Legions of the Avatarial Undead

Avatars are really fucking obviously zombies. Evidence to follow. Thank you. 

 

Lets define the undead, boring but necessary task. For Zizek the undead are the 'inbetween', they are neither concretely living or dead, hence the middle term 'living dead'. These are creatures that exhibit the markers of life, walking or talking, yet have returned from the beyond of death. Vampires and Zombies fit into this 'non-category' but it may also be the best term for discussing the nature of the avatar. The simulated representational body on the screen indicates life through body form, motion and speech without ever being more than a computer generated object. It is not definitely living or dead and so falls under the type of undead. Aside from the ontological issues the avatars purpose in the game often further determines their undead status. Avatar death is something of a regular fixture in games, occuring when the avatar sustains too much damage but there is an internal mechanic for dealing with avatarial death - the extra life. The avatar can always respawn at one point in the game. Avatars die and are resurrected. In games death is certain but its finality is not and so the respawn or continuance becomes part of the undead discourse of the avatar. 

 

The undead being an indefinite category to which the avatar fits, has further sub-categories into which its figures may sit. In light of the avatars indefinite title the puppet metaphor as well as the player’s relationship to the avatar might be nuanced to assume the roles of zombie and necromancer respectively.  Ewan Kirkland concludes his pronunciation of ‘dead’ game bodies with an illuminating statement; ‘the zombie may be a metaphor for the process of videogame engagement, representing the avatar without player, the computer-controlled figure, without the human soul to make it truly alive.’ (Kirkland: 2009). By way of unpicking this statement the avatar will be constructed as zombie (or zombi) in two ways; firstly, through a physical and behavioural resemblance that pertains to media representation and secondly in metaphorical terms determined by a history of folklore.  

Zombies Behaving Badly 

Perhaps the most notable and popularized depiction of the zombie comes from the visual style of George A Romero, a style that has been repeated and elaborated on since his zombie debut Night of the Living Dead (1968). These zombies are distinct creatures, slow and shambling, unable to negotiate obstacles, bent in posture with arms upraised, glazed emotionless eyes, the zombies are soulless beings motoring on primitive instinct alone. Such behavioural qualities can be seen in avatarial animation in games.

Consider the motion of avatars in the gamespace produced by remote input by the player. The directional controls (analogue stick, wii mote, six-axis or arrow keys) do not produce fluid movement when provoked. Even directing your mini-ninja, lego character or avatarial camera down a straight trajectory can produce jagged movement when trying to align. wobbling and jerking down a path appears illogical, like a zombie uncertain of its motivation. 

In Zombie Zone, whatever avatar is selected, the poor rendering and control design produce zombie-like effects in the execution of certain moves. For instance the 'jump attack' requires precision and control and its direction is inalterable after the command has be executed. The speed with which this attack needs to be performed against numerous enemies often sees the avatar hopelessly jumping and slashing at the bare floor, hitting nothing like the zombie hoards banging at the door of potential prey in Night of the Living Dead. 

Romero invented the contemporary principles of zombie’s destruction as a blow to the head. Horror films often have carnage riddled depictions of zombie slaughter, with their bodies suffering massive violence without halting them.  The zombies physical threshold for damage is reflected in the health meter of games. This facility allows a certain amount of harm on the avatar before a game life is lost, it is a system disproportionate to expected biological norms. Zombie Zone’s avatars have a particularly high damage threshold, signified by the health meter in the lower left corner of the screen. When an avatar takes a hit the screen is splattered with red representational blood and the avatar is stunned momentarily, briefly freezing the controls. the only evidence of the depleting health of the avatar is blood on their body that can be rinsed off with ‘cleansing gems’ that rejuvenate the avatars health also. The persistence of the avatar’s body despite representational harm is a behaviour like the zombies of Return of the Living Dead part II, in which shooting or stabbing them has no effect on their animation, they keep on moving. Even severed limbs and heads don’t stop these zombies they slither and crawl, like so many hits that do not stop these avatars.  

The first-person shooter BioShock, as well as many others, features zombie maneuverings although they are perceived from a different perspective. The mazelike design of the game requires turns in motion often, the sensitivity of the controls however produced jerked movement that often passes the intended point. Couple this directional severity with motion and the commands may produce an unintentional diagonal straif or direct the avatarial camera directly into a wall. Once the avatarial camera is confronted with the wall there a two ways to right the positioning that appear awkward and illogical; the avatarial camera can be motioned backwards gradually creating space for the avatarial camera to be directed elsewhere, or by pressing forward the avatarial camera will slide down the wall until reaching its end. Crashing into things and awkward movement is reminiscent of the zombies irrational motion, ‘twitchers’ thrashing in fountains in Dawn of the Dead (2004). 

In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007) is anther first-person shooter in which the characters hands serve as the only physical presence in the game.  Collecting items, viewing computer log data, and activating buttons are a common feature I the game that utilize the avatarial hands. If the distance from the object is too great or the angle off the hands will swipe fruitlessly in the direction of the object. The repeated attempt to hit the target produces an affect not unlike a zombie grappling for flesh. 

Zombiisms 

The second aspect in determining the metaphor of the zombie avatar pertains to a specific folklore, descending for Haiti. The zombie has evolved in fictional depictions but the zombi traditions of Haitian voodoo represent the nature of the avatar as well as the relationship between player and avatar.

Boon continues to divide the zombie into seven types that might better assert the avatars analogy to the zombie. The zombie invokes many types and has numerous connotations, and the zombie that the avatar is best likened to is a specific model – the zombie drone. This zombie differs somewhat from the popularized ‘zombie ghoul' represented in contemporary horror and defined by the films of George A Romero. This is the earliest type of zombie to enter into western folklore, dating from the American occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. Tales circulated of bodies raised from the dead to serve in labour. This reanimation is performed in with Haitian voodoo practices. William Seabrook defines their appearance, conjuring and purpose in Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields:

The zombie… is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life – it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvnize it into movement and then make it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.

(Seabrook in Boon: 38)

The zombie as worker shares function with the avatar. Like the drone the avatar is mechanized. Coded with finite capacities, animations that simulate life and numerous predetermined actions that would constitute their labours. The avatar is put to work in the game by command of a remote control, performing the tasks it is commanded to. The avatar is enslaved in that it cannot disobey, it has no volition of its own to go against the input of the player. A glitch is not disobedience as that would endow the avatar with consciousness, nor could the ‘idling’ poses and cut-scenes of a videogame constitute actual volition as they are predetermined animations. When the avatar performs badly in a game, or ‘slackens’ - regardless of player culpability - they receive corporal punishment. This may take the form of gibs, dismemberment or even temporary life loss to be brought back into the game and the same zombified state.

Peter Dendle’s (2007) cultural analysis of the zombie also concentrates on the zombie drone, though without recourse to the term coined by Boon.  Dendle’s essay The Zombie As a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety, considers the zombie as tied up in a metaphor for the economies of labour, beginning with the Haitian lore and progressing through to consumer capitalism. Essentially Dendle sees the zombie engaged in themes of subservience, from the othering of ethnicity in White Zombie, the dominated women in The Stepford Wives to the mindlessly consuming mallrats of Dawn of the Dead – ‘the zombie is a soul-less hulk mindlessly working at the bidding of another… the essence of the ‘zombie’ at the most abstract level is supplanted, stolen, or effaced consciousness; it casts allegorically the appropriation of one person’s will by that of another.’ (Dendle: 2007, 46-47). What seems to be key to this particular zombie type is the control that is assumed over the undead body. This is reified in the relationship between player and avatar as the player commands (x,o, up, down on the keypad) and the avatar responds. The way in which the control over the avatar is performed might best explain the relationship at work between player and avatar. Taking the puppeteering analogy with a nuanced perspective relating to Haitian zombification lore, the player can metaphorically become the necromancer.

xoxo Final Girl