Monday. 8 a.m. It’s just an average wake-up-and-begrudgingly-go-to-class day at Pepperdine. Students are wandering around aimlessly with the heavy burden of getting an education on their backs.
With the joyous feel of Friday, the ecstatic environment of Saturday and the inescapable death grip of Sunday all gone, it’s time to get to work. But there is something different in the air. For the first four days of the week there was a war. A war that pitted mortals against the undead — a war of humans versus zombies.
The popular Humans vs. Zombies game arrived at Pepperdine on Monday, Feb. 17 at 8 a.m. The campus-wide moderated tag game involved about 50 sophomores from Monday to today. It was originally intended to end Wednesday at midnight, but was extended for more day due to popular demand according to the HvZ Pepperdine website.
After signing up for HvZ and joining the game, students were provided with a bandana, an index card with an ID number and a hacky sack used to stun zombies. In order to be identifiable, Humans had to wear the bandanas around their arms while Zombies had to do so around their heads.
Communication professor Caitlin Lawrence, who was one of the program coordinators, said the idea came about thanks to Associate Dean of Students Brian Dawson. She said that after talking to sophomore Resident Advisors and Student Life Advisors, Dawson and the program coordinators decided to “go for it” a couple of months ago.
“The whole reason we wanted to do this game is because it’s really great at building community,” Lawrence said. “It’s a great way of helping students get to know people who are in their classroom but they’ve never had a conversation with.”
More than 30,000 students have played HvZ in the past five years with the game spanning over five continents, according to the HvZ website.
“We [HRL] worked with Risk Management and [the Department of Public Safety] to make sure we had approval to play this type of game on campus,” Lawrence said. The next step was to decide what the Humans would use as weapons in the war against the Zombies.
After discarding marshmallow shooters because of the possible effect on the local flora and fauna, as well as using flour in socks because of the possibility of it being used as a real weapon, the hacky sack was chosen as the “weapon” that Humans would use in their defense against the Zombies.
Lawrence described the game as “assassins meets freeze tag meets capture the flag.” Everybody starts out as a Human except for one person, dubbed the “Original Zombie.” The Original Zombie is invisible, meaning he/she doesn’t have to wear a bandana to display his/her side. It is the Original Zombie’s job to start converting Humans, thus initiating the zombie apocalypse. In order to convert Humans, Zombies must firmly touch any part of a human.
Zombies need to tag a Human every 12 hours in order to “feed” and stay alive. Once tagged, Humans surrender their index card to Zombies, who need to report their kill online within three hours. One hour after being tagged, they become a member of the Zombie team. If Zombies are struck by hacky sacks, they can’t interact with the game for 15 minutes, a time during which they will place the bandana around their neck.
“It’s fun and interesting to have all the sophomores who are here playing something together,” sophomore Jamal Lopez said. “I wish there was more people, but it’s pretty fun. The most fun part is that you don’t have to go out of your way to play it. It’s happening all the time.”
Another addition to the game is Missions, which are certain tasks that — if completed — reward the Humans who do them with either extra ammunition or anti-Zombie vaccines. The first Mission was for Humans to access a checkpoint while avoiding Zombies waiting outside the HAWC.
“There are a few other people playing the game who I didn’t know before,” sophomore Lexy Prodromos said. “It’s been fun playing with them and getting to know them. It’s a good experience to bond with the sophomore class.”
There are several safe zones around campus, all of which are academic and recreational buildings such as the HAWC and the Caf as well as a 10-foot buffer zone around any doors in which Humans receive Sanctuary. The surviving Humans at the end of the four-day period win. It is the Zombies’ objective to turn all Humans.
“I really enjoy the game set up in an engaging and fun way that doesn’t take too much away from doing homework,” sophomore Elaina Duran said.
Duran, who was the first student to be infected by the Original Zombie, said there should have been a better advertising method. “Having it midterms week wasn’t the best idea. I feel like it wasn’t properly advertised. If there had been more info it would’ve been a better success than it is now,” she said.
Sophomore Kevin Whiting said he shares a similar view. “I think maybe planning when it happens a little more carefully so that it’s not happening when most people have midterms would help. It would just make it so that more people are out and about encountering each other more often,” he said.
While 46 people are signed up on the website, Lawrence said there are even more people actually playing the game. “The game so far has been a little slow in getting started, and it’s partly just because students are still just figuring out how to play the game,” Lawrence said.
Prodromos said getting the word out in advance would be very beneficial. “I wish I had known about it earlier so I could’ve had a lot of other people play.”
Duran said even though it’s a great way to build community and meet many people, she doesn’t see it becoming a tradition if the planning remains the same. “If they kickstart it, then yes. Students were really excited about it and other priorities got in the way because it’s such a busy time of the year,” Duran said.
There isn’t a set date for the next HvZ game, but Lawrence said she hopes it will become a campus-wide event. “Typically we tend to stay in our same friend groups. It has the potential to help foster community in a unique way that doesn’t always happen in the day-to-day occurrences,” Lawrence said.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Follow Ricardo Avila Alvarez on Twitter: @RAvila27
