Maxistentialism

Humans vs. Zombies is a game of tag played at over six hundred locations all over the world.

I am a national organizer of the Humans vs. Zombies game, as well as the Chief Brand Officer and a founding member of Gnarwhal Studios Inc., the company my friends and I started to manage the Humans vs. Zombies game.

As one of the national organizers of the Humans vs. Zombies game, my responsibilities include the design and maintenance of our online community of tens of thousands of players.

Impact and Reception

The International Herald Tribune called Humans vs. Zombies “the antidote for the ailments of a generation.” Data from the game has been used in models for Foreign Policy magazine. Steven Colbert named the game the “number one threat to America.”

We have been invited to competitive gaming festivals such as Come Out and Play, where we won the “Players’ Choice” award and were recognized for our game design and organizational ability. We have also organized corporate games for groups like the SONY Playstation product development team in San Francisco.

The game has received positive coverage from media outlets such as:

• NPR
• The Boston Globe
• The Associated Press
• The Washington Post
• USA Today
• The Globe and Mail
• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• SlashDot
• Fox News

The Humans vs. Zombies Brand

Humans vs. Zombies needs a strong brand that captures the sense of community that the game creates, reminds people that it is safe and family-friendly, and pays homage to the gritty zombie genre that attracts new players.

I do all of our print and digital design in-house, which gives us fine-grain control over our branding, and has helped to increase awareness of the game and grow the Humans vs. Zombies community.

Humans vs. Zombies Website

We rapidly outgrew five different versions of our website as the Humans vs. Zombies game exploded in popularity.

 

Our current site is able to scale to meet the demands of a growing community. It has a modular design so that we can add or remove items as necessary.

The fifth generation of our site uses WordPress with some AJAX fanciness which can scale to the size of our growing community.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes on this site – integration with SMF forums, applications from the Google Maps API, a web store, JavaScript, dynamic content, and user-generated pages and posts.

Humans vs. Zombies Merchandise

As Humans vs. Zombies has grown in popularity, there has been increased demand for merchandise and other HvZ brand extensions.

 

Humans vs. Zombies Print Materials

As we start to take our game on the road, we have to rapidly develop and produce print materials that explain the game and let people join in. Here is an example of a brochure we created for the Come Out and Play festival:

 

Public Relations and Rapid Response

Occasionally, schools will ban or restrict play of Humans vs. Zombies. Part of maintaining the Humans vs. Zombies brand is to challenge these decisions. We work with students and organizers on the ground to overturn these bans or reach a compromise with school administrations.

Sometimes, in order to communicate to uncooperative schools just how important the Humans vs. Zombies game is to its players, we ask our community of hundreds of thousands of players to get involved. To facilitate this, I designed the HvZ Action software, which I built at no cost in-house with our lead developer, Justin Quick.

This software allows us to quickly add phone and email advocacy campaigns with custom talking points and invite players to send a message to the school in question. As players write their messages to schools, the software uses keyword recognition to determine if players have discussed the important talking points. If they haven’t, they are politely reminded to mention all of the relevant issues, and given the option to send their message anyway if they want.

This design enables our community to take instantly satisfying action on behalf of a game they love while staying respectfully on message.

The HvZ Community

Our community of players is quirky, engaged, and fun. They give us important feedback on every decision we make, and are active participants in spreading the game and keeping it legal.

We maintain an active forum for players to discuss everything HvZ related, and make an effort to stay in dialogue with them on a daily basis. Recently, some outstanding forums members have come forward to help us moderate discussions and organize posts.

Based on several years worth of forum posts, we started to assemble a guide for starting a game of HvZ. The guide was written by Adam Longwill and myself, and I designed it:

Giving this much attention to the community of players continues to surprise and reward us. When we began building the new version of the HvZ SOURCE software that helps players organize their games, we needed quick cash to start development. We partnered with Kickstarter, and used their grassroots fundraising software to collect over $2,000 in donations from our players in under a month:

Our networks allowed us to get the word out and explain why we needed the money, but it was our special relationship with our community that led them to support us.

Video

In 2007, I created the “Humans vs. Zombies Documentary” which followed the fourth-ever game, played at Goucher College. The documentary spread virally, and was featured on Comcast OnDemand.