You’d think there’d be more video games that are explicitly about clearing away corpses, given how many corpses players produce. Getting rid of bodies is a routine problem for developers, with a variety of crafty or cursory solutions. Horror projects such as Resident Evil sometimes resort to accelerated decomposition, with felled zombies dissolving to maggots in seconds, but in most shooters, it’s a question of despawning the victims when you look away. Stealth sims mandate a certain level of respectfulness, albeit by accident: stray cadavers must be carefully interred in random dumpsters or closets before they trigger an alarm.
As with a lot of things in games, there are technological concerns here that form a curious warping of practicalities in the world beyond the vidbox. Dead bodies in games absorb computing resources that are needed for the next enemies along. Bodies of actual flesh and bone are a weight, if not a burden upon the dead person’s loved ones. The memory has to be freed up, so that it can be used for something else.
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