College kids with nerf guns are hard to miss and so is a game of tag with headbands designating who is it. If you've seen people like this wandering about the campus purposefully or clashing suddenly in a flurry of foam darts and fingertips, then you've seen Humans vs. Zombies. It's a game like any other, designed to take the edge off for those who play it.
However, when the common student turns a weary eye to the mayhem in front of the tennis court, they only feel like sipping their five-hour energy and hunching back to an existence of term papers and Keystone. It's an irreconcilable, estranged relationship that neither party worries to resolve. It's almost like the quiet understanding of a taxi driver and a cyclist.
The only problem with such a position, peaceful as it is, happens to be that neither party can ever get a clear idea of the other. That said, we'll see what both sides feel during this 2011 fall semester game.
Despite rule changes and the power of moderators, HvZ players feel the game is not only a good time for those already playing but in general. Killian Le said the game was important to Longwood University and its students "because you get to be a kid …you get to shoot people with nerf guns, it's a competitive sport, its athletic and people get together …"
Gavin Teague's explanation was much simpler: "You run around campus and get an excuse to shoot zombies." Even with this outlook, some players acknowledge the marginal status of the game in the university's culture. Andrew Kippenhan said, "HvZ players are kind of stigmatized these days. I think it'll take a lot more support and some new blood …."
Sitting at a table nearby in the Dining Hall were non-players Andrew Kant, James Graham and Austin Cheatham. Cheatham said, "Its entertaining to watch, I mean it gets a little extreme, like, when you've got people running around in [camouflage] and stuff … there's a whole bunch of people who are really low key about it. I feel like the bandanas on the forehead is a little weird … and you know vests covered in darts, six guns and a bazooka and a belt full of socks."
Kant half-jokingly said that paintball guns could legitimize the game by making it a bit more serious. However, Graham made the point that "you're supposed to shoot people and [nerf guns are] the only thing they're going to let you carry that fires a projectile." While he still thought that parts of the game were overblown, Graham said, "I think they're the purest organization on campus." He went on to say that HvZ was the least likely organization to have drug or alcohol charges and that its purity had to do with them being like children running around and harmlessly shooting each other. On that note, Cheatham stated, "At the end of the day, if these kids are having fun, then let them have fun."
The general idea is that HvZ, though hard to understand and a little ridiculous for non-players, doesn't have total opposition and will continue to be part of players' lives for a long time to come. As Andrew Kippenhan said, "Thanks to my roommate Killian, we're probably going to be playing this in wheel chairs in a Retirement home."
