We’ve all heard of Stubbs the Zombie, one of the few videogames ever made from an Undead perspective. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were more?

Well, there might be, if ‘Ray’s the Dead’ gets made.

The ZRC became aware of ‘Ray’s the Dead’ from this reading this article, in which one of the creators dispenses some unique insights on Zombie videogames:

“Ray’s the Dead” came from a mutual longing to see more zombie games that were actually about zombies, Chris Cobb told NBC News. Cobb co-founded Ragtag with his friend and colleague Matt Carter after they left “Stubbs the Zombie” creator Wideload Games.

“There’s no doubt that there is a tremendous amount of not only zombie games but just zombie everything these days,” Cobb said. “But, in my opinion, there aren’t really many zombie games out there at all. I mean, there are plenty of games where you just shoot the zombies. But there are very few games where you play a zombie and get to do zombie things.”

The Zombie Rights Campaign agreed heartily with this assessment; there are all too few games where you play as a Zombie *character* in this sadly Living Supremacist entertainment sector.

But we need more than Zombies as playable ciphers; we need Zombies as appealing icons of tolerance, and that, sadly, is where Ray’s the Dead falls down:

The titular protagonist of “Ray’s the Dead,” therefore, is “a notch above the rest of the zombies. He’s kind of calling the shots.” While Cobb admitted that the developers “are still figuring out what aspects of the zombies are automated,” he said that players will have to strategically position their zombies to prepare for ambushes and other types of tactical gameplay to outwit stronger human opponents.

Must… must it always come back to violence? To conflict?

*sigh*

We were so close on this one. I could almost FEEL the Zombie Friendly potential.

Sadly, since we saw the news story this post was based on, the fundraiser for Ray’s the Dead was cancelled on Kickstarter, so there is currently no way to bribe the game creators toward a Zombie Friendlier path.

The game is not cancelled, however, merely shifting development plans, so we’ll keep an eye out for future developments.

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This entry was posted by John Sears on Saturday, June 8th, 2013 at 5:58 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.