The Players are the Product: A Study of Player Communities, Community Managers, and Zombies
The Players are the Product: A Study of Player Communities, Community Managers, and Zombies
The Players are the Product: A Study of Player Communities, Community Managers, and Zombies
Daniel Warmke
March 28, 2021
Summary
Multiple times per year for more than a decade there are foam darts left on the Ohio University College Green when the sun rises.
They are the remains of a game played the night before where some dozens or hundreds of students have come together to simulate a zombie apocalypse.
This looks odd at first glance and it only gets odder on second glance: despite its large following and longevity this game is largely unadvertised; it is completely free and supported only by volunteer labor; and each iteration of the game is a unique and elaborate narrative creation featuring anything from simulated time-travel to filming a movie within the game to pastiches of other types of media in addition to the aforementioned and ever present zombies.
This is not a unique phenomenon but only one college chapter among hundreds that play the same, or similar, games.
When I embarked on studying the process that brings the Humans Vs Zombies game on Ohio University's campus into existence it was with all of these idiosyncrasies in mind.
I am a game designer and interested in this game and the people who create it for some of the same reasons that an anthropologist may be interested in studying an isolated traditional society rather than any of the major globe spanning cultures.
This is not the same sort of game creation firm as Nintendo, Blizzard, or Hasbro but that difference makes it interesting.
I'm using the term "Game firm" to incorporate the wide variety of groups that make games in the world from those large companies to the club creators on college campuses.
Imbedded in this research is one meta question: are the theories and findings drawn from other types of game firms relevant to HvZ and does that say anything about the general applicability of these studies to all game creating firms or are they only relevant to large companies?
Reference
Warmke, D. (2021, March 28). Analog game studies. Retrieved July 09, 2021, from https://analoggamestudies.org/2021/03/the-players-are-the-product-a-study-of-player-communities-community-managers-and-zombies/