See that photo of the girl with the guitar? That’s my little sister. And by now, the zombies have probably devoured her poor little sister flesh.
The shot is from Resident Evil 6’s new Facebook integrated “Shared Nightmare” trailer, which uses photos from your Facebook friends list to put you behind the eyes of some man-handed, panting version of yourself. The trailer works like an app and, thus, requires access to some privileged account information like who’s on your close friends list– presumably to make the emotional moment of someone sending you a badly written text more powerful. Imagine how that tender candlelight shot would have played out if my sis was still using a production still of Hermione Granger for her profile picture. Not so cute.
In the nature of Facebook things, the trailer pauses for you to send a message advertising your complacency in the latest high-tech novelty marketing scheme to all your friends and family, thereby ensuring you drop a few percentage points in their respect for you. But! Zombie apocalypse!
Still, if these Facebook-integrated trailers are going to become A Thing, it’s a much more effective outing than that awkward Kevin Butler/”Hall of Play” bonanza we had around this time last year. And you don’t even need to be a gamer to appreciate a notification on your timeline about how you were just eaten by a horde of the mindless undead– you are on Facebook, after all. What else is there?