Claremont Humans vs. Zombies organizers announced Monday that their fall semester game will be postponed for a minimum of three weeks due to the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas.
“The goal of HvZ is to be a fun and positive event, however, we acknowledge that the use of blasters in the game could be very distressing to some members of the Claremont community this week,” the game moderators wrote in an email to the registered players.
The moderators emphasized that it doesn’t want to trivialize the Las Vegas shooting, where a gunman opened fire from a hotel room balcony on a crowd attending a country music festival, killing 58 and injuring 489 others before taking his own life.
“Our top priority are members of the community, both players and non-players, who could find the sight of nerf blasters around campus distressing at this time,” the group wrote.
HvZ, as defined by its website, is a “five-day real-time simulation of a zombie apocalypse” where “zombies try to tag all humans, and humans try to survive by stunning zombies with projectiles.” Those projectiles can include socks or Nerf foam darts.
Organizers have met with Harvey Mudd College administrators and will hold a forum with students to determine the steps to follow for the celebration of the game, according to the email to administrators. They wrote to players offering to exchange rented blasters for the deposit and offering refunds for bandanas if players were not interested in participating in the postponed game.
HMC has offered to help cover the costs of any materials needed to celebrate the game at a later date, the moderators wrote to the students.
“Lots and lots of love, lots and lots of brains to come,” they wrote.