck of creating masses of similar objects significantly.

    So what will be next? Multicore computing might suggest better AI and physics as definite possibilities, and id tech 5 seems to point to a future that can seamlessly handle high res close up textures (for instance, a face) as well as large scale worlds.

    Heck, giant robots are a definite possibility; post-rending techniques and better streaming may make battling 20 story bots obscured by smoke and atmospheric haze across a ruined city the next in-thing.

  51. 01/12/2009 at 12:51 Clovis says:

    The next big genre will be Adventure Games. This will happen.

  52. 01/12/2009 at 13:01 The Sombrero Kid says:

    i suspect we’ll follow the 80′s – now movie curve pretty close and move onto pretensions of seriousness and John Everyman protagonists in relatively realistic scenarios while still winning the day, it will be a mixture of luck and hard work, then we’ll move onto glorifying the comic book industry, desperately raiding it for scraps of originality after the doldrums of the 90′s while not doing the things that are truly awesome about it i.e. giant robots.

    call of duty 6 is a sign that we’re heading for die hard or speed instead of commando.

  53. 01/12/2009 at 13:05 nayon says:

    Shiny vampires.

  54. 01/12/2009 at 13:17 Vandelay says:

    Ironically, the music that video uses is from 28 Days Later.

  55. 01/12/2009 at 13:30 spliter says:

    hm… what we’ve been through already?
    Space dogfights, Air dogfights, zombies, post apocalyptic themes, modern warfare, world war 2….
    I’d say that robots actually would be a good idea. oh… and myaybe aliens. I’m not talking about the green dudes with lazer pistols and whatnot , I’m talking about the real aliens, I can’t get enough of them. (and I am aware there are several games existing about them and there’s one on the way, but you can never have enough aliens, they kick both pirate AND ninja ass, especially if you can play as an alien)

  56. 01/12/2009 at 13:32 EaterOfCheese says:

    Clearly the next big thing will be steampunky airballoon ballast & blunderbuss battles.

  57. 01/12/2009 at 13:38 Psychopomp says:

    Will the next big thing be games other than MILITARY SHOOTER:MODERN ACTION MOVIE being able to make 300 million dollars?

  58. 01/12/2009 at 13:42 PetitPiteux says:

    I hate that zombie meme. It got old after the first couple of films, and I have been avoiding it since (with admittedly increasing difficulties). Narratively speaking, there nothing whatsoever there.

    So whatever comes next will be better. Yes, even pirates (‘yarr!’).

    • 01/12/2009 at 14:24 Jimmy says:

      Or just combine…
      I have been wasting valuable uni study time playing Zombie Escape on a Pirates of the Caribbean escape map. Incredibally good fun but dangerous when your time is your own.

  59. 01/12/2009 at 13:44 hoff says:

    Hmmm… I mean, yes we do have L4D which is kind of a big deal. But have zombies really ever been “out”? The nineties had its Resident Evils already, zombies are a default villain in any game you could squeeze a colorful set of enemies into (Half-Life had zombies, Thief had zombies, Earthbound had zombies, Zombies Ate My Neighbors had zombies,… I could go on).

    Zombies have always been a subgroup of the horror genre, sometimes popping up more popularly. But they never ruled the meme scene but rather stayed a constant niche, kinda like pirates or ninjas.

  60. 01/12/2009 at 13:51 Isometric says:

    Why you do this robots?? :(

    Robots are the way to go.

  61. 01/12/2009 at 14:02 noom says:

    Swans. The next big meme will we swans.

  62. 01/12/2009 at 14:16 Hulk Hogan says:

    scary foreigners
    black people
    imperial guardsmen
    pigs who walk on hind legs, they’re called humans
    everyone in australia the land of mad max and shaun of the dead
    carpool simulators

    this is the future

    of my anus

  63. 01/12/2009 at 14:17 Gutter says:

    Zombies AI are easy to code. “Track target and run to target” is easier to do than “track target, hide behind a barrel, shot, check health, shot”. Gamers would not accept their robots to be mindless target practice, it wouldn’t feel “roboish”.

    • 03/12/2009 at 08:52 Nerd Rage says:

      Depends on the complexity of the robots. If they’re all 1950′s Lost in Space type, I’d buy the extremely simple zombie-like AI. If we’re going all futurist with it though, no, a real AI would be nearly god-like and… sigh, resistance would be (effectively) futile.

  64. 01/12/2009 at 14:23 Pattom says:

    Aw, after Dino D-Day I was lookiing forward to more thunder lizards in games. :’(

  65. 01/12/2009 at 14:33 FernandoDANTE says:

    Bipedal Giant Robots are fucking lame. We already have two horrible Transformers movies to prove that, we don’t need any more, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

    Zombies FTW.

  66. 01/12/2009 at 14:53 Clovis says:

    Sounds like we’re gonna’ need some Robot Insurance.

  67. 01/12/2009 at 15:04 Wulf says:

    Games tend to follow movie at a rate of about 1-2 years behind, sometimes with dramatic speed leaps, sometimes not. 1-2 years back, zombies were all the rage in movies, too, and we even had indie movies about zombies. Then was the ‘year of the vampire’, and currently we’re on the ‘year of the werewolf’, as there are many werewolf movies being released and in the works, this seems to culminate with Freeborn which will probably redefine the werewolf genre.

    Now, I’m not sure what you can do with a sparkly vampire, so I doubt we’ll see many of those, but we may see a dystopian, gritty setting, akin to Bloodlines, we might even see a new Kain game (holy crap!), and that would be fun, wouldn’t it? So after developers get bored of zombies, we’ll probably see some angsty vampire heroes, angstily angsting about their antihero angst in their angsty dark world of angsty angst… and so on. Or we might get Kain.

    After that, hopefully we’ll see some things from the year of the werewolf, as it seems to be very easy to make a rather deep werewolf/shapeshifter character. I’m endlessly amused (and I like being amused) how people keep telling me that for the first time in Twiight (New Moon) they’ve seen characters that aren’t entirely wooden, that the shapeshifters are slightly compelling, even if they don’t get enough air time and Edward returns to fuck up the movie or whatever else (I have no idea, I can’t bring myself to watch New Moon yet, it is Twilight after all).

    So, we migh get a few RPGs featuring around colourful, extroverted, clever werewolf packs, focusing on the dynamism of shapeshifting, the usefulness of animal senses and so on. And you can do a lot with a werewolf after all, a detective who’s able to follow scents and possesses supernatural strength is only the beginning. As I said though, Freeborn will open a few eyes, there (if World of Darkness hasn’t all ready).

    Anyway, zombies for a bit. Enjoy them while they last, because things could get very emo, and potentially even very sparkly with the upcoming vampire age that’s ready to hit us.

    (Also, sorry Jim, the year of the robot in which robots were re-envisioned from killing machines to heroic creatures with depth and emotion was a while back, culminating in the rather beautiful and incredible Iron Giant. This had shockwaves in the videogame industry as well, and it’s why we see the odd good guy mechanical man now.)

  68. 01/12/2009 at 15:07 Chaz says:

    Seinfeld could be the next meme, we’ll have “games about nothing”.

  69. 01/12/2009 at 15:29 VHATI says:

    There will be no death of zombies.

    Other things that wont die listed here.

    Post apocalyptic worlds.
    alien invasions.
    Invading alien worlds.
    Oversized weapons and hairdo(japan exclusive)
    Oversized armor

  70. 01/12/2009 at 15:54 Lucas says:

    The recent popularity of Zombies thematically strike me as a backlash to the trend of increasing realism. Except in special cases, game characters are inherently zombie-like, especially in older games with more limited art and tech constraints.

    I feel like we’re ready for games that toss the pretense of realism entirely in favor of better game design and mechanics. Like why marry FPS death and respawning with realistic anything? Why not make the player unkillable and deter progress or resolve scoring in a different manner entirely? Geographies of progression would be more interesting than the repeating binary pass/fail we’ve accepted.

    • 01/12/2009 at 20:02 Impossible says:

      I’d like to see this as well, but with a few exceptions (Geometry Wars, Rez), themed games are much more appealing to people than abstract ones. This is even the case in the indie scene. People would rather make and play something that has some sort of theme, even if building an abstract game purely focused on mechanics might lead to more interesting\fun gameplay.

  71. 01/12/2009 at 16:05 minipixel says:

    >So what will come next?

    Moderately evil bananas!

  72. 01/12/2009 at 16:10 Lucky Main Street says:

    Yes to giant robots! PLEASE YES!

    Also: giant monsters. Giants: Citizen Kabuto really peaked my interest back in the day, and I’ve been waiting for something with giant monsters that’s less fantasy based. I would be very happy if we entered our Godzilla phase.

  73. 01/12/2009 at 16:29 stilgar says:

    The next big thing will be the eco-apocalypse, as the world dies outside we will want to play games about it inside.

  74. 01/12/2009 at 16:33 the_fanciest_of_pants says:

    I’ve always loved zombies.. and I’m afraid I always will. It’s a shame there’s so few examples(proportionately) of good zombie fiction in any given genre however…

    If anyone is feeling that zombies are getting old, I beg you to read World War Z by Max Brooks. Best zombie storytelling ever in my humble opinion, it’s a shame films about them are so uniformly sub-par.

  75. 01/12/2009 at 16:54 Caramelcarrot says:

    I think the trend is that zombies usually happen in times of Republican US governments, vampires during Democratic governments, taking account development lag-time. So I expect vampires will be back in some guise.

  76. 01/12/2009 at 17:17 Doug F says:

    Hm. I’ve been wanting to try and make a turn-based tactics game to try out Unity, and I’d been leaning towards Zombies as at least the initial enemies, for a lot of the reasons listed here. I want something inhuman/nonhuman, and something a plucky group of characters could hold out against as the player learned the game. I had thought about aliens, but if I’m going to get compared to X-Com I’d like it to be because I managed to get the gameplay right, not because I ripped it off thematically as well as mechanically.

    Robots are my other consideration, but it’s harder to scale them from easy enemies at first to harder enemies as the game progresses. The linked XKCD comic seems pretty accurate in that regard.

    Zombies, though. Basic zombies are easy enough to deal with in small numbers early on, and difficulty can be increased by some combination of more zombies and harder zombies. Or harder undead in general – the “villains” could be necromancers causing the whole mess, and who knows what other nasty things they could create.

    Demons are another possibility. hmmm.

  77. 01/12/2009 at 17:24 invisiblejesus says:

    CCP is still working on that World of Darkness MMO, and last I heard they were doing quite well financially. If that actually comes out reasonably soon it could kick off the aforementioned vampire and werewolf crazes. Though I’m a little skeptical of werewolves as a dominant genre; I’m not familiar with Freeborn, but I think it’d really have to completely change how people see werewolves. It’s just not a genre that’s ever caught on in the way that vampires or zombies have. If a game or movie comes out that changes that, sweet.

  78. 01/12/2009 at 17:39 Jeff Strain says:

    Hey Jim,

    I actually agree with most of what you are saying here. It’s unfortunate that my “guilt-free meat puppet” comment has been propagated so widely, because I think the real essence of the zombie genre is not shooting and hacking at the undead, but instead the ramifications of societal collapse and the necessity for teamwork and human connections to survive. Certainly in the context of an MMO, it is the “survival” aspect of the zombie genre that is interesting, rather than the “carnage” aspect.

    Jeff

  79. 01/12/2009 at 18:29 SteveHatesYou says:

    I hope vampire squids are the next meme.

  80. 01/12/2009 at 18:41 Impossible says:

    My new goal in life is to make the Giant Robot game that makes western developers adopt giant robots like COD did for WWII or L4D did for Zombies.

  81. 01/12/2009 at 19:21 James F says:

    What if they used giant quadrupedal robots then?

  82. 01/12/2009 at 19:50 clive dunn says:

    BISCUITS!!!

    The great war of the biscuits will start and we’ll just be the screaming refugees stuck in the middle of it all. God help us all………

  83. 01/12/2009 at 22:19 Jakkar says:

    I disagree. Zombies as a theme is a tired thing, but zombies as an ingredient is universal. Nothing is complete without zombies. Everything, on some level, depicts zombism – hypnotised villagers, rotting ghosts, hordes of mind-control-chipped scifi soldiers – one way or another, almost everything has ‘zombies’. It’s something we love for many reasons, and often chilling and exciting.

    I am tired of all the zombie-focused games, but more because they’re not very good than because they have zombies in them -they remain among my favourite fictional components to a game, film or any story.. And I don’t think they’ll vanish. Merely return to their place as a part of a world, rather than the point of it.

  84. 02/12/2009 at 03:18 Gabbo says:

    Since most games don’t even come close to actually using zombies in the way a George Romero film uses them, perhaps they should work on that first before abandoning them altogether.

  85. 02/12/2009 at 03:39 Caiman says:

    Developers got tired of everyone comparing the AI of their soldiers to the ones in Half Life, so now it’s all zombies, all the time and they hand the AI duties over to the intern.

  86. 02/12/2009 at 03:53 Bret says:

    And the ability to render tons of enemies means the military can swarm you!

    Excellent.

  87. 02/12/2009 at 07:59 Melf_Himself says:

    I solved the problem…. Necromancer Archvillain controls zombies.

  88. 02/12/2009 at 08:49 Heliocentric says:

    And you can’t spell necromancer without romance, so there is a love interest sorted.

  89. 02/12/2009 at 09:19 Eagle says:

    Oh damn, this mean the next big thing will be environmental disasters .. :(

    But I hope for giant robots idd.

  90. 02/12/2009 at 13:50 dingo says:

    I never fell for that Zombie craze.
    To me there is lack of motivation since there is no one to “blame” for it usually.

    Now seeing that trailer and speculating that this was an alien attack (the ships) using robots I would happily grab a gun and start hunting them since I would take such an attack on mankind personal!

    I definately want some bad guy to blame and hunt down in line of “Independence Day” or “Duke Nukem”.
    Even better if I get attacked on my home soil (like in Modern Warfare 2, World in Conflict and the upcoming “Homefront”) to really start my blood boiling. :)

  91. 02/12/2009 at 15:24 Ninja says:

    imo the Zombie “meme” won’t be over until somebody creates an uber realistic zombie game.

    I’m talking REAL zombie survival. Not running forward and shooting zombies. I’m talking Stranded Mod on Garrys Mod, with the added tension of thousands of zombies tearing through walls in the next room.

    At that point I’ll be willing to say “Okay, they’ve done as much with Zombies as I care to see them do, lets go onto the next thing”

    Until that point there won’t have been a zombie game I’m truly fond of (I didn’t mind l4d or L4D2 much, even though I love Valve and TF2), because i like games with more strategy than twitch skills and knowledge of level layouts.

    I’m thinking Standed Mod + dead rising or something of the sort. Massive open world area to travel around in, zombies realistically placed and realistically proportioned, and on top of finding weapons to fight off zombies, being forced to make decisions based on how much hungry your character is, or how thirsty, or how tired.

    Since a Zombie invasion isn’t likely to happen (Knock on wood) I’d like a game that makes me feel that I’d know what a zombie invasion would be like. The “idea” of a survival horror game starring zombies and the poor sap that has to live with him is cool, but so far most Survival games have been more about shooting zombies in the face with randomly found weapons, and less about surviving.

    Maybe I’m just some crazy guy trying to prepare for the apocalypse, or maybe I’m just a guy who wants a zombie game that isn’t as fact paced or twitchy as L4D. Who Knows.

  92. 02/12/2009 at 16:40 Piratepete says:

    If you want a bad guy for the Zombie Horde check this out:

    The Minister Parts 1 & 2 and ‘The Boy’

    Written by my own fair hand, with Part 3, the finale out soon!

    Please feel free to leave comments and check out some of my other stories on the site.

    (Shameless plug)

    I’ve just realised that this is my first post on the RPS forum so this looks like spam but I’ve been on RPS since Jim was in short pants. I just didn’t know there was a forum until last week.

  93. 03/12/2009 at 14:41 Enshu says:

    How about…Daleks?

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