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Fraidy Cat Gamer
Allen Cook, over at Gamers With Jobs, talks about the problems of being a 'fraidy cat gamer'. Horror games are awesome, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to actually play through one if your fear takes hold of you. From the article: "I can watch most horror movies without any problem. The trick has nothing to do with my horror movie constitution but simply knowing the formula. At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead. Probably at the hands of some supernatural force, a mask-wearing psychopath or some otherworldly parasitic infestation. It's a given part of the formula that most of these characters will die. When it happens, I may be surprised by how they die, but it doesn't emotionally scar me. With horror games though, there's no switch I can pull to stop caring about my character. That's me in there in the inexplicably short mini skirt and tall boots, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Why the hell did I wear that anyway? Is that standard issue zombie hunting gear where I'm from? It doesn't matter, a zombie just tore a chunk out of my skull."
At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead.
Simple solution:
Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.
I find that breaking the connection from Player to Character helps.
If the character in the game is wearing a short skirt and tall boots, I wear a tutu and clown shoes.
Also, the lines at the arcade seem to be quite short in this attire.
Doom 3 stopped being scary as soon as I learned to walk into rooms backwards.
I have the same problem, and my solution is to play frightening games in small doses. 10-15 minutes here and there, and eventually I make my way through it. It took me almost a week to get through Ravenholm the first time, just because I needed to take so many breaks and go play Civ.
As an alternate solution, I will just blast through such a scene quickly, letting whatever baddies reveal their locations, then I go back to my save point and do it again with full knowledge of just what nastiness is going to jump out at me and when.
I feel the same kind of intensity from other emotions in games, not only fear. It's just much easier to deal with the other emotions, as they don't come with a built-in fight-or-flight response the way anxiety and fear do.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
There's not so many games anymore that really draw you in like some of the old ones did. I remember playing Alone In The Dark, and getting really scared at some points. For a game to scare you, it has to really draw you in, so that it's the only thing you are focusing on. I find that I got scared a lot playing Metroid Prime. Not because it had a horror theme or anything, but because the atmosphere of the game really drew you in, and when some enemy jumps in front of you when you are already on edge, you tend to jump a bit.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I can't play System Shock 2 anymore. Eternal Darkness & Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth are both pretty damn creepy.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
If you can get past the graphics, Marathon:RED.
Bort... bort... bort... bort... bort...
-:sigma.SB
WARN
THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
I was expecting this to be more of an article about people who were afraid to play games the way they were intended. (intention in the eye of the beholder)
I have several friends who play StarCraft completely defensively. On team games a couple of us will completely destroy the enemy while these RTS campers build base defenses the entire time. Highly frustrating.
Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?
I also play Travian, a stupid web based RTS, and people constantly bitch and moan about being attacked. Hello! It's a war game.
As far as the subject, I don't really understand horror in any medium. But why seek out the best horror game and then try to find ways to get through it? You're just watering it down! Take it like a man, you pussies! (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"
That IS real combat. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, and you never, ever, give your opponent an even break. Unless you think of combat being the way the British fought the revolutionaries, or how the Civil war was fought where people just stand out in the open blatantly shooting each other.
If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
When you willingly put yourself into a game that would not normally scare you, your imagination can eventually take over and make the game a whole lot more enjoyable then it otherwise would have been. :)