It’s a gloomy, rainy night in September in a small, quiet town, just outside Ottawa, Ontario. A little too quiet though. It’s late and this is feeding time. For zombies.

 

As soon as it's dark, they come out to look for food. Us. You. Me. Humans. Whoever is left, that is.

 

Fear starts to overcome your body as you’re walking through the only building in town that has the medical supplies that you need to stay alive. Your hands tremble but you grip that rifle as hard as you can, in anticipation.

 

Then you hear it. The zombie. Your survival instincts kick in and you prepare to fight. Until you hear another zombie behind you and see the entire room fill with them. Now, you’re just thinking how in the hell you’re going to get out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Presumably, that was a scene from an episode of AMC’s hit television series The Walking Dead, right? Wrong. It’s one of the many scenarios that are included in the video game franchise Call of Duty, a series developed by Treyarch and published by Activision.

 

Call of Duty is a first-person shooter video game franchise that originally simulated combat situations with soldiers in WWII. Eventually recognizing people’s interest in zombies, Call of Duty developed a game mode in which players would face zombies instead of people.                                                                                                         

Viraj Patel, 26, of Toronto is an avid Call of Duty gamer, who has been playing the video game since its release in 2003, says the zombie mode is probably one of his favourite aspects of the game.

 

“I like that it’s different than the original Call of Duty,” Patel says. “It’s the ability to be able to use different weapons and play the game in another way.”

 

It is no doubt that zombie culture is a popular phenomenon that has recently made a presence in the media, as people have a clear fascination with the concept of the undead.

 

Aubrey Anable, an assistant professor of film studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, who is writing a book about video games and their affect, says that the zombie phenomenon is an “ongoing cultural fascination [that we’ve seen] represented across all media.”

  

Drekken Pownz of Toronto, a co-ordinator for video gaming events, has seen his fair share of trends pop in and out of the industry.

 

“The zombie trend is no different than any other,” Pownz says. “Call of Duty [developers are] just capitalizing on that in the way they need to.”

 

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Pownz, who originally studied business and entrepreneurship at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, decided to “trade in the life of a boring computer engineer” to follow his passion for video games, more specifically e-Sports (also known as competitive gaming.)

 

He founded ESChamps Studios, a business that provides services in broadcasting and outsourcing for the e-Sports industry, giving Pownz the responsibility of planning various video gaming events.

 

With his presence in the gaming community, he gets the opportunity to see what keeps people interested in a particular type of game.“Call of Duty is a very special case,” Pownz says. “[It’s] a title that is released year in and year out and it has a heavy requirement to produce new and exciting content."

 

Anable says that it seems the notion of a “zombie apocalypse” has really only emerged over the last few years, even though Call of Duty developers have been using the motif since 2007, when Advanced Warfare was released.

 

“It’s interesting that we are thinking about the end of the world through the lens of zombies,” Anable says. “There are lots of other ways we can think of the end [and] it’s important to ask, why zombies?”

 

The assistant professor cannot say with certainty where the fascination stems from but she says that it’s a phenomenon that has been introduced to the world through various forms of media.

 

The idea of an apocalypse didn’t just come from one or two sources.

 

“It went from a comic book to a television series to a video game,” Anable says. “[It’s this] trans-media way of telling stories that really gets people involved in the narrative.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patel says, aside from playing Call of Duty, he enjoys watching The Walking Dead and loves the similarities between the game and the show.

 

“The fact that there is no second chance [in the game] makes it realistic and life-like, which improves the entire experience,” Patel says.

 

Anable recognizes this same notion that many other gamers feel when playing Call of Duty.

 

“They feel more connected to it than if it was just a television show,” Anable says. “They can follow the narrative across many platforms and that creates [an] intimacy with what’s going on in the story.”

 

Anable believes that the world maintains a fascination with zombies because it represents the “very real possibility of the end of a sustainable planet for humans.”

 

“The notion of an apocalypse and humans as the undead, is [something that we believe] just lives on,” Anable says. “I think it really taps into [people’s] fears that the world is ending and that we are in an end game."