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Being Scared in Games is Needed
zombieinthebackofyourcar writes "The Escapist has done an entire issue on why we love and need horror games. Jon Schnaars, an expert in psychology and mental health issues, writes about how we need to be scared to generate pleasure from the game. From the article: 'Perhaps the most important change made in the game mechanics of RE4 was fixing the camera behind Leon, providing a tight third-person shot through which the player could experience the action. Through this move, Leon has become every protagonist from every horror film ever made. He is the lone survivor; steadily trudging into the dark when all our instincts tell us it's a bad idea. And as the player, it is actually us proceeding into the dark, receiving (when we're not getting beheaded) our genre pleasure.'"
I don't know about Horror being needed. I sometimes like the idea of playing the monster, when the opportunity presents itself. Heck, I've certainly been one in the online games I play, where I go around slaughtering things to gain experience levels and take the victim's treasures. See it from their point of view. "Horrors, here comes that damn human again! Is there no end for it's thirst for blood? It'll probably go after our shaman some day, then were will we be as a people?"
Really, what we already know is that variety is what games need. If every game was based upon something jumping out of the shadows and ripping your lungs out, we'd have someone telling us what is needed is the safe-and-secure game genre where no harm comes to our valiant little avatar as he/she zips around collecting rings or what have you without repressing some proletariat.
My own take is I have long had a preference for games where the player explores the unknown. There may be danger, there may be reward, but cooling your heels doesn't do much for the sense of intrigue. Exploring dungeons and wiping out baddies, or going on raids day after day, to achieve enough levels to used some object or spell is, as a topic some time back pointed out, is work (you know, that four letter word.)
Ages ago I was totally wrapped up in the old fortran game Empire (eventually released as a PC game), until I'd played it enough to know what to expect. Nothing quite like the first time you're marching your little a into the black unknown only to find the enemy well entrenched, then to gear up your production for an assault. Eventually it was too slow and tedius. Same went for Seven Cities of Gold when you rolled your own New World (which wouldn't be at all like what you see on a normal globe) Exploring the unknown and facing risk is what gets the heart rate going, Grue or no Grue.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Real horror is seeing these in close proximity to each other:
L h R
H >
L
I still have nightmares about that.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
I used to get genuinely, properly scared playing Doom as a 13 year old on my 486 in the 90s. No game since has done it - why? I think the answer is that we're moving the post all the time and we simply take more and more stimuli to scare ourselves - I'm not sure if the current technology is capable of it any more.
i'm no 'expert' on any brain-stuff, but I'd have to disagree on this. Sports games are incredibly successful, and none of this fear stuff applies here whatsoever. Madden, Tiger Woods, MLB, NBA, FIFA, Tony Hawk PS, and so on...
In one of Jack Vance's novels someone has determined that society has made things too safe in comparison to most of our evolutionary history, and people suffer some kind of debilitating angst as a result. So there's an organization whose members go around scaring the sh*t out of random people, in order to restore our species' cognitive balance.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think if a game is able to scare you, that's just a sign that the game has successfully pulled you in. Rather than being an outside observer to the bame, you become the character. I still remember play Half-Life for the first time, after a long battle with soldiers on the cliff-side, and climbing the ladder into the last tube only to have the crap scared out of me by a sudden, jumping head-crab. That fright is part of the reason I knew Half-Life was a great game...I wasn't playing as Gordon Freeman, I was Gordon Freeman.
It has tense moments in it, but it's certainly more of a thriller than a horror game. If you want to play a disturbing video game, try Fatal Frame 1, Fatal Frame 2 or Resident Evil 4.
And for God's sake turn off the light, otherwise it's like watching The Grudge during the day with the light streaming onto the TV screen.
Summation 2
System Shock 2, a true classic, was extremely scary. The player finds himself (or herself, but let's not kid ourselves) on a derelict spacecraft on which something has gone terribly wrong. The game is not to be missed.
And it wasn't any kind of gore, or zombies, or anything like that. Well, lots of things like that, but that wasn't the main cause -- it was the foreboding atmosphere.
Abandoned schools are scary. It taps into childhood fears. Seeing the 'regular' world turned upside down and redecorated with body parts and rust is deeply unsettling. The lack of regular communication with other characters in the game, the ambient sound effects - my god, the sound effects work in that game was good. I remember standing in what I think used to be a gymnasium but in the 'other' world, and just standing there, listening to this distant clank-clank-clank of some unseen machinery. I left my character standing there for awhile, just taking in the sound, and I truly began to feel disturbed.
It was shortly after that I descended the ladder to the first full-on satanic ritual looking setpiece in the game. This gigantic cucumber with four legs ran out and split in half as it opened its mouth, revealing about a million teeth, and i swear to fucking god I actually dropped my controller and shrieked like a little girl.
Good times.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
First "scary" game.
3:15 am in front of a 12" television with all the lights off and sound cranked up.
Land spaceship to pick up survivor.
Survivor has a pink helmet on... white = good guy, green = evil alien, pink = ???
well we're not going to let him in until I get a better look.
">knockknockknockknockknockknock"
"gonna have to..."
Big alien head appears on my cockpit and starts trying to bash in the window.
"BRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
AUUUUUUUUGGGHHH!! TURN ON THE SHIELDS TURN ON THE SHIELDS as in my haste, my hand bashes my Pepsi(tm) can knocking it across the room until I can hit 's' and fry the sucker.
----
"Boo" horror we pretty much have down. Besides "Rescue..." this has been used in Resident Evil, Doom, Unreal, etc to great effect.
"Creepy" horror we got with Silent Hill to great effect.
But the kind of deep "horror" that makes you lie awake at night? I dunno. I submit that that's only doable in books/movies because it's passive entertainment and so the viewer/reader is dragged along. But in interactive entertainment it's like negative reinforcement. You're going to have to do something to keep the player wanting to go forward while whacking them with things they dislike. (Unless you're into that sort of thing... or Goth... Kinda like that HR Giger game way back when... or... heh... Beyond the Forbidden Forest. Okay game but most of the fun was watching the grotesque ways you would die)
I haven't played a lot of videogames in a long time, but the summary made me think of something that could be pretty cool in a horror game, if any game designers are out there.
You, as the player, control a character who is seen in a third-person view like what's described in the summary. This character is actually moving ahead of "you," though. The POV of the game is actually that of another character that walks behind the character that you control. That other character is basically defenseless, however -- think screaming chick from a horror movie. It's the job of the character you control to protect the POV character. So you fight the zombies and what-not with the character from a third-person POV, but every so often the zombies are trying to reach over the shoulder of the character you control, to claw at the POV. Cue all sorts of nasty death scenes where you get to watch your protector be overrun and killed, even as your own POV camera flips sideways to the floor...
Breakfast served all day!
"[...]And as the player, it is actually us proceeding into the dark, receiving (when we're not getting beheaded) our genre pleasure."
So essentially he's saying "This bitch gives good behead."
I remember Inky charging down the corridor after me, his hot ghost/monster breath on my neck. In the distance was the glow of the power pill, promising heavenly salvation. Nearly there. Nearly there. Only have to get past this last, dark side-corridor... Clyde, nooooo!
Hell, the horror of just thinking about it now makes me want to shrivel up and die.
If a game can draw any emotion out of you, then it is doing something right. Games are like stories - if they don't make you think, or love, or hate, or fear, or SOMETHING then they are just dumbing you down by staring at pretty pixels.
When Doom 3 came out, I upgraded my video card, setup my 5.1 sound system, and dimmed the theater lights. My friends would gather round as I played. People would fidget, jump, dodge, and squeal as things jumped out at them. The game was truly emotional for the people playing and watching. Now THAT is entertainment.
I had a similar experience with Shadow of the Colossus and Half-Life 2. Shadow made you hate what you were doing to those beautiful creatures. Half-Life 2 made you feel like you were in 1984 (the book, not the year!).
The biggest problem is getting enoug content without making the game repetitive. Shadow and Doom 3 both had this problem. But overall, making a provocative interactive story is difficult to do, but it is definitely a winning formula.
It's fear of the KNOWN dangers. Because you KNOW that whenever you enter that basement, an ugly bloody looking thing is going to follow you making screeching noises.
So you step in, and suddenly your radio begins generating static. You ran out of health drinks, and then you hear the screeching noises. You turn to the left, and it's a dead end. On the other side of the fence there's these arachnid creatures, and you only got your gun. Shoot the wrong target, and you'll get slain. Ah, isn't that beautiful... more dogs cut in half and they just started howling.
But wait, the horror's not finished. The horror only starts when you turn off the game and go to sleep, and notice how your clothes mysteriously resemble a beheaded bloody mannequin, and the noises out the street remind you of the radio static ringing. You try to sleep, read a book, and slowly you get tired.
But wait, the horror's not finished. Because you start dreaming about the game you were just playing a few hours ago...
You wake up and try to sleep again and have a heck of a stomach ache.
But wait, the horror's not finished. You remember that your mother asked you to show her your school grades, and you get them today.
7th Guest and 11th Hour.
... they all drew me in. I think a big part of the pleasure is seeing how tough you are. You want to keep watching until the next scary part and see if you'll still jump or wince.
I played those for hours on end and kept getting drawn back in by the story and fear and wanting to know what was next.
I grew up a horror-loving kid - watching all the B flicks with my friend in our dark basements. IT, The People Under the Stairs, Wax Museum, House, all the Nightmare's that plagued Elm Street
A game that can draw you in like that is even better. You want to keep playing to test your limits, see if you can handle it. Then you can go brag to your friends about beating "the scariest game ever," and show it to the girls and have them curling up against you. Maybe that's more with movies. But you know what I mean.
I love being scared. I can't get enough of it. I think it's true that people are a little too sensitive and understimulated in general, so maybe a good scream is what some people need.
What?
Dude... System Shock 2.
I guarantee it'll scare the pants off of you if you get the mod that upgrades the models. Play at night, no lights, turn the sound up.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Those type of scenes never scared me. What they did do was exasperate the hell out of me. "You moron! The psycopathic killer from beyond the grave is going to bash your skull with an axe as soon as you step in there."
"Don't these friggin' idiots EVER look behind them? Especially after four of their friends bought it that way."
And don't get me started on body disposal methods for supernatural psycho killers. These numbdumbs just bury Jason then act all surprised when he comes back a month or two later. HELLO!, you had to kill him ten times over just get him in the grave.
You can only heavily stun such a creature at best. Should one of non-idiot characters manage this then the correct thing to do is to bind ankles and wrists with HEAVY chain or rope then thoroughly dismember and slice and dice the creature. If intelligence was employed in the binding then the fact that the creature lives through this should pose no problem. Don't let a hack writer take your life at the last minute. The pieces should then be thoroughly burned and the ashes scattered in separate bodies of water. Any solid pieces should be encased in concrete and likewise scattered. Throughly soaking any remaining pieces in holy water is optional but can't hurt. NOTE: Do NOT put holy water on an intact Creature; it'll just wake up angry.
The case of the Liquid Metal Terminator was one of the rare cases of correct Super Creature Body Disposal. Sumbitch probably wound up in 40 different cars. RoboCop 2 had a good Creature Dismantling but they botched the job by dumping the pieces where his buddies could put him back together again. And those IDIOTS who thought running Christine through a car-crusher was sufficient, they should have checked with the Connors.
Maybe I should start one of those Evil Overlord type lists for Super Evil Creature Combat.
OK, you know you're a nethack addict when & and D scares you.
I've been there.
I admit, when I play horror games - I should say, when I played horror games, since I've gotten so bored with them - they do startle me. They scare me when I'm not bored to tears by their pathetic hackneyed plots stolen from B horror movies. So basically what I get out of it is a bunch of boredom punctuated by occasional moments when my heart is wondering what the fuck I'm doing to it.
YOU may need horror games. The author of the article may need horror games. I'll pass. What I need is more racing games that don't suck :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't think that the summary was accurate to the article itself. The article talked about the need to have a level of satisfaction when our expectations are met from having an immersive environment. That's not restricted to the horror genre of games as the summary implies. Every genre of games requires a level of satisfaction when our expectations are met or the game will get panned by players and critics. I use that abomination of Ultima: Ascension as the prime example of a game that completely failed to meet expectations and therefore generated no satisfaction. That article also mentions GTA. I wouldn't exactly call that a horror game.
There are some classic games that are so much fun, not so much from a playability standpoint but from an entire experience. I am a great fan of the Max Payne, Thief, and Splinter Cell series. Lots of great suspense and dark gameplay, but they pulled you into their environments, which is one of the key factors in the success of games of that nature.
Honestly, I think that the editors need to be a bit more accurate in the description of the articles. I was about to go on a huge rant about the bullsh*t that we need to be scared in order to derive pleasure from games until I actually RTFA.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Looking Glass Studios dissolved, but the programmers and the team responsible for SS2 are at work on a sequel, whose working title is "BioShock," I think. You can check Gamespot's coverage.
In manhunt you have to protect a bum and then a reporter in the end to complete missions in the game. And it is done well. The bum keeps wandering off.
On a side note the reporters voice was debbie from Sealab 2021.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Stephen King once commented about why horror books and movies do so well. His point was that we need to feel fear in order to process the emotion without our real fears paralyzing us. He pointed out real fears: that we'll get cancer, our loved ones will die in car accidents, that our children will be kidnapped or molested. These are all very real fears that could actually come true. Yet, we read books and watch movies in which bad things (both plausible and unplausible) happen. Why intentionally scare yourself? Because the experience (as the article somewhat mentions) lets you live out or experience the emotion and yet go on with your everyday life.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Run your console off of a battery only source. Then hope and pray you can get to the next save point before the battery runs out. Or worse yet, that the memory card isn't being written to when the power failure occurs.
You've been on that game for two hours straight? I just DARE you to go past the boss battle, after you defeated it, without saving.
For even more thrill, tie some catnip and a string to the memory card while it's still in the system. Set the game to autosave and then let the cat play with the string.
I remember playing Ultima Underworld "The Stygian Abyss" on my old 486DX with an early Soundblaster back in 1989 or 1990 (whenever it was). Possibly the first ever first-person game it had creepy shadows and scary music. That one was so great because of the atmosphere, it was edge of seat stuff.
Then later Ultima Online was scary because dying actually cost you something. I agree with the article. If a game can scare you then so much the better.
while sco {
wget -O
}
Everblue 2 for ps2. everblue 1 never came out in US, but i picked the sequel up on a whim, because it sounded like a wierd enough game that it might just be awesome. Everblue 2 is a scuba-diving RPG, actually, and you wouldn't think that would sound scary.... a game where you dive to the bottom of the ocean and take photos of fish or salvage things, in order to gain money, to buy better scuba equipment....... BUT....
there are a few very scary moments in it.
there's a scene where you are diving into the wreckage of a sunken cruise ship, and you get inside of it and its pitch black, no sunlight can filter down that deep, and when you're actually in the ship, all light is blocked out. the water is murky. your flashlight allows you to see only a scant few feet in front of you. you know there are sharks in the area, and in the gameplay segments, there is actually only one music: a theme that plays when sharks (which can eat you) are around. so, as you explore the ship, you come across a doorway, and you open it, and its an old indoor swimming pool... and you hear the shark theme, which, as a gamer playing it, lets you know that there are threats nearby, and that you should be very very cautious and try not to panic, and that something big and scary could lunge for my throat at any moment.....
my experience with this area was one of the few times a game has honestly scared me. its one of those moments where I was so immersed that I forget i was playing a game. its a tight, enclosed level, and i hear the sharks, and I know that i need to be on the lookout for threats.... and then, all of a sudden, i run smack into a ghostly white face, illuminated by my flashlight and made more scary by the murky water.......
after jumping up and dropping my controller, because i totally wasn't expecting to find any ghastly apparitions, i realize that what I'm looking at is not a ghost, but a statue, remnants of the luxurious decorations of the cruiseliner. nothing as out of the ordinary as I'd thought, but the atmosphere, and the fact that I knew i was in dangerous waters, and then the running smack into the thing just made me jump and still gives me the heebeejeebees. truly effective game design... and unfortunately, in a game that almost nobody has ever played.
Horror is not necessary to a video game and more than it's necessary to Chess.
Horror as a genre is not needed unless you like that, but fear is.
I could think of a high emotion chess champion game in which you fear loosing in front of thousands of people for example or perhaps a chess game where you have your house or family lives on the line or if you loose that atomic weapons will be unleashed on your nation. Ok... That is a bit extreme. Lets just say you play a game of virtual chess for 1,000,000 of your gold pieces in World of War craft.
Well... Depending on how much you value your virtual gold, you will be sweating it and seriously thinking about each piece you move. Fear is the main reason behind gambling. It makes the game serious and ups the stakes.
Take if like this... Back in the good old days of Ultima Online, I would be dungeon crawling and then a player killer shows up. Now I could run or fight or I could die and loose my things...
Since I know dying will set me back a bit and make me try a frantic run for my gear and loot after I get rezzed, I have to weigh in my options to whether or not running or fighting will be fun.
And if I do run how much of a chance of actually making it out of the dungeon alive?
Of course throughout the years of playing UO there are plenty of times where I have fought and won, ran away, and sometimes died and had my things taken from me.
But the heat of the battle and the knowledge all my loot was on the line was exciting much more so than say fighting an AI monster who I knew I could simply walk away from if I lost too much health.
Also this applies to FPS games... Everyone was used to the Quake system in which you died and then you instantly respawned without much fear of dying.
However, when Counter-Strike came along you actually got scared of dying because not only did you loose the weapons you saved up money for buying, but you had to sit the rest of the round out until one side one.
That is the best formula for playing any game that is for those who want to fill that "gambler's buzz". The player must have some type of risk in where if they loose they will be punished and loose whatever they had previously worked on.
Personally, as comforting as save games and not loosing your items in MMOGs, a player must face some type of punishment for loosing.
There must be some fear of loosing otherwise we will get bored of a game like it had god mode turned on.
But I would also like to point out if that punishment for loosing is too great, then the game gets pretty tedious pretty fast (otherwise known as loosing over 15 hours worth of leveling when you die at level 59 in EQ arrrrgh!!!!)
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I was so scared of PKs while playing Ultima in 98 that no other game has every provided me with as many thrills.
Where'd that extra O come from? The word is lose. Past tense is lost. Current tense is losing. One O. Loosing is not a word.
Fear of falling in a pit, getting hit by a fireball, stomped, fried, or otherwise getting killed.
One thing that has turned me off to modern games (as opposed to the old-school ones) is that "dying" has no meaning. With virtually continual savepoints and infinite lives, "dying" usually means nothing more than a 30-second setback nowadays. Therefore, I don't feel any excitement, because it really doesn't matter - completely the opposite to the experience of having one life left as you enter level 8-4.
One of the top games ever. The other two are amazing as well.
This is not my sig.
The Resident Evil games just don't work for me - to me, they're too "arcadish" in that I find the story flimsy, an excuse for the gameplay. The gameplay should serve the story, not vice versa.
On the other end of things, there's Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem . The Gamecube was an odd choice of platforms for this grown-up title, but this game alone is nearly enough to justify picking up an old used 'cube. The gameplay was solid and fun, but it was always in service to the story: even your most basic actions were affected by a choice that you make in the first few minutes (which God you're aligned with affects how you interact with different monsters).
On top of that, they had a brilliant sanity system - as you lost sanity, they'd introduce subtle audio effects (using the surround sound to do so), and introduce visual distortions and hallucinations (like blood dripping and statues' heads turning to follow you). As you truly lost it, they'd gradually escalate to doing things like playing tricks where you'd hallucinate walking on the ceiling of a room you've just entered - or even alarm you by simulating a system crash, or pretending that you've just reached the end of the game, without resolution (showing you an add for the fictional sequel). There's another one where they simulate someone playing with the volume control on your TV's remote - first you think, "Hey! Where's the remote?" before thinking a split second later, "Hey, that's not what the volume control feedback looks like on my TV!" There are dozens more, they're truly inspired and some of them will get you.
If you have not played this game and you want a truly scary experience, give it a look. It's the best game I've played since Deus Ex (for a different genre game with a brilliant, driving story line). It's one of maybe 5 reasonably modern games that I'd say are truly don't-miss masterworks.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny