Abstract
This chapter plays through the level “Quarantine Zone.” It introduces the characters Tess, Marlene, and Ellie; theorizes Joel’s hostility toward the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) in relation to the neoliberal state and the concept of militarized masculinity; describes gameplay mechanics and how they combine with fiction to win the player’s consent; and interprets the meanings of the Cordyceps virus.
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Notes
- 1.
Wells, Meyer, and Monacelli, Art of The Last of Us, 44.
- 2.
Druckmann and Straley, “Definitive Interview (Part One).”
- 3.
Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton, introduction to Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, eds. Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton (New York: Verso, 2016), 4.
- 4.
Kline, Dyer-Witheford, and de Peuter, Digital Play, 194; Gerald Voorhees, “Daddy Issues: Constructions of Fatherhood in The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology 9 (2016), https://adanewmedia.org/2016/05/issue9-voorhees/.
- 5.
Louis-Martin Guay, “Objectives,” in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies, eds. Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2014), 190–196.
- 6.
Newman, Videogames, 74–75.
- 7.
Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 4.
- 8.
Newman, Videogames, 137.
- 9.
Rune Klevjer, “Enter the Avatar: The Phenomenology of Prosthetic Telepresence in Computer Games,” in The Philosophy of Computer Games, eds. John Richard Sageng, Hallvard Fossheim, and Tarjei Mandt Larsen (New York: Springer, 2012), 17–38.
- 10.
Druckmann and Straley, “Definitive Interview (Part Two).”
- 11.
Murray, “The Last of Us: Masculinity,” 104. It should be noted that resource scarcity in The Last of Us changes according to the difficulty setting.
- 12.
NakeyJakey, “Naughty Dog’s Game Design is Outdated,” YouTube, October 1, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCYMH-lp4oM. I think Christensen’s criticism captures the experience of many players (though obviously not all). Several students expressed similar criticisms when I taught a seminar on The Last of Us. The statements of agreement in the comments section of Christensen’s video (which currently has been viewed 4 million times) are another potential indication of at least a subset of gamer opinion.
- 13.
Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, April 28, 1885, in The Collected Letters of William Morris, vol. 2, part B: 1885–1888, ed. Norman Kelvin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 426.
- 14.
Game Informer, “The Inspirations for The Last of Us,” YouTube, April 5, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZkCBHmeeMg.
- 15.
Anthony Newman, “Unsynced: The Last of Us Melee System,” YouTube, October 29, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox2H3kUQByo.
- 16.
Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia (New York: Broadview Press, 2005), chap. 4. Dante Ravioli, “How Many Enemies Can You Avoid Killing in The Last of Us?”, YouTube, October 7, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCDQPry3lmI. It is debatable whether Dante is a trifler or a cheater. He insists that glitches are part of the game and distinguishes them from cheats and mods.
- 17.
Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005), 5.
- 18.
Druckmann and Straley, “Definitive Interview (Part Two),” my emphasis.
- 19.
Sarah Stang, “‘This Action Will Have Consequences’: Interactivity and Player Agency,” Game Studies 19, no. 1 (2019), http://gamestudies.org/1901/articles/stang.
- 20.
Wells, Meyer, and Monacelli, The Art of the Last of Us, 19.
- 21.
Hanuman Welch, “The 10 Worst Video Game Escort Missions Ever,” Complex, May 8, 2013, https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-video-game-escort-missions-ever/.
- 22.
Cecilia Åse, “The Gendered Myth of Protection,” in The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Security, eds. Caron E. Gentry, Laura J. Shepherd, and Laura Sjoberg (New York: Routledge, 2019), 274.
- 23.
Neil Druckmann, “The Last of Us: New Trailer, New Ellie,” interview by Greg Miller, IGN, May 16, 2012, https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/15/the-last-of-us-new-trailer-new-ellie. The transgender actor Elliot Page accused Naughty Dog of stealing his likeness for the original design of Ellie. The allegation may have been another reason for changing Ellie’s appearance.
- 24.
Johnny Minkley, “Naughty Dog Wants to ‘Change the F***ing Industry’ with The Last of Us,” Eurogamer, December 13, 2011, https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-13-naughty-dog-wants-to-change-the-f-ing-industry-with-the-last-of-us.
- 25.
Wells, Meyer, and Monacelli, The Art of the Last of Us, 47.
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Ramirez, J.J. (2022). Quarantine Zone: American Dystopia. In: Rules of the Father in The Last of Us. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89604-1_3
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