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When Will Games Disturb Us?
Game Girl Advance brings up the subject of emotion in games, again, by going to the dark places. Jane talks about movies that are just plain uncomfortable to watch (shades of Donnie Darko), and wonders why when games will have the same effect. From the article: "Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of 'fun.' You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is."
It would seem that the author's never played a Silent Hill game before. Or System Shock 2. Or Eternal Darkness.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
The first game that disturbed me in a good way was the original Doom... even low res, those weird textures that seemed to be based on skinned flesh was just creepy.
The first game that disturbed me in a bad way was the first Duke Nukem, where if you shot the strippers, they turned into piles of money. That's just mysogonystic. Yes, in theory the strippers were taken over by aliens, but that's wasn't the primary reason strippers were shootable. Someone on the team just wanted to be able to shoot woman (and let's face it, if you listen to the guys at the top of 3D Realms, they strike me as men with serious psych issues with women).
Even games like GTA didn't give me a sick feeling like that did. The violence in GTA is in the context of the world. The Duke Nukem thing felt like it was someone's sick fantasy that they thought was funny.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The mood of a game is a result of its story-telling. If the underlying story isn't disturbing, putting more special effects isn't going to change anything, either. But if we assume there are books that can be disturbing to read, then certainly any game has at least as much access to present information as well as a book, so of course they can be, too.
And I don't think mass audience interactive entertainment (a.k.a. Video Games) will cross into truly disturbing Territory anytime soon. There's a difference between being a passive observer to something disturbing such as all the many movies already mention and being an active participant. And I think that the mental and emotional consequences of crossing that line are going to be too high for the majority of people to accept.
Granted, there's games out there with downright creepy premise, but they don't tackle such socially disturbing topics as movies because movies don't require that you project yourself as an active participant. The mental and emotional toll required to do that would, I think, force 99%+ of people to abandon such a game only a few minutes in.
The original Diablo in all its 640x480 glory.
Maybe it was the soft string instruments in the background.
The intro movie was pretty good too.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.
Such as Infocom's Trinity (about time travel and nuclear war), and A Mind Forever Voyaging: Starts off with the mildly disturbing premise of what it's like to be a "brain in a vat, experiencing a computer simulation". Continues with the extremely disturbing unfolding of what happens when (because reality's just a computer simulation), the simulation extrapolates social/political consequences of what happens when one plugs in a certain Senator's "plan" to save the economy... and what happens to the brain in the vat when it starts to learn things about the "plan" that the dear Senator might not like.
AMFV was probably the most disturbing interactive fiction title that Infocom ever released. (Because we're arguably still playing it - you and me reading this - today.)
When did Diakatana come out? Seriously though, System Shock 2 and Undying may be a bit dated now, but they certainly were unnverving.
The first XCOM had some creepy bits. I remember the first time I found an "examination room" in a UFO.
The general ambience was just plain spooky, especially the night terror missions.
No current games are disturbing in the "keep you up at night thinking, appear in pathologically terrifying nightmares, make you think twice about telling people about it" sense. They're scary and shock in the same way a slasher movie will, but ultimately they're shallow in the same way, lacking in depth and development. Nothing 'horrific' in that sense happens in films like Donnie Darko, Jacob's Ladder, Requiem for a Dream or Silkwood, but they're far more emotionally disturbing than, say, Doom or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They express a deep, complex and gut-wrenching fear of the real and utterly tragic rather than simplistic caricatures of brutal violence. No game has ever made me rethink my attitudes to nuclear energy, phone up an old friend just to see if they're still alive or toss and turn for days.
Doom 3 is old hat and monsters jumping out of the closet horror been around forever. F.E.A.R., on the other hand, is a bit more scarier with the psychological horror of actually seeing things. Now that's disturbing.
A: As soon as we all play the Silent Hill series.
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Actually, it's kind of an original concept. Most of the stalk-and-kill games involve creeping up and slashing guards' throats, sneaking further into a fortress, and doing it all over again. Thief, Metal Gear, Commandos, Desperados, they're all the same.
Stalking people, then killing them, then worrying about the evidence, add some shootouts and narrow escapes from the cops... that'd be great! You could have a voice in your head telling you which victims to find ("Balding man between the ages of 30 and 45", "Young boy with dog") to act out repressed tresspasses on you. The police could follow your actions (for example, if you always kill in a 3 block radius, they'll step up patrols there), you could go on killing sprees, where you'd have to kill X people within X minutes, you could have slasher sections where you'd have to kill groups of cliche, dumb teenagers while dressed in a scary mask... A minigame where you have to invade a high school and take out as many people as possible. Killing with interesting weapons and devices ("Kill this guy by dragging him behind your car." "Kill this lady by setting her on fire.").
Call me deranged, but that sounds way more fun than GTA.
I found the game Sanitarium fairly disturbing at some points. Incase anyone missed it, it was a point and click adventure where the player assumes the role of a mental patient. You drift between fantasy and reality and try to sort out your memories, and save the world or something. I forget.
It's disturbing not because it tries to shock you with weird stuff, which it certainly tries to do and doesn't do that well. It's disturbing because as you play through the fantasy worlds you get the impression that something very wrong is going on in the real world that you are powerless to stop.
The answer to how to keep players playing disturbing games is so simple that it's sort of depressing that people get mystified and ask if it is even possible in games. Give the game a compelling story, what they are going through now may be disturbing but maybe the characters and scenario will develop. You could also, like, make the game fun to play. Worth a try.
What you just described already exists, but for the last few bits. It's called Hitman. No, it's not a serial murder simulator, but it's pretty much exactly what you described: Stalk your victim to learn their patterns, stay hidden, kill your victim (and others, if you like, though no Silent Assassin rating for you if you do), leave no trace. The "voice in your head" is the agency that sends you on the hits rather than schizophrenia, but is it really that different?
Hey guys! Yeah you, the ones with mod points. Why are you modding up all these posts about being scared or "creeped out" by a video game? That's not disturbing, anymore than riding a roller-coaster is disturbing.
Storylines that pull back the fascia of society to reveal ugly truths about the nature of man are disturbing. Hotel Rwanda is disturbing. A love story like Oasis where one social outcast rapes another and yet the two are able to develop a relationship that is 100x more healthy than the "normal" society around them is disturbing (just read the comment from the woman who naively rented the movie for valentines day).
The point of the articles is that movies like those are the level of story-telling to which video games should be striving. What the article doesn't really discuss is just how to motivate someone to continue interacting with a game when the story hits them with such a huge emotional wallop. When it happens in a movie, the audience can just sit there, stunned into immobility (and often tears) and let the experience flow over them. But that's not what games are about. Perhaps it is just not possible for a game to evoke the kind of strong, personally felt, emotions that a movie or book can. Or perhaps the genius who will figure out a way just hasn't been born yet.
If you want to understand the difference between elemental horror and the fun-house shocks of Doom there is no better place to begin than with H.P. Lovecraft: Tales, in The Library of America series.
Lovecraft's best effects are achieved through suggestion.
You never see anything clearly or fully but you are left with the conviction of having encountered something profoundly alien.
I'm not sure it's "disturbing" in the way that, say, A Clockwork Orange was, but Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube was a very freaky experience for me.
For those who aren't familiar (shame on you) the game used so-called "Insanity Effects" which were basically designed to make your character think they were going crazy - except they also applied to you. You would walk into a room and be immediately decapitated. Then the screen would flash, your character would scream a bit, and you could continue playing the game. Other effects included rooms appearing completely upside-down, invincible monsters, and ever-present whispering that really freaked me out the first time I heard some of them.
ED was fantastic at really working the psyche and trying to make a real "Horror" game that didn't involve things randomly jumping through windows at you.