The Playful Undead and Video Games: Critical Analyses of Zombies and Gameplay
- Submitting institution
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Staffordshire University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 6803
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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10.4324/9781315179490
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9781315179490
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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A - The C3 Centre: Creative Industries and Creative Communities
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Zombies have featured in popular culture for decades, but their significance has only rarely been theorised. Zombies represent an enduring preoccupation with death, disease, the boundaries between life and death, apocalypse, the body, the other, desire, and negation. The book situates the function and significance of the zombie in the modality of play (Huizinga) and reflects on the ludification of fields such as psychoanalysis, ideology critique, philosophy, and gender studies.
The range of his expertise gave Stephen Webley a unique vantage point to see that the significance of zombies depends on each of these fields. His reputation as a researcher on these topics then enabled him to assemble the authors, and the material, included in the book – the first curated collection to bring together writers from different disciplines to examine the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary games and culture. As the primary editor, Stephen Webley was responsible for the idea of the book, steering the proposal through review at its publisher, and editing contributions through re-writes to ensure the coherence of the collection. He contributed both an Introduction and a concluding chapter to the book. The Introduction frames the critical approach of the book and the concluding chapter lays out the ideological significance of the zombie in film and games, opening avenues for future research.
The collection presents the zombie as a cultural artefact spawned from turbulent social unrest and links the growth in its popularity with the ideological failures of contemporary capitalism. The zombie emerges as crucial to the impact of independent cinema on the way narratives are formed, consumed, and cannibalised in consumerist culture. This is especially significant for the growing role of ludification in new areas of society and culture and demonstrates the importance of games studies and film studies to other disciplines.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
