There have been more video games set in a post-apocalyptical society in this generation of consoles than ever before (I think... feels like it anyway!) If you slightly-broaden your definition of post apocalypse a little, there are HEAPS. Two Fallouts, two Metros, Deus Ex, four Gears of Wars, I am alive, Infamous, Left 4 Dead, DayZ, The last of Us, four Resistance games, the Stalker games, Walking Dead games and X-COM just to name a few. We've seen a rise in love for this fictitious nightmare not just in games - but in in television and film as well.

So why do we now seem to enjoy the ideas of a society descending into chaos?



Metro: Last Light

When we started to see our first video games appear back in the late 70s and early 80s, the world was still in love with space and also still living in fear of the (second) cold war.



Asteroids, Missile Command

So we saw games exploring those ideas and taking them to their logical end game scenarios (albeit in a wonderful blocky pixelated fashion). I think today, us Aussies tend to feel relatively safe and insulated from such things - all tucked away down under. But we probably shouldn't - the threat of nuclear war, climate change catastrophes and economic collapse have certainly been sitting on my mind in the last few years. There are a lot of nutters out there, with a lot of power. I think this is one reason why these post-apocalyptic games are so popular with dreaming developers. On top of that, devs have often said that this kind of brown, decrepit art simply just looks good on this generation of hardware. Perhaps that comes with finally being able to have those large, open-world draw distances which can truly show an endless view of nothingness.



Fallout 3

Thinking about what YOU would do to survive in an endworld situation is inherently fascinating. The idea of testing yourself and your own morals and the choice to become a hero or a villain just to survive is pure, delicious psychology. And it's why I think Fallout 3 and DayZ are the best recent examples of this genre. In Fallout 3, you can choose to stumble into a town, help everyone you can and be rewarded accordingly. You can be a lone ranger out to do good and help those in need. But you're also in a position of power and you have the choice to tear the town apart - take out all the quest-givers and simply take what you need to survive in the capital wasteland. I still remember killing Boone in FNV simply for his awesome red hat without even knowing he was a potential companion in the game - and apparently the best one. But I loved that hat. Actually that's probably my main motivation for taking out NPC's - good hats.



Fallout: New Vegas

I go on about DayZ a LOT so I'm sorry to sound like a broken record... but it's DayZ that really shows how interesting these survival choices are to gamers. There is no file save safety net in DayZ. No predictable AI routines. You're out there with real people, talking to them on real communication. Helping. Planning. Surviving. Plotting. Killing. Hearing their cries of sadness as you turn on them.

I've killed my fair share of survivors in DayZ for simple items like beans, backpacks, or even a broken old Bicycle: sometimes for no reason at all and sometimes so I don't have to think about the risk of them killing me. I still remember the first person I turned on. It was only a few days after the mod launched. We met in the dark, his name was Sam and he was from Melbourne. We had few flares and had been walking in the dark for hours so another human was a rare find. I made the decision to end his life not really for anything he had, simply to see what it felt like. And it felt horribly interesting.



DayZ

Exploring the darkness of these choices is why I still play this game almost every other day and it's become a bit of a personal fascination of mine - laying loot and vehicle traps and trolling at night with a troll voice modification on. It turns gamers into storytellers, and the stillness of the world provides the pacing for you to truly feel alone and against the odds [and this has had no effect on your psyche whatsoever, has it, Bajo? Exhibit 1 : Exhibit 2 - Ed]

I think that's the other reason we love them - you are often up against everything in these games: hunger, food, cold, radiation, zombies, aliens, disasters, other players and bandit gangs with their own self-determined hierarchy and infrastructure. A hero shines when it's a normal person in an extreme situation. A true relatable hero needs a true challenge, and making it past insurmountable odds just to survive (and often build a proud collection of bits and bobs along the way) is satisfying gaming.



DayZ

Also, us humans like to worry. It's why we're the most successful species on earth and end-of-days games give us a slight insight in to what we would do when staring at an empty pantry. As a side note, when things do go wrong, you probably don't want to tell me you have spare beans.

You can see some of Bajo's DayZ shenanigans on his YouTube channel. Also note, Australian independent film, Fallout Lanius, Premiere's on 20th July.