After the Apocalypse, We'll All Be Gamers

There's a growing trend I've been noticing in games for a while now and the games shown at E3 only added to that trend. Game developers are employing the post-apocalyptic more and more as the setting for their games. The versions of the post-apocalyptic are numerous, but the principle of the setting remains the same: there is a moral vacuum for the player to fill up. Perhaps there once was a morality that was obliterated by the apocalyptic event, but no matter what the player exists in a world that is free from moral guidelines. Before I get too far into that I'd like to cover the games that typify this trend and talk about certain ones more thoroughly.

The list so far:

• Gears of War series
• Fallout 3 (series)
• Crysis 2
• Bioshock series
• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
• Borderlands
• Half-Life 2
• Rage
• Bionic Commando
• Bulletstorm
• Left 4 Dead series
• Darksiders
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

These games aren't small fry. Some have done better than others, but they're all major games that have been released recently or will be soon and in one way or another involve a desolated land/world. To be fair, Fallout 3 is part of the Fallout series, which has a longer history than almost all the games here. I still believe my criticism applies in this circumstance as the post-apocalyptic is a growing trend in games, not a new one.

There is division with the post-apocalyptic games such as Crysis 2, Enslaved, Rage involve existing moral structures that are destroyed. Consider the Left 4 Dead series:
Left 4 Dead is essentially a playable zombie apocalypse. But the zombie apocalypse serves a function beyond being fun. It allows for the guiltless killing of people. Not random people from a non-existent world or land, but Americans living in the South. But, the player does not care because these people now compose a zombie horde. The moral structure that existed before the zombie apocalypse (killing people is wrong) no longer applies, because there are no people. There is simply the zombie horde threatening to kill you. Of course it's moral to kill zombies, they're not people.


Crysis 2 (I'm basing this on everything I've read and seen about the game) utilizes the post-apocalyptic in a somewhat similar fashion. Rather than making killing moral, Crysis 2 turns New York City in a playground. Without the post-apocalyptic, Crysis 2 would be a game about a guy using a super-suit being chased by the authorities for causing havoc in NYC. But, the havoc is already wrought in Crysis 2. So, whatever the guy wearing the super-suit does, he cannot harm the city anymore than it has been.

Games like Borderlands and Bulletstorm bring the apocalypse to a whole new world.

Borderlands is about opening a new frontier of sorts. Sure, the planet of Pandora has been traveled, but so had the American West when gold diggers went looking for gold. The characters in Borderlands are prospectors themselves, looking for the treasure of Pandora. Their mission calls on them to conquer the planet by killing people and animals and helping others. The post-apocalypse, in this conception, is a challenge: survive and you'll benefit somehow. (Bulletstorm is about surviving a desolated planet to get revenge).

Essential to both conceptions (the erasure of morality and the opening of a new frontier) is the sense that the player must make it on his own. The player must construct the new morality of the post-apocalyptic world. Or the player must make his own life the post-apocalyptic world. The player does not actively do this however. It's built into the storyline of these games. It's a back-to-basics experience and perhaps a reaction to extremely connected gaming. The Mass Effect series has email for crying out loud. Grand Theft Auto IV had cellphones. The Halo series always had Cortana or some military guy in your ear. Not only do some games socially network the player with other NPCs, but they're extremely advanced technologically. Post-apocalyptic games may have advanced technology, but they create rustic feel to them. Nothing in them works 100% of the time. The player must fix cars or guns or whatever himself.

And that's why gamers will be better prepared for the world after the apocalypse than anyone else.