The City of the Future is about to become history in our Halloween 2020 Virtual Race, Die Rise!

A tower block under siege. A hostile police force on the streets. A race against time to save the world. Welcome to New Oban, Runner 5 – and watch your step. If you fall, it’s a long way down…

To get your briefing from Janine and follow the path to New Oban, open Die Rise in Zombies, Run!

Training Missions start from 7th October, and the Race from 22nd October.

How to Enter

It’s simple: become a Zombies, Run! VIP member! You’ll get access to all ten existing Virtual Races plus three Virtual Races launching in the 12 months! VIP membership is only $89.99 USD/year and includes everything in Abel Runner’s Club, plus amazing benefits including a 20% discount in our official shop.

To join or upgrade to VIP, just tap Die Rise > Enter with VIP! 

Die Rise continues the epic story that began in our Train to Oban Virtual Race, available to all VIP members!

Exclusive Merch

Join the New Oban Resistance with our brand-new Die Rise merch collection, including shortsleeve and longsleeve tech shirts, tech tank tops, cotton tees, hoodies, movie-style posters, tote bags, and our all-new headband!

Pride of place goes to our special Souvenir Pack with:

• A gorgeous Finisher’s Medal
• Finisher’s Certificate
• Briefing card
• Race bib
• All-new Runner 5 headband!

What better way to commemorate your trip to the City of the Future?

VIP Keeps Getting Better

Spotted the sting at the end of our Die Rise Trailer? That’s right – your favourite Radio Abel hosts will be returning in our new Early 2021 Virtual Race, Jack and Eugene’s World Tour!

We can’t wait to share more with you, but here’s one detail you’ll like: Jack and Eugene’s World Tour is in addition to our usual Spring and Halloween Virtual Races, which means this will be the first time we have three virtual races in a single year. So if you become a VIP member to play Die Rise, you’ll get our Early 2021 and Spring 2021 races as well!

But there’s more: all VIP members can get a 20% discount on everything in our official shop, including Virtual Race gear! Visit your ZombieLink account to get your exclusive discount code.

Available now in Zombies, Run!, Between the Lines is a chilling horror story written by Tom Crowley. This is the first project to be released from our New Adventures Commissioning process, and we’re extremely excited to unleash it upon you all. You’ll never look at an audiobook the same way again…

Once you’ve played Between the Lines and had a little time to recover, check out this conversation between Tom and Six to Start head of production Matt Wieteska to hear a little bit more about the inspiration for Between the Lines, Tom’s writing background, and why he hates the word “intimate”. Be warned – this interview contains full spoilers for Between the Lines.

Cast

Amy Rockson: Narrator

Amy is an RSC alumnus with vast experience in classical and modern theatre, film and television (Spotlight).

She is the voice of Zoe Crick in our ground-breaking Zombies, Run! game.

Theatre includes: Montjoy in Henry V (Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory/Theatre Royal Bath); Duchess/Scholar in DOCTOR FAUSTUS (RSC/Swan Theatre/Barbican London); Charmian in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (Shakespeare Live! from the RSC/ BBC live broadcast).

Film and Television includes: HOLBY CITY (BBC); DOCTORS (BBC); LONDON VOODOO (Zen Films); PANCHRESTON (Hubris Productions); GOING NOWHERE (Firewater Productions)

Robert Dukes: Invader

Robert Dukes is an award winning actor whose most recent work saw him playing Detective Ron Adkin in the greatly anticipated feature Lair, alongside Corey Johnson.  (Spotlight)

Known for his work on indie hits, The Code, A Friend In Need and the upcoming No Way Back, Robert has also voiced many television campaigns and provides numerous voices for the video game app, Zombies, Run! 

Aislinn De’Ath: Cohabitant

Aislinn De’Ath is a multi award winning, Drama Centre trained actress. (Spotlight)

Known for her leading roles in hotly anticipated features LAIR & Cornered, video games (The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, The Shapeshifting Detective, Dark Night’s with Poe & Munro, Zombies, Run! ), various short films (including indie hit A Friend In Need and fan favourite Growing Shadows as well as a multitude of other award winning shorts) and roles on Silent Witness & various television movies.

Last year, we decided to add new types of story to Zombies, Run!, and to bring new creators into our fold. Today, we’re going to talk about how we tried to build an inclusive process, what we’re proud of, and what we want to improve for next time.

What if there weren’t any zombies?

It’s right there in the title: “Zombies, Run!”: we make a smartphone fitness game where you run away from zombies. Yes, you run away from zombies in a rich, characterful, masterfully-plotted adventure by award-winning global megastar author Naomi Alderman – but you’re always running from zombies. But then, in 2019, we asked ourselves: what if you weren’t?

This wasn’t the first time we’d explored new kinds of running stories. On our Racelink platform, we’d created virtual races for charities – everything from thrilling spy adventures and a heart-pounding escape from an erupting volcano (written by a working geologist!) to non-fiction journeys across thesolar system. These new stories had shown us that our audio storytelling engine was really flexible and could support many different narrative styles.

We were also driven by the fact that Zombies, Run! was entering its eighth(!) season. Unlike TV shows, where you can binge dozens of episodes a week to catch up to the rest of the audience, our players would need to run for multiple years before catching up to our latest stories! So we wanted to make sure we were making great stories that everyone could enjoy, while also continuing the epic adventures of Runner 5 that had helped so many of our players meet their fitness goals over the years.

These impulses combined to inspire a big change! Starting with Season 8, we cut our usual 40 episode season of Zombies, Run! down to 30. That gave us the room for two brand new five-episode “alternate universe” stories featuring twists on the beloved central characters. These ten episodes could be played by anyone, no matter where they were in the main story. The world of Zombies, Run! was expanding.

From a doomed Venusian Colony to a horde of zombies threatening the Roman Legion at Hadrian’s Wall, these new settings were an immediate hit with our players. We were keen to meet the demand for new stories – perhaps with stories that didn’t feature zombies at all!

So, in October 2019, we introduced the New Adventures, stories set completely outside the Zombies, Run! universe that we’d commission through an open call.

Aims and Process

We set ourselves three key aims for our commissioning process:

• Find a group of talented writers with a diverse set of ideas and backgrounds.
• Give fair compensation for every level of the process, and not to ask for an unreasonable amount of labour from anyone.
• Create stories that our audience will love, and which are not harmful to them.

All three aims come from a single core drive: to use the privilege of our platform responsibly. Here’s how we tried to fulfil that:

Whose Voices Are We Amplifying?

When we set out to introduce New Adventures to Zombies, Run!, we had a great opportunity – not only to expand our variety of stories but to also increase the diversity of writers we had telling those stories. If we were going to commission new scripts, we wanted to amplify voices that aren’t ordinarily be heard so easily.

It’s all too easy to let unaddressed bias creep into decision-making and to reinforce existing power structures. So, from our first internal discussions about commissioning, we worked intentionally to build a process that would minimise our own internal bias, and to combat existing power imbalances.

This all centred around a single key question: “Whose voices are we amplifying?” We would come back to it regularly: Whose voices are we amplifying when we advertise our open call in certain spaces? Whose voices are we amplifying when we set certain requirements for pitches? Whose voices are we amplifying when we talk about pitches in a particular manner?

This wasn’t easy and it led to our meetings becoming much longer than they might have been otherwise, but it forced us to be very aware of the unintentional effects of our decisions, and of the places where structural bias is created. Committing to this from the beginning strengthened our habit of having uncomfortable conversations, of looking inward, and of attempting to mitigate our own biases through our process.

No Unpaid Work

For our open call, we asked people to submit only as much as we absolutely needed: a maximum of three 50-word ideas, and a single page dialogue sample. We asked writers to avoid, if possible, creating a dialogue sample specifically for this submission. This was all to reduce the amount of work writers would be doing before we paid them for an outline, or reject them from this commissioning round.

As writers made into the next stages of the commissioning process, we committed to paying them promptly as each stage of work was completed. It’s the fair thing to do, and we didn’t want to make it difficult for writers with greater financial pressures to take part in the process.

This also meant we could commission more liberally at the beginning of the process. By dividing payment up explicitly by stages of work completed, we avoided putting our writers in the position of having to assume the risk for their pitches not proceeding onto the next round; we always paid for work done. This also meant we weren’t put in the position of being overly committed to a piece that wasn’t working for us.

The end result? We had a wide variety of ideas and writers at the outline stage, and therefore a better variety of completed scripts.

Constant Process Review

At the end of each meeting, we reviewed our practise and questioned our performance – not only from a business and logistics perspective, but also in terms of how our workflow might be affecting the writers or how we might be introducing bias. We made explicit space for our team to give feedback on this publicly and privately, and made any changes quickly.

One key example of this came as we reviewed the outlines from the first phase of the commissioning process. As there were too many outlines to discuss in a single meeting, we split our discussion into several calls. For the first call, the person leading the discussion introduced each outline in turn, gave their opinion on it, and then invited comment from the rest of the team.

This was quick and easy to understand , but in our discussion at the end of the meeting, we realised that this was unintentionally promoting the opinions of the discussion leader over those of the rest of the team. For the remainder of the outline discussions, we had a different team member introduce each outline in order to make sure everyone’s voices were heard equally.

An Inclusive Selection Process

One of the most difficult parts of the process was deciding how we’d choose which writers to take forward to the next round, keeping in mind we wanted to amplify voices from under-represented communities. Our first instinct was to use a “blind” process that anonymised submissions and making decisions based solely on what we could read on the page.

However, we quickly realised that this would put us at risk of commissioning potentially harmful work, by unintentionally asking writers to tell stories which they lacked the lived experience or understanding required to tell sensitively. A blind process would also risk us privileging those with advantages that might make them better at presenting their work – those who have been able to attend courses on screenwriting format, for example – over those who might produce better scripts but have less industry experience.

So, our final approach combined an uninformed assessment with a informed selection, which took place over a couple of phases:

1. Submission; Writers sent us one page of dialogue, up to three short (< 50 word) pitches, and a cover letter. We invited our writers to self-identify to us however they felt comfortable. We were clear that we wanted to especially encourage people from under-represented communities to apply, but also acknowledged that not everyone feels safe identifying themselves as such.
2. The “dialogue filter”; one of our team processed each new submission by reading the included dialogue sample without reading the writer’s name, cover letter, or pitches. We rejected any submissions that didn’t demonstrate sufficient aptitude for dramatic dialogue, giving us confidence that anyone we brought forward from this stage would at least be able to create a compelling script.
3. Pitch Ratings; each member of our team rated the writer’s pitches, giving an overall score out of 10. This was done without reading names, cover letters, or dialogue. We then rejected all submissions whose average rating was below 6, and automatically moved forward to our shortlist all submissions whose average rating was above 8. The remainder made up our longlist.
4. Pitch Selection; with our long-list of pitches, the full team then read each writer’s cover letter and dialogue, as well as re-reading their pitches. In a series of meetings, we discussed each submission in turn, taking all available information into account as we built our shortlist by “promoting” those submissions we felt most strongly about.
5. Pitch Shortlist; we then assessed our shortlist to ensure it was broadly representative and balanced, in terms of the writers’ gender, background, and other biographical information given to us, but also in terms of their level of experience and professional background. We also took great care to ensure a good balance of themes and genres within the slate.
   In every case where we felt our shortlist was unbalanced, we promoted extra submissions, rather than eliminating others. We worked by addition rather than subtraction. This often led to us bringing forward submissions that one or two members of our team were especially excited about, but had been narrowly left out of the original shortlist.
6. Holding / Commissioning; we commissioned the writers of shortl
   isted submissions to produce outlines. In a few cases, we paid writers a holding fee in exchange for them withholding the idea from further development for a period of time; this was mostly for ideas we felt fit better as part of a different slate or would benefit from us improving our production pipeline before beginning work.
7. Outline Selection; in deciding which outlines we wanted to commission into scripts, we again used the principles established in our pitch shortlisting phase. We tried to build a balanced slate (both in terms of genres and writers) and to ensure that balance by adding extra work to the slate, rather than removing work from it.

What worked?

After over a hundred submissions, months of discussions, and a heck of a lot of reading, we have now commissioned seven New Adventures that we are super excited to share in the coming months! We’re also very proud of some other outcomes of this process:

• We have a great, varied slate of ideas ranging from modern-day romance stories, through historical epics, to far-flung future conspiracies. The quality and variety of storytelling on offer to Zombies, Run! players is in great hands.
• Our seven writers are from diverse communities of gender, sexuality and ethnicity. We’re really excited to be bringing such a wide variety of perspectives and ideas into our team.
• This will be the first time the majority of our writers have written for games. We can’t wait to introduce the games world to such great talent!
• We gave helpful, actionable, and (hopefully!) kind rejections to writers who we didn’t bring forward from the outline stage.
• We feel the process was humane to both our staff and the writers who came through it. No-one at Six to Start faced an undue amount of work to make the commissioning process a success, and we hope the writers we’ve worked with agree we worked hard to remove as much anxiety and unnecessary work from the process as possible.

What Can We Do Better?

This was our first time running a commissioning process of this scale, and we had to learn almost everything on the fly. We hope we have, at least, avoided causing harm to anyone in the process, but we’re certain there are areas to improve on.

If you have thoughts on what we might be able to do better, or how we can meet the goals listed below, please do email hello@sixtostart.com with the subject New Adventures Improvements. Here are some things we know we need to improve, and what we’re currently planning to do about them:

• We want to see more submissions from people of colour and from a broader array of backgrounds. We will:
  • Be more proactive to advertise our open call in spaces for those communities from whom we want to see more submissions.
  • Be more transparent about our process and about the team carrying it out to ensure we’re accountable for what we’re doing, and that people can be confident they’re not entering a harmful process by submitting to us.
  • Reach out directly to writers whose work we like and request that they pitch us.
• We want to see more submissions from early career writers. We will:
  • Advertise our open call in more casual spaces online; social media communities for early career writers, fandom communities, etc.
  • Give more explicit and robust guidelines for submission; e.g. avoid assuming knowledge on how to format dialogue.
  • Create a separate submission track for developing new writers, with guaranteed spots that are reserved for early-career writers. This track will come with more guidance and more hands-on advice throughout the process.
• We want to continue to make the process easier and more transparent, to remove unnecessary labour and anxiety, and to promote fairness. We will:
  • Update our standard contracts to include changes negotiated by agents and unions in the current round of commissioning. Not all of our writers – especially those who are early in their careers – have access to legal advice, and we want to ensure they aren’t disadvantaged as a result.
  • Provide clearer guidelines, including examples of our best practices.
  • Provide templates to help with formatting.

New Adventures: Commissioning Again Soon

We’re really pleased with how this round of commissioning has gone, and we’re excited to share the results soon. We’re opening submissions again in the next few months as we continue to build our slate for 2021 and beyond. Follow @sixtostart on Twitter so you don’t miss out!

In the meantime, please do drop us a line with your thoughts on the process, especially to let us know where we can improve. We’re committed to ensuring we use the platform we’ve been granted as responsibly as possible, and that starts with being completely open to advice and criticism.

– Matt (@gamecat) and the New Adventures Team.

Hello Runner 5,

At a time like this, it might feel odd to be thinking about games. But while Zombies, Run! is a game, it’s here to keep you fit and healthy. It’s also good for your mental health to have a break from the world and spend time with characters you love.

So we’re doing whatever we can to keep you fit and strong.

Introducing The Home Front

Starting today we’re launching a ten-mission programme of Zombies, Run! home workouts. All ten will be completely free and fully unlocked.

These workouts are designed for beginners and intermediate exercisers, and they don’t require any special equipment. They’re also fun! The first is by Naomi Alderman, lead writer and co-creator of ZR, and it stars Sam Yao as your operator.

So whether you’ve just arrived at Abel Township or you’re a veteran runner, you can play and enjoy these non-spoiler side missions. Some will be tied into our book, Zombies, Run! Keeping Fit and Living Well in the Current Zombie Emergency – and we intend to release extensive excerpts from the book for free next month.

You can find The Home Front by tapping the Missions tab at the bottom of the home screen. We’re hoping to release these missions roughly every week, but since we’re writing and recording from our own homes as we speak, please be patient if we’re delayed!

How to Run Safely

While you shouldn’t be visiting gyms, in many places you can still take on missions for Abel Township.

“You can use your garden, if you have one. You can also leave the house to exercise – but stay at least 2 metres away from other people.”

NHS

The New York Times has great advice on walking, jogging and running outside. But don’t push yourself too hard! There’s no need to set any records right now. And please check with your local and national guidelines on exercising outside.

Season 9 is Delayed

We’ve decided to delay recording the first 15 missions of Season 9, due to the impact of coronavirus in the UK. This means we won’t be able to launch Season 9 in May as we’d originally planned.

We’re disappointed we can’t share one of the most exciting seasons of Zombies, Run!, but the health and safety of our team and actors – along with the need to practice social distancing for the good of everyone – is our highest priority. We’ve always tried to record all our audio in person, with as many actors in the same room as possible, so we can ensure the best quality and performances. These existing processes make it harder for us to adjust the production of our mainline Zombies, Run! missions to current circumstances.

Our hope is that we can record and release all of Season 9 later this year, but it’s impossible to know when it’ll be safe to do so. What we can say is that we’ll keep you updated when we’ve made new plans.

But we still have plenty of missions for you! We were able to record our Spring 2020 Virtual Race, which will go ahead as planned next month. We also recorded A Study in Ichor, a five-part New Adventure thriller/horror story set in Victorian times and starring a whole host of beloved ZR characters, and we’re sure you’ll love it. We’ll be releasing it, and other New Adventures, in the coming months. And of course, there’s The Home Front.

All Virtual Races Available Later This Year

Finally, in a few month’s time, we’ll be releasing all past virtual races for sale; from Runner 5’s quest to win a treasure trove of Werther’s Originals, to stopping a rogue general with stolen nuclear bomb, to your visit to the deadly Tomorrow Island. This will take a little longer to set up as we have something special planned, but rest assured: it’s definitely happening.

Stay Safe Out There!

Abel Township needs you fit and healthy, Runner 5. We’ll get through this – together.

The Zombies, Run Team

We’re looking for someone to help us manage our content on Zombies, Run! and our fast-growing New Adventures segment! You’re ideally ambitious, highly-organised, with multiple years of experience in the media industry – whether that’s as an Editorial Assistant in publishing, or in production in the film/TV/audio/games sectors.

This is a remote-only, part-time position for 3.5 to 4 days per week, with the potential to become a full-time position dependent on performance and company requirements. Our core hours are 10am to 4pm, UK time.

Check out all the details, including responsibilities, experience, salary, benefits, and how to apply!

With the release of Run with the Ancestors, we now have ten New Adventures waiting for you to try in Zombies, Run!, and plenty more to come. Whether you’re waiting for Season 9, or need a break from Abel Township (impossible!), we’re sure you’ll find something to keep you company on your next run with the help of our handy guide!

I just need something to tide me over to Season 9! I miss Abel!

You should try some of our other missions set in the Zombies, Run! universe! We have the Race Missions, for longer stories set in Season 1, Supply missions for when you aren’t sure how long you want to run for, Interval Training, for when you want some more intensive training,  and try catching up with Radio mode to satisfy the craving while you wait.

I do like zombies, but want something a bit more like The Walking Dead.

Try Dystopia Rising! This post-apocalyptic adventure sees you joining a band of mercenaries set to guarding a caravan of traders and travellers as they head towards a new settlement. But there are terrible things waiting in the woods, and secrets waiting around every corner.

I’m a bit of a sci-fi junkie and I’ve run out of episodes of The Expanse.

Check out Venus Rising!

Set in the future, you’re heading to Venus Colony One to investigate why the colony has cut off all communications. Explore the settlement, search for survivors, and discover the deep secrets of the planet.

I  love sci-fi, but I’d like to learn more about space in reality!

We can do that! Escape orbit and train to be an astronaut, with Run the Solar System.

This British Science Association run will put you through your paces as a trainee astronaut, and then guide you through local space to explore the planets that make up our solar system.

Or you can learn about the surface of Mars, as you climb the tallest mountain in the solar system with Run Olympus Mons!

Let’s bring it back to Earth. I am a fan of science, but also… disaster movies!

Not a problem. We think you’ll love Volcano Race!

Become a technical intern for a team of Volcanologists studying Mt. Archie. But when the mountain erupts, you’ll have to run for your life to escape the ash and lava flow!

I like a bit of period drama, with a darker edge. Think Ripper Street or Sherlock Holmes.

Allow me to recommend Track the Ripper! Join up with the City of London police and explore the streets of Victorian London on the trail of a notorious killer.

No, more historical than that!

We understand! Delve into Rule Britannia! It’s Gladiator meets Zombies, Run! Travel almost 2000 years into the past and become Roman Legionary Quintus and help to stop a war with the Picts along with your good friend Sam. Eh… Samnium. 

Even more historical! I mean, really historical!

If you want to go into the far reaches of history, then explore the origins of humanity itself in Run with the Ancestors!

This run from the British Science Association will take you a million years back in time, to the very earliest humans in Britain. Follow the development of our species and the landscape right up to the present day.

Ooooh, I do like documentaries! Do you have anything like the Blue Planet?

Run to the Deep, made with the British Science Association, will definitely scratch that itch!

Go diving with expert explorers and scientists, and explore our oceans. Discover the incredible variety of life that the waters of our planet harbours, as you travel from the surface down to the blackest depths.

I’m not good with depths, but I do like the idea of exploring.

Then check out Lewis & Clark! You’ll travel back in time on a historical tour of an expedition to reach the west coast of the USA. See all the preparation that went into the expedition, and join it as they travel up the Missouri river and cross the Rockies on their way to the Pacific.

Whatever your interests, we’re sure that you’ll find something to get you running! What’s your favourite New Adventure?