Acta Ludologica 2018, Vol. 1, No. 1 ABSTRACT: This document details the abstract for a study on zombie narratives and zombies as units and their translation from cinemas to interactive mediums. Focusing on modern zombie mythos and aesthetics as major infuences in pop-culture; including videogames. The main goal of this study is to examine the applications The Infectious Aesthetic of zombie units that have their narrative roots in traditional; non-ergodic media, in videogames; how they are applied, what are their patterns, and the allure of Zombies: An Exploration of their pervasiveness. of Zombie Narratives and Unit KEY WORDS: Operations of Zombies case studies, cinema, narrative, Romero, unit operations, videogames, zombie. in Videogames “Zombies to me don’t represent anything in particular. They are a global disaster that people don’t know how to deal with. David Melhart, Haryo Pambuko Jiwandono Because we don’t know how to deal with any of the shit.” Romero, A. George David Melhart, MA University of Malta Institute of Digital Games Introduction 2080 Msida MSD Zombies are one of the more pervasive tropes of modern pop-culture. In this paper, Malta we ask the question why the zombie narrative is so infectious (pun intended) that it was
[email protected] able to successfully transition from folklore to cinema to videogames. However, we wish to look beyond simple appearances and investigate the mechanisms of zombie narratives. To David Melhart, MA is a Research Support Ofcer and PhD student at the Institute of Digital do this, we employ Unit Operations, a unique framework, developed by Ian Bogost1 for the Games (IDG), University of Malta.