明天开始，僵尸，奔跑吧！粉丝们将能够为健身应用程序下载一个由八部分组成的新故事。这简直就是一个奇迹。 2012年，《僵尸快跑！》 was one of the first fitness apps to find a dedicated community. A big part of that success was that it combined a couch-to-5K plan with immersive audio storytelling set in a zombie apocalypse. Six to Start — the company behind the game — was eventually sold to OliveX, a dubious purveyor of crypto and NFT products.然后，它陷入了与许多独立应用程序和游戏被收购后所遇到的同样的陷阱。 A little over a year ago, all but two Six to Start staffers had been laid off, and new episodes of the game were indefinitely put on hiatus. This is usually the point in the story where devastated fans try to mount a campaign to save the thing that brought them together — often with little hope or success. You only have to look at Supernatural, a popular virtual reality game that suffered this exact fate a few short months ago after Meta laid off the bulk of the game’s staff. But in the case of Zombies, Run!, fans got lucky. Cocreator and author Naomi Alderman bought back the app in November, and after roughly six months, Zombies, Run! is kicking off a new era aptly titled “Back from the dead.” “That was the feeling I came to. I was just like, ‘I don’t want to let my thing die, and also I really care about my players,’” Alderman tells The Verge, noting that coming from a writing background, it’s been a steep learning curve to run a company. The new episodes will feature much of the same beloved characters and voice actors, says Alderman. She also notes that the game is going back to its roots. I got a sneak peek at the first episode, and without giving away any spoilers, that characterization rings true. “We wanted to write something that is easily accessible for new people who haven’t ever played the game before, but also is still within the world for people who have played all the way through, because we have a lot of fans out there,” says Alderman. Comebacks like this are exceedingly rare — and in many ways, Zombies, Run!很可能仍然是该规则的例外。 Alderman says she partly benefited thanks to a clause in her original contract that allowed her the right to buy back the game if it were ever put up for sale. She also had never been bought out by the game’s new owners.奥尔德曼说，为了做到这一点，她从小说家的工作和银行贷款中筹集了资金。 现在，阿尔德曼说僵尸们，快跑！团队必然是精简的。我们的目标不是爆炸、赚大钱，然后通过出售给另一家公司来套现。相反，阿尔德曼强调，目标是创建一家可持续发展的企业，长期为忠诚的社区服务。 But even with the narrower focus, there are still plans to expand on the Zombies, Run!应用程序。首先，在收到粉丝反馈后，游戏很快就会引入智能手表对音频播放的支持。 “I think there are at least as many people out there who haven’t tried Zombies, Run! yet, so I feel like there’s good organic growth to be had in the player base,” she says. “我们面临着一场末日，我们需要成为社区的一部分并互相关心来度过难关。我觉得现在比以往任何时候都更需要这样的信息。”