Zombie Economics: Violence and Economics in three first-person shooter zombie-themed video games.

This thesis presents a textual analysis of three zombie-themed video games: Left4Dead, Call of Duty: Zombies, and Killing Floor. The relationship between violence and economics presented in the in-game actions is analyzed to demonstrate that when capitalism is seen as ideological in nature, the zombie-themed games observed can be seen as evidence of the reiteration of that ideology. A gradation of economic systems becomes apparent through a comparison of these video games to the zombie myth presented in film, using a combination of the methods of narrative examination and ludology. The games which imitate the capitalistic market do so by utilizing the money-for-bodies ludic system, where players earn points of money for killing. Money-for-bodies raises questions about the subjectivities that arisein first-person shooter games—as the embedded capitalistic actions within video games which focus on killing leads to a combination of the two subjectivities connected to Empire, the worker-consumer and the citizen-soldier. Violence and economics are also connected through multiplayer interactions where players enact counterplay by committing avatar suicide to financially assist teammates, making life a resource and enacting a type of capitalism with moral haziness