Hello, its blogging time again and its Halloween again and for this blog entry, we're taking at the real ife insparation behind one of the greatest horror game fanchises of recent history. With over 20 million copies sold, and winning numourus awards, its no supprised it went from a uniuqe zombie survival game to a successful franchise. I'm of course talking about The Last Of Us.
Released in 2013, The Last Of Us proved to be more than just a Zombie Survival Adventure game. It's gameplay and story telling capture the hearts of both gamers and game developers, not only spawning numourus spinoffs but also influenceing a number of other games, movies and tv shows.
However, while the game is fictional, one crucial element of it is anything but. You see, unlike other zombie appocolypse stories where the infection spread is caused by a virus or chemical of some sort, The Last Of Us's infection is caused by fungus. Now belive it or not, there is a real fungus species that behaves very similar and was a key influence to the game.
The story actually begins with the doccumentary that Naughty Dogs developers leared of it from: BBC's Planet Earth. It all started in 1954 when the BBC was approached by a new hire producer to produce a series about an animal-collecting expedition for the London Zoo. His name was David Attenborough.
Attenborough had a long facination with natural history. Born in Isleworth, Middlesex in 1926, he spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and natural specimens. By the time he was a young adult, he won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge, in 1945 to study geology and zoology, and was a member of the undergraduate Sedgwick Club, eventually earning a degree in natural sciences. In 1947 he left to join the British Royal Navy for national service and spent the next 2 years stationed in North Wales and the Firth of Forth.
After leaving the navy, he took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company, but soon became disillusioned with the work and applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC in 1950. Although he was initally rejected, his curriculum vitae later caught the atention of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (or factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service.
At the time, Television was still a new invention in the UK, as they were very expensive and very few people owned or even saw television programing. Attenborough was no exception and had seen only one programme in his life.
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Still, Attenborough took Adam's offer eventually joining the BBC full time in 1952. There, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax.
But in 1953, Attenborough began work on natural history programming when he produced and presented a three-part series called Animal Patterns, which featured animals from London Zoo, with the naturalist Julian Huxley discussing their use of camouflage, aposematism and courtship displays. Through the programme, Attenborough met Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo's reptile house, and they decided to make a series about an animal-collecting expedition.
The BBC Aproved the series and was set to produce the programme with Lester as presenter. But when Lester fell ill, Attenborough became the presenter of the series instead. The result was Zoo Quest, first broadcast in 1954, and featuring Attenborough traveling with staff from the London Zoo to tropical countries to capture animals for the zoo's collection.
The series ended up being a massive success, captuing millions of viewers across Great Brittan, encouraging the BBC to producing more nature doccumentaries.
In 1957, the BBC established the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, with the station asking Attenborough to join it. but Attenborough declined as he didn't to move from London where he and his young family were settled. Instead, he formed his own department called the Travel and Exploration Unit, allowing him to continue to front Zoo Quest and produce other documentaries, notably the Travellers' Tales and Adventure series.
By the early 1960s, Attenborough resigned from the permanent staff of the BBC to study for a postgraduate degree in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, interweaving his studies with further filming. However, he accepted an invitation to return to the BBC as controller of new BBC Two before he could finish the degree, becoming Controller of BBC Two in 1965.
Over the next 8 years, Attenborough became a major force for BBC2, establishing program variaty, encouraging the switch to color broadcasts, and (regretably) authorising the imfamous BBC wipeouts to cut costs. In 1969, Attenborough was promoted to director of programmes, making him responsible for the output of both BBC channels. His tasks included agreeing budgets, attending board meetings and firing staff, were now far removed from the business of filming programmes. Attenborough disliked the job, and eventually resigned again in 1973.
It wasn't until 1979, that Attenborough and the BBC's Nature Doccumentaries were really launched into mainstream success with the series Life On Earth. Also becoming highly acclaimed as a milestone in the history of British wildlife television. it established Attenborough as not only the foremost television naturalist, but also an icon in British culture.
And to think that it all started when one ant got infected with a species of fungus in a doccumentary. Thats all I have more my blog entry today, Happy Halloween, and thanks for reading, see you next time!
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