The future of Resident Evil is (not) about market value.
In her essay ‘Zombies in Gamespace’, Tanya Krzywinska offers that the “popularity of zombies in video games may in part be informed by the way that they articulate, in a mediated fantasy context, contemporary cultural fears about the loss of autonomy or the capacity of science to create apocalyptic devastation” (2008: 153). This is a point that is often repeated when the cultural infiltration and depiction of the zombie is being considered within academic discourse. The zombie of fiction is, after all, both “living and dead”, leading Sarah Juliet Lauro to muse whether “the zombie’s refusal to be just one thing may have translated into its protean nature” (2017: ix). Were one to consider the Resident Evil video game series (1996 –), multiple sociological critiques engage with these zombie texts, to create a field where, as Nadine Farghaly concludes, “there are many more venues that need to be addressed when discussing such a lively, ongoing, and diverse universe as Resident Evil” (2014: 5). Krzywinska, however, goes on to add a crucial caveat to her initial statement in that “the market value of zombies as a subgenre of horror, technological developments, and the limitations of animation in games have a lot to do with the ubiquity of zombies in video games” (2008: 153). This chapter will follow Krzywinska’s same prompt with the understanding that the Resident Evil series can provide sophisticated analyses regarding parallel social phenomena but that these readings emerge from the popularity and history of a franchise that has always been created with other, more corporate, concerns.
Krzywinska’s analysis of the drive within the digital zombie corpus gains more ground when one considers how Japanese developer and publisher Capcom have publicly responded to the revitalised success of their Resident Evil franchise, with the sustained ambiguous claim to remain “committed to satisfying the expectations of all stakeholders” (Capcom 2020). When Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017) was announced in 2016, Capcom USA celebrated in their marketing blog that the game “Ushers in a New Era of Fear” as “Capcom has heard fans’ masochistic cries for a Resident Evil game far more terrifying than anything that has come before it” (Capcom USA 2016a). As key features of a conscious tonal shift away from Resident Evil 6 (2012), the blog points towards “an immersive first-person view”, which was a first for the core-numbered titles (although multiple spin-offs had already used the perspective), When asked about the shift into a first-person perspective, producer Masachika Kawata explained that “if we want people to experience horror and experience it in the most direct, visceral way possible, then literally putting yourself in the position of seeing what the character sees is the best way to do that” (Capcom USA 2016b). Here, Capcom’s horror gameplay ambitions were enabled by “a photorealistic graphical style” (Capcom USA 2016a), facilitated by the new RE Engine (Reach for the Moon Engine), built by Capcom for this new entry in the series.
Praised within one of their press releases in 2020, Capcom note that the Resident Evil franchise has “become the first Capcom series to surpass the 100-million-units-sold milestone” (Capcom 2020). According to Capcom, the record-breaking sales were due to them “maintaining a consistent release schedule for new titles” such as Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, and using “cutting-edge technology to reimagine beloved hits, such as with Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3”. Capcom have ported dozens of their titles to different consoles over the years, with Resident Evil (2002) being a ‘remake’ of the first game in the Resident Evil series. Despite being a critical success, director Shinji Mikami has stated that “Because of the reaction to the Resident Evil remake, I decided to work more action into Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 4 would have been a more scary, horror-focused game if the remake had sold well” (Otero 2013). Where the poor sales of Resident Evil (2002) became a negative influence on the thematic direction of the main series, the later remakes, Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020), were concurrently created to complement the main series, serving as a zombie anchor-point to allow the main series to take even more risks with its new horror direction.
In 2021, Capcom announced that their new title, Resident Evil Village, sold “5 million units at a quicker pace than its preceding entry in the series” (Capcom 2021), making it the fastest selling Resident Evil game. This was partly due to their continued use of the RE Engine, but also through a “Single Content Multiple Usage strategy, Capcom is actively leveraging the series in a variety of mediums, befitting the 25th anniversary of the Resident Evil brand”. Notably, in 2022 Capcom re-established Capcom Pictures, Inc. in the U.S, with the remit of “Planning and production management of motion pictures” (Capcom 2022a). Covering a series of time periods and parallel time-lines, this leverage includes the film Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), which is a loose adaptation of plot strands from the first three games; and two television series for Netflix: the CGI Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (2021), which fits within the canon events of the later core games, and the live-action Resident Evil (2022), which separately imagines a post-apocalyptic future.
In 2023, Capcom “reported record sales. It sold 41.7m games during the financial year ending 31st March 2023, the highest in the company’s long history” (Yin-Poole 2023). A significant factor in this achievement is attributed by Capcom to the success of the Resident Evil 4 (2005) remake, and an expansion for the fantasy action role-playing game Monster Hunter: Rise (2021), which like all of Capcom’s contemporary tent-pole projects, such as Devil May Cry 5 (2019) and Street Fighter 6 (2023), also utilises the RE Engine.
Since 2016 and through to their financial peak in 2023, Capcom’s press releases and reports consistently state that the increasing value of their franchise comes from an ability for them to sell their core titles in conjunction with the remakes of their earlier titles and ancillary media spin-offs, while they leverage their new game engine to make technologically sophisticated titles. This chapter will explore this belief in the “market value” of Resident Evil video games in more detail, to consider two interrelated focal points derived from Krzywinska’s observations: that the future of Resident Evil is about zombies, although traditional definitions of zombies may no longer apply to every new title; and that the future of Resident Evil is about the limits and advancement of technology, although it is arguably the novel strategies in which it is used that is of more significance.
The future of Resident Evil is (not) about zombies.
Stephen J. Webley offers that “The zombie has become a video game character par excellence, starring in dedicated franchises such as Resident Evil” (2020: 3). Yet, writing in 2011, shortly before the release of Resident Evil 6, Matthew J. Weise discusses how….
The full 7,500 word version of this chapter is published in Zombie Futures in Literature, Media and Culture, edited by Simon Bacon, published by Bloomsbury, 2024.
Carl Wilson 