What Scares Game Developers?

John Callaham writes "Gamecloud has a new feature this Halloween asking game developers from id, Epic, Gearbox (among others) about what games scared them and why." From the article: "Todd Hollenshead - id Software: 'DOOM 3! Of course.' John Romero - former id and Ion Storm designer: 'My personal second scariest game was probably the Ravenholm section of Half Life 2. Man, when those screaming, galloping zombies are tearing around on top of a building and coming at you or clawing their way up a drainpipe - it's INSANE!'"

Comments

He his afraid...

[alexandreracine]

...of his own game! That's scary! :)

Re:He his afraid...

[Meagermanx]

He's secretly making a jab at the source code.

Really

[Elranzer]

Want to know what really scares game developers??

Re:Really

[Psychor]

Want to know what really scares game developers??

Re:Really

[Miffe]

No no, you're both wrong. What really scares game developers is a good storyline.

Alone in the Dark

[zhiwenchong]

I thought Alone in the Dark (the first one) was pretty scary....

Huh?

[Dachannien]

I can't believe nobody mentioned System Shock 2. Not for the "Holy Bajeezus" startle-the-crap-outta-you kind of scare, but for the unnerving, menacing, heebie-jeebies kind of scare that you get when a blood-covered guy with a parasite going out of his chest and onto his head runs at you with a steel pipe, saying, "I'm sooorrrrrrrryyyyy...." Or when a protocol droid steps gingerly toward you, saying, "That's the Tri-Optimum way," and you know you've got to beat feet before it explodes in your face. The game robs you of human* contact, constantly holding the possibility of finding someone else still alive on the ship just out of reach.

(*Yeah, I know "human" contact is something of a stretch, since it's just a game, but I couldn't help thinking throughout the game that there's safety in numbers.)

Re:Huh?

[dave-tx]

...I couldn't help thinking throughout the game that there's safety in numbers

Nicely put. Thinking back, I can specifically remember the feeling of being completely alone and paranoid that System Shock 2 created. SS2 was far and away the creepiest game that I've ever played - it left me jittery even after I'd turned it off and left the computer.

Re:Huh?

[Tim C]

Doom 3 had me feeling reluctant to go on at times, but only System Shock 2 (so far) has actually, properly unnerved me.

I was playing it late at night one time, and eventually gave in to the lateness of the hour. Before going to bed, I popped downstairs to grab a drink. Standing in the kitchen, looking out into the pitch dark of the wee small hours of the morning, I couldn't shake the feeling that any moment now, a hybrid was going to smash its way in through the glass door, muttering "Silence the discord..."

Other games have made me nervous while I've been playing them, but only Shock 2 has kept it up after the PC has powered down. If only there was a chance of a third.

While we're on the subject, I really liked that aspect of other people being constantly just out of reach too. As you say, it helped to emphasise your solitude - if you could just get through the next area a little faster, maybe you could catch up...

Oh gawd, I agree with Romero

[buffer-overflowed]

To a limited extent. The two most recent frightening experiences were the "We don't go to Ravenholm" level in Half-Life 2 and Resident Evil 4. Doom 3, not so much scary, I mean, it's doom, monster-in-a-closet is old hat, and it's cheap.

Going back further though, we have System Shock 1&2, which were both excellent.

System Shock 2 had me sitting wide-eyed the whole time.

So, I'll have to go with System Shock 2.

I'll Tell You What Scares Game Developers

[American AC in Paris]

"...and we're releasing it next month."

Re:I'll Tell You What Scares Game Developers

[cgenman]

"The publisher wants Multiplayer. Online. The ship date can't slip."

"The design isn't finished, and the art won't be ready until next month. Could you code up the interface this week?"

"Just make the code do whatever it is that it's supposed to do."

"How hard could adding a story be?"

"Don't worry, we won't crunch for long this time."

"At the publisher's behest, we're going to have a focus test. With the publisher's kids."

"Of course I put it in. That was a full system re-write. Besides, we have at least a day before E3."

"We have a milestone due later today, so I finally got around to creating those task lists."

"The president thinks we don't need a lead artist."

"There is an e-mail virus going around today. If you're reading this, your e-mail client is open and you're probably infected. Yank your ethernet cable now!"

"On this project, we're using all publisher QA."

Back to basics

[Red Flayer]

"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."

Scarier words have never been written into a game. Never thought that text games would give my nephews nightmares... boy was I mistaken.

Alien Vs. Predator

[luder]

I almost had an heart attack playing Alien Versus Predator with a 4 speaker system. Just remembering those "blips" on the radar gives me chills... System Shock 2 was also very scary: because of the constant respawn of zombies and other not so friendly beings, one never could feel safe, there was no "clear area". Also, the best hard science fiction game I ever played!

Perhaps

[FidelCatsro]

All those are fairly scary .. but what truly terrifies them is Working for EA

Thief: The Dark Project

[Gollum2001]

Anyone that has played Thief sure remember the haunts mumbling "Flames, nothing but flames, burning my flesh..." in the cathedral level. Not only that, when you disturbed them, they started shouting "Join us!! Join us now!!!".

Try to stand calm in a corner of a room with four of those haunts in "search-mode". Eric Brosius, the sound designer, did a fantastic job with Thief and System Shock 2, other of my favourites. Also very scary.

Those two, Thief and System Shock 2, should definitely be topping the list of the scariest games ever made. Weird none of those designers even mention them.

The craddle level in Thief 3 was "good" too...
Just my two cents.

Re:Thief: The Dark Project

[cortana]

Having just read Journey into the Cradle, I simply have to share a choice quotation. It is haloween, after all. ;)

PC Gamer: Any particular incidents stuck in your memory from your research?

Jordan Thomas: One story involved a patient who managed to escape into the storage wings of the asylum, and because of her eroded state-of-mind, she became lost and succumbed to starvation. The
place was such a teeming 'snake pit' that she wasn't missed, and the stain from her body seeped permanently into the wood.

Another involved a man who was committed as a toddler. Decades later, when asked to sign his own name, he drew a rough silhouette of the hospital. The place was so omnipresent and dominant a force in his life that it eclipsed his identity. The Cradle was built out of that sort of cheery material.

Re:Fatal Frame 2

[KDR_11k]

I only played the first one but I got to say it's the only scary game I ever played. Sure, I missed out on System Shock but modern "scary" games like Doom 3, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil or FEAR don't even seem mildly creepy to me. I guess it's rather hard to be afraid when you are the one holding the BFG. Hearing noises and stuff isn't creepy, in a game it's normal to have a monster right around the corner and most of it is ambient noise anyway. Project Zero/Fatal Frame is the only game I know of that makes the enemies themselves frightening instead of merely relying on darkness and cheap scares. In PZ the ghosts that appear can hurt you and they are hard to track so there's always uncertainity to combat. There's no uncertainity when you're blowing away soldiers or demons with machineguns, rocketlaunchers and BFGs. There's also the difference between seeing the walls turn to blood or some nasty scene because in a game that just happens and those harmless ghosts in Project Zero because they aren't easy to tell apart from the harmful ones.

Having hallucinations, visions, apparitions in games doesn't mean jack if those things don't hurt the player. While finding yourself wading through blood and seeing screaming faces coming out of the wall will freak you out in real life, in a game it's just part of the level design and isn't surprising for the same reason you aren't surprised when you hear that shy girl you've been travelling with in jRPG #311 is the key to saving the world or when you encounter an unknown alien race on a simple scout mission.

Silent Hill 2

[Winterblink]

Not only did this game have a really good story, but it was damn scary. With positional audio, a mere walk through some woods was reduced to a white knuckled adventure because as you're walking, suddenly you hear a second set of footsteps - which stop the second you quit moving.

Or being in a hotel at night and walking into a room with some... THING... in there, that's covered in rusty metal and dried blood that just turns and tries to kill you mindlessly. Don't even get me started on the nurses.

Anyway, the SH series of games has always been great for scares. They're my favorites.

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

[DoctaWatson]

Play the Ocean House part with headphones and the lights turned off. IF YOU DARE!

My favorite part was when you fall into the basement laundry room and read a newspaper article about the decapitated child that was found there years ago. Then suddenly the washing machine turns on. THUNK-THUNK, THUNK-THUNK

"He's right behind you!"

F.E.A.R.

[Thalagyrt]

F.E.A.R. is simply the creepiest game that I've ever played. It screws with your mind the entire time, people appearing and when you get close disintegrating, that little girl Alma always watching from some hidden corner. There's the usual scare tactics of stuff jumping at you - walking down a hallway in the middle of it someone's body flys through an office window into the hall dead. But then you walk into the office and there's nobody there. Or you'll be walking down a hall and all of a sudden a white flash and you're running through a pool of blood in slow motion. It's truly a great game.

Doom 3 was pretty scary, but it was mostly just jump/shit-your-pants tactics such as stuff jumping out at you from the dark... Not to mention that that game was dark the entire time and that kind of ruined it.

Half-Life 2 had its moments as well, as was mentioned in the story, Ravenholm was scary. I don't really remember many other parts of HL2 that were incredibly scary though.

F.E.A.R. was just downright creepy from the start, and it just gets creepier as you go.

Doom 3, I agree.

[Sierpinski]

Here I am, sitting in my basement, 30 years old, finding myself having to save the game and go upstairs (during the day, I might add) after hearing that faint whisper:

"Sssssave me."
or
"This way."
or
"Follow me..."

*gah*

Towards the end of the game, the imp summoning was nothing. I'd wait until they were close, and blast them with my shotgun. But when I first started playing that game, I found I was more freaked out than the first time watching the Nightmare on Elm Street.

Re:An old AtariXL/C64 Game

[JoeFaust]

RTFA for your answer. Bill Kunkel mentions "Rescue on Fractalus" which is what you're describing.

That there next game might be....

[elasticwings]

DAIKATANA!!! Oh, imagine the nightmare of having that attached to your resume on your way to your next job, being that a flop that big probably cost your current one.

Clive Barker's Undying

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

I agree with a lot of other comments... System Shock 2 was scary, as was Resident Evil 4 (the Gamecube Resident Evils in general were quite well made).

I also remember Undying being pretty scary in parts... I thought that game was underrated.

Re:Deus Ex Catacombs

[sirboxalot]

I have to agree with you on this one. Another thing scary about Deus Ex was the amazing level of detail put into the game environment... sitting all night with headphones on, lights out, and reading about how the world is crumbling in newspapers or public terminals.. the plague victims/zyme addicts made the atmosphere complete. Spooky. Not jump out of your seat scary, but complete immersion.

Re:Scariest.. ?

[thenerdgod]

Amen absolutely. The Aliens TC for DOOM was scarier than DOOM itself, for exactly that reason: The level designers could afford to make the first level suspensful, because with DOOM, if the first level of the shareware version had NO MONSTERS, people wouldn't have bought the game.

Sometimes the scariest parts of games are the parts where you're left alone, wondering when the hammer will fall. I also liked the Aliens TC for the novel approach to door monsters... they'd have partially transparent walls, so you'd walk in, and you could see the monsters, and hear them, and you knew that at any moment, they'd pop out and gnaw you.

Man. Suspense is always scary.

Though, for me, the "Hell" level in DOOM 3 was pretty good. Not Aliens TC good, but scary as... er... hell.

Doom 3, right.

[88NoSoup4U88]

I call bullshit on Todd Hollenshead's comment that it's Doom 3 : When you've been so much involved in the process of designing such a game (or, to make a parallel, a horror movie) you know all the tricks involved in -making- it that scary :
The zombie grungily walking towards you is now "that model made by Kenneth Scott with the grunting made by that voice actor (we had some pretty fun times creating those grunting loops !) that gets triggered once you walk past that cabinet".

I think it's lame to call Doom 3 the scariest game : Not even because he is (partly) the creator of it himself, but because it just... wasn't.

My list

[sabit666]

3. Max Payne - dream sequence
2. KOTOR 2 - Sith Tomb
1. Half Life 2 - Ravenhome