Video Games Day 2: The Future Part 2

A
     Unlike movies and television, today's zombie video games don't always focus on the survivors and the effect the zombies have on them; it's more of an even balance. This is due to the popularity of two types of zombie games. The shooters that revolve primarily around killing hoards of zombies pay little attention to those wielding the weapons bashing their heads in. These are games like Call of Duty or Left 4 Dead. Other games, RPGs and action adventure games, tend to be more story driven and focus on the characters within the game. These are games like The Last of Us and Telltale's The Walking Dead. The fear and tension in video games comes primarily from the threat of the zombies and how the interactivity of games adds that extra threat that you control the character and the zombies could kill you.

B
     In games like these, music and atmosphere changes in importance depending on the type of zombie game. If it is the shooter type of zombie game than music and atmosphere becomes far less important because the game is more about pumping as many bullets as possible into the zombies running at you rather than immersing yourself in the world around you. In RPGs and action adventures like The Last of Us the music and atmosphere become immensely more important. Those games often focus on the people caught in those worlds and it's effect on them, how they survive in the world around them. This makes the world-building that comes from good music and atmosphere all the more important to fully bring the player into the experience.