You would be forgiven for driving past the old ‘Hard Yakka’ building, hidden in a quiet residential pocket of Broadmeadows, and thinking nothing of it.
But dare to go inside and you’ll be introduced to a world of real-life zombies who seek to annihilate anyone who gets in their way. And it’s your job to destroy them.
Residing in the building is the genius creation of Patient 0: a real-life, multiplayer, first-person shooter, role-playing game. The warehouse rooms are ‘gored up’ with blood-spattered walls and prosthetic bodies, waiting for eager ‘shooters’ to have some fun.
The concept was dreamed up over after-work beers and pizzas by three friends last March.
By October 31 their dream had become a reality and so had their company, IRL Shooter (In Real Life).
One of the creators, David Leadbetter, says the game of ‘glorified laser tag’ has people from across Melbourne, Australia and even overseas, intrigued.
It’s a simple concept.
You’re in a team of six shooters and have a mission to complete in just over an hour.
The obstacle is the zombies who will get in the way as players progress through three massive warehouse-style rooms.
The shooters need to do just that: shoot the zombies with their laser guns to eradicate them.
More than 100 professional actors have been hired in these flesh-eating zombie roles, to scare, obstruct and thrill whoever comes into contact with them.
“The players take a very definite path and then there’s all these hidden doors for our zombie cast to move through,” Leadbetter says.
“A lot of the actors are physically trained and theatre-trained or they are circus performers.
“One of them does this incredible ‘crab walk’, very exorcist-like, so that’s really creepy. They’re very physical. They absolutely destroy their costumes.”
While it sounds scary and confronting, the whole operation is extremely safe.
The entire warehouse is covered with CCTV cameras, so staff can watch the moves of all players, ensuring safe and sensible conduct throughout the course of the game.
“We can follow the teams as they progress through the course, so we can see what they’re doing. That’s for their safety and security and also for our cast, ” Leadbetter says. “Because of the cameras we can play with them a little bit. If a team is going too fast we’ll probably throw more zombies at them to slow them down, or if they’re too slow we’ll make it easier for them to go through.”
With zombies in costume and painted in dramatic make-up, there’s bound to be a few scares along the way. Leadbetter says some players even ask to be taken out of the game because the scare factor is too high.
“When it’s filled with smoke and the cast are hiding behind the curtains or the rubber doors, the players come in and then somebody will burst out behind them. We get some good scares.
“The first game we play with ‘babies’ is ‘peek-a-boo’. They get that shock and then they laugh.
“It’s natural and it’s inherent for us as humans to have controlled scares, because we scream and then we laugh. Really that’s what we’re providing, a grown-up version of that.”
Leadbetter says players vary in age and sex and are not just the stereotypical ‘nerd’.
But in Ballan, Daniel Cumming, the owner of Paintball Games, admits 80 per cent of his customers are nerds.
