Undead ecologies: Reconceptualising zombiism in videogames

In this presentation I make a case for an emerging figuration of the zombie as an undead ecology rather than an embodied figure. This view rests on the observation that the necrotisation of the planet Earth, a process accelerated by the ecological relations associated with late-stage capitalism (McBrien 2016), is intricately connected to this new form of ludic zombiism. I examine two games that sit outside the conventions of traditional zombie texts—Timberborn (Mechanistry 2021) and Elden Ring (FromSoftware 2022)—to reveal that, just as the shambling corpses of earlier zombies destabilised biological and ontological meaning, virtual landscapes and ecologies in contemporary games now ply the margins of life, subjectivity and meaning.