Psychoanalyzing Resident Evil and Silent Hill

The Game Career Guide site has up a piece doing a psychological examination of horror games. The uber-successful series Resident Evil and Silent Hill go under the microscope, giving readers a look at the psychological archetypes the games elicit, while also discussing the titles from a gameplay standpoint. It is the author's contention that the RE series is the 'standard' for the genre, while Silent Hill games shake up the gamer's viewpoint with 'avant-garde' elements. An interesting, and thoroughly academic look, at the modern face of gaming horror.

Comments

Article

[Turn-X Alphonse]

I like the concept of the article but when I get to the first picture and see

A, Resident evil 4 (an action game more than survival horror)
B, A complete and utterly incorrect comment

I have to wonder if I want to read an "indepth" article by these people. I mean how difficult is it to get that Resident evil 4 has ZERO Zombies? There are NO Zombies in RE4.

If you're going to do an indepth article at least make a note that the living dead tend to be... well dead.

Re:Article

[theCurse]

The enemies in RE 4 were zombies. They weren't Night of the Living Dead zombies, but they were mindless husks under the control of another entity (which could be seen as more in line with the original zombie myth).

Perhaps you need to expand your definition of "zombie."

wow...

[onemorehour]

From this perspective, Saddler's long tentacles could be considered maternal, representing the "umbilical" (discussed further below) rather than the traditional phallic.

This article is, hands-down, the stupidest thing I've read all day.

It's psychology...

[Junta]

In psychology, everything is either about sex, or your mother, but usually both at the same time...

They worked hard...

[Junta]

To try to shoehorn RE4 to line up some of the symbology to Silent Hill..

RE4 wasn't really the same sort of game as previous RE games, not really scary at all, just an action game for the most part. That said, RE has never struck me as being a particularly deep game series, for the most part simple resource scarcity and 'boo!' moments for relatively cheap suspense/horror. Extensive psychoanalysis of that series, particularly trying to pull in desire for a womb/sexual desire, comes off as a huge piece of bullshit to me.

Silent Hill's creators obviously very much buy into and intentionally incorporate every psychoanalysts dream smorgasbord of refrences/meaning. It ultimately makes it easy for psychoanalysts to roll through and point out the obvious things put in by the creators. Problem, for me at least, was the whole womb/room/umbilical cord thing just didn't strike me really. In fact, it kinda softened the impact of the whole thing because even as they tried to integrate it, it just seemed out-of-place, and not out of place in an eerie way, just in an almost funny 'reducing suspension of disbelief' sort of way. It was just so painfully obvious a psychological theory planted into the game that I've never took stock in. The fact that I didn't buy into it reinforces to me the decreased merit of 'everyone wants to be back in the womb' theories that pervade psychology. However, to me, Silent Hill *does* make good use of some deeper psychology to evoke deeper suspense and fear that is more persistant than anything in the Resident Evil series, so net Silent Hill's strategy of using more complex psychology works for them. To this end I was able to look past the parts that bugged me and enjoyed the overall game.

When I observe psychological archetypes that I do not believe have real meaning in a game, for me that's generally the point where I'm convinced (it fits so well, leaves my suspension of belief intact, and I can identify with the situation), or proves to myself that I'm not just being skeptical. Maybe it varies from person to person, but it seems most psychoanalysis is no where near as universal as the writers would have you believe.