New Orleans Overtaken By Zombies

Using a real city as the setting for a video game can be kinda touchy -- especially if it's a less-than-complimentary reimagining of the city as a zombie wasteland. Post-Katrina New Orleans gets the dystopian video game treatment.

1 minute read

December 8, 2009, 9:00 AM PST

By Nate Berg


The hurricane-battered city is the setting of zombie shooting game Left 4 Dead 2.

"The potential backlash didn't scare off developer Valve Software from choosing the deep South, including a beleaguered New Orleans, as the site for the zombie shooter game Left 4 Dead 2. The previous title in the franchise made no mention of a particular place, but Erik Johnson, producer for the game, says that choosing a specific location was crucial to understanding who the four survivors of a zombie outbreak actually are. 'We wanted there to be progression through a real place,' he says.

Although a prominent setting in other creative mediums, the South is frequently neglected as a location for games."

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