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• 1 media/the last of us wallpaper.jpg media/the last of us wallpaper.jpg media/the last of us wallpaper.jpg 2023-04-03T09:21:54-07:00 Video Games' Fascination with Death 18 image_header 2023-04-06T19:22:24-07:00 The future of Human is a recurrent theme in popular culture, and especially in video games. As a matter of fact, since the start of COVID-19, “video games engaging with pandemic infections became high sellers” (Milesi 2022, 11). The Last of Us series, one of my favourites, is a prime example of the popularity of post-apocalyptic/survival games. However, the problem with such games is that in their imagining of what humanity’s future will look like, fear of death and violence are commonplace. In The Last of Us, for instance, Joel and Ellie have all sorts of enemies, ranging from the zombie-like Clickers to the human cannibals, to the militia group known as the Fireflies, and more. The player, then, has to be in a constant lookout for danger. Therefore, it is safe to say that video game producers capitalize off of fear. Afterall, the horror genre is well-liked in cinema and literature, so why not video games? Some examples of horror games include the popular Amnesia series and—one I particularly hate because of how scary and stress inducing it is—The Evil Within series. While I admit that such games are entertaining and sometimes even touching, such as in the case of the highly acclaimed Last of Us, not all have some sort of significance to them. Rather, in their constant portrayals of gory deaths, such digital games only encourage violence. You may ask, why does it even matter when the enemy is fictive and faceless (literally)? The issue is, is that in normalizing it, this violence can extend to more familiar-looking faces as well. This is especially true when we consider that games are often based on necro-politics.