ABSTRACT
The video game zombie has its origins with one man—the independent filmmaker George A. Romero. In 1968 Romero, a college dropout who made commercials and industrial films in downtown Pittsburgh, decided to seek investment to make a low budget horror movie. The most pertinent of arguments about the genesis and evolution of zombies in games centres precisely on whether they should be fast or slow. In some form or another all zombie games we play today owe their origins and commercial success to Romero. Romero's zombies are perfect vehicles to play with the process of othering that in the post-ideological condition functions to contort our intersubjective relations. Romero’s interactive zombies are the perfect metaphor for the excess of the drives and for play itself—and it’s sweet and fitting that his ‘children’ are the most prevalent antagonist in what is the most prevalent modality of enjoyment.
