The Last of Us Haunted House and the Social Acceptability of Gaming
It’s My Birthday And I Get To Pick The Activity
When I heard I was going to be in LA when there was a Last of Us haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights, I immediately went online and bought a ticket for myself as a birthday present. Not even asking if anyone wanted to come along. I truly did not care if I ended up going alone. I had already decided what my plans were and it was to see a clicker try to jump in my face on a Sunday night.
Despite the fact we (I did not end up going alone) all understood the experience would be fundamentally different from the game, aside from Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson’s new voicelines, people still eagerly flocked to it. Fans were waiting in line for upwards of 4 hours for a 5 minute experience. But, there’s always the temptation to know what it’ll be like. Nobody actually wants to live in the fungi zombie apocalypse (at least if they’re sane), but we still want the experience of being closer to what we love. Ellie and Joel have literally transcended the PlayStation exclusive and become characters representative of our cultural connection to gaming as a whole. They are ambassadors of a world that the mainstream is only just beginning to breach.
Waiting 4 Hours for a 5 Minute ExperiencE
I had convinced a group of four friends to come along with me, my mom said she would’ve found it depressing if I went alone and I couldn’t entirely disagree with her. Since it was my birthday, I was the one stuck with the task of deciding how we were to spend our time, and I had already made the decision: we were going to The Last of Us house first. If you’ve spent any time in theme parks, you understand there are two options to handle the experience:
Avoid the bigger rides/events until later in the day, then come back once it’s cleared out a little. However, this comes at the cost of spending way more time than you may have been intending at the park.
Bite the bullet and wait in line for the thing you want first.
Obviously, Halloween Horror Nights is already later in the day and is only for a limited time. Not to mention that not once during the entire night did The Last of Us line ever decrease in wait time, but that’s not something any of us would realize until much later. Thus, I decided to go with option 2. We bite the bullet and wait for a couple hours… right?
Wrong.
If you are expecting a themed queue experience you would be deeply mistaken, as Universal instead had the line switchbacking on the concrete strip behind The Revenge of the Mummy like it was the DMV. Which gets deeply tedious after 30 minutes, let alone 4 hours. While we had already made the decision to tough it out, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that the reason this queue existed was not only because of the popularity of the game — something I saw on display all throughout the evening with lovingly acquired/made fan tributes — but because of Max.
The house obviously isn’t themed after the Max show, it’s themed after the game. There is no Pedro Pascal lookalike, nor do they try to make an adult woman in an Ellie costume do her best Bella Ramsey impression. However, the house would not exist without the show, as it created an entirely new audience for the game after executives realized that video games have… value as stories? (God, imagine a wild idea like that.) Though, it is an idea we must recognize within the context of events such as The Last of Us house existing. There is a new(ish) idea that there is validity to concepts video games have, now that they’re not just for play.
Putting aside critical nuance for a second, the house was genuinely incredible. The time passed one way or another and eventually, we got our five minutes with Ellie and Joel. The sets were gorgeous, the actors did a great job with lip-syncing the new material and keeping the crowds moving, and the zombies. They were not done with makeup, which makes sense due to time constraints and the fact no one should put minimum wage workers through the equivalent of CIA torture to work a haunted house, but instead with masks and suits. All of which were extremely impressive.
All in all, I’d consider the haunted house an overwhelming success and, putting aside the hellishly long wait, it is worth it. My group and I all agreed that we forgot about our time in line by the time we left the attraction. However, as a side note, I’d like to add that as a more seasoned horror fan, this wasn’t a particularly scary experience—it was far more novelty than horror—but that did not devalue the enjoyment I got out of it. So if you’re going as a haunted house frequent flyer, you’re not probably not going to be shaking in your boots.
Zombies Next to Nintendo Land
There’s a layer of irony that must be acknowledged that not 500 feet away from the exit of The Last of Us is the entrance to Super Nintendo World. While it wasn’t open, we tried to catch glimpses over the wall and gaped when we saw the uncanny landscape of the plastic Mushroom Kingdom over the trees. I don’t need to explain the cultural significance of Mario to the masses, as anyone who’s been alive for longer than 2 seconds can say “it’s-a me” in a pseudo-Italian accent, but I still find it to be a fascinating pivot point: the moment where video games went from cute kids’ hobby that must be let go of by adulthood to profitable IP.
Companies have always been willing to make a buck off fans without hesitation or understanding of the property. That’s how we ended up with the mythos of the “video game movie curse”. Everyone loves a sucker, and in the eyes of a corporate entity, kids and those who enjoy “kid things” are the ultimate ones.
However, we’ve found ourselves in the midst of an interesting trend where suddenly video game adaptations are being made with a degree of care. It's an interesting paradox, each time I’ve been hyping myself up for something to be terrible, I’m surprised to find it’s actually… good? Or at the very least, fun. Perhaps that’s just because I had already lowered my expectations, but even audiences and critics agree. I don’t even need to point out how The Last of Us show was a runaway success and the Mario movie, while certainly not a masterpiece, was a good time. What gives? What does it mean for companies outside the video game bubble to care about video games?
I searched high and low through the internet, searching for an article by a more professional media journalist that might have some answers, however, there are none. Thus, I am forced to come to my own conclusions about that, as well as the future.
“Video Games Are Going To Be As Popular As Superhero Franchises”
The heading of this section is actually a snippet from a quote by Geoff Keighley, CEO of The Game Awards and Guy Who People Are Normal About And Hold No Ill Will Towards. In the full quote from PBS, he states the following, “I think now we are really in this renaissance of video game adaptations. I think in the next three or four years, I think video games are going to be as popular as superhero franchises.”
The interviewer goes on to reply that that’s kind of an insane prediction, but is he really wrong? Video games have always been extremely profitable within their audience; just look at all the friends I’ve lost to Baldur’s Gate 3 (including my girlfriend, who has made it her mission to babygirlify Astarion), but until recently, they’ve been relatively insular. While you’d occasionally see video game inspired movies and experiences appear, they existed relatively in a vacuum or flopped so hard that we all chose to forget about them. However, that is no longer the case. Video game adaptations, now more than ever, are thriving and in high demand. Expectations have been raised, they’re not going down, and as Marvel fatigue continues to rage on, people are searching for something new to scratch the itch.
While companies certainly don’t respect video games and we have the strikes to show for it, they’re en vogue. That means they’re willing to hire people who do respect them to make money. The Last of Us haunted house is not going to be, and excuse the accidental pun, the last we see of this trend and with the overwhelming success of the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, I’d be shocked if there isn’t a FNAF house next year.
Not to be the guy who ruins everyone’s fun–though I do love to do it–but I fear the proliferation of this trend and how it will eventually (and probably already is) exploiting the artists who are involved in the process of making video games. As we’ve already seen well on display with recent Hollywood strikes, loopholes for corporations are numerous and abundant and they are more than happy to abuse aforementioned loopholes in order to get out of providing their artists further compensation for the work they helped originate. Though Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson may have been paid for new work on The Last of Us house, that does not mean that we will not see future moments where actors are not paid for their voices being used in new attractions that they did not consent to within their original contract. Or, in other potentially worrying cases, artists’ work being used outside of its original context without compensation.
And while some may say that that is the price you pay when you sign onto these big projects, I do not think that should be a prerequisite sacrifice to participate in an industry you’re passionate about. You should not be expecting that, at any moment, your work could show up in a new place with the serial numbers filed off to make some extra cash for [insert company of your choice here]. These experiences and films, while thrilling and showing that video games have a future in the mainstream of the entertainment industry, still must be reflected upon as extensions of the art as it was originally created and it must be recognized that real people worked hard to make that real.
That’s the real scare.
SCORE: 7/10
The Last of Us Haunted House is a novelty experience offering high production values and a solid fright- though it’s the implications of the future of gaming that’s more scary.
