A Photojournalist Documents The Life And Death Inside A Zombie Apocalypse – The Virtual Kind
When one thinks of photojournalists one thinks of war torn countries or natural disasters so the last thing one might think of is bringing us the world of a brutally realistic zombie apocalypse from inside the game; but then we aren’t Joss Widdowson.
Photojournalism isn’t something new to the former art student as Joss earned his stripes photographing itinerant dancers in Ghana however his newest project is something totally different as he begins to document the endless war going on inside DayZ, a very brutal zombie game that is built on top of ArmA II which is a very popular combat simulator.
Where some of us might see a mindless game meant to pass the time with Joss saw a world worth using his talents as a photojournalist to bring us the story of life and death zombie apocalypse style.
He filed his first report this morning, after a skirmish at a trading post the weekend before. “It was a night’s work,” he told me, “but a really good story emerged from it.”
A group called Freeside Trading Company had staked out a camp where players could trade items safely, with remote snipers keeping the peace. A group of bandits appeared out of nowhere, driving the traders and their customers into a small tower, where they were picked off one by one. The climax came after the last traders had been wiped out. The attackers swarmed into the tower and a third group arrived to blow it up, killing the remaining attackers and wiping the slate clean.
via Buzzfeed
Even though Joss was killed halfway through as he took part in a failed reconnaissance mission he still managed to put together a pretty amazing account along with the type of photographs you would expect from a real war zone.
Needless to say this type of project has hit all the right nerd and geek points and has gotten massive approval from both DayZ fan sites and Reddit.
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About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
