Mutants and Zombies Everywhere! Or Villains, Violence, and Selfishness: Questions of Humanity in the Post-apocalyptic (Pandemic) Video Game

The post-apocalyptic environment has been popular in video games for many decades—from nuclear fallout to alien invasions, there is a fascination with the decline of mankind. This article looks, in light of the Covid-19 outbreak, at the depiction of failing and inhuman worlds in video games about pandemics. The environments in games such as Bioshock (2007), Left 4 Dead (2008, 2009), and The Last of Us (2013), are unflinchingly cruel, often depicting humans (and the player) as selfish entities seeking only self-survival. These environments are destructively violent, and, although the player is often surrounded by ‘mutants', these worlds are also oppressively lonely. This article looks at the fears reflected in pre-Covid-19 pandemic video games and what they say about our world, offering a retrospective view now we are living through a global pandemic perhaps not so different from those found in these games.