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Videogames Make Better Horror Than Movies?
Wired author Clive Thompson has up an article stating that, with today's jaded audiences, videogames are more effective horror-conveyances than movies. Thompson argues that the removal of the fourth wall, placing the player directly into the story, overcomes the obstacles movie-makers face when telling a scary story. "I'll start down a corridor, hear something freaky up ahead, then freeze in panic. Maybe if I stay quiet the monster will go away? S^!t, maybe it's already headed this way, and I should move! But if I move the monster will hear me ... so maybe I should stay quiet ... gaaaaah! Games already seem like dream states. You're wandering around a strange new world, where you simultaneously are and aren't yourself. This is already an inherently uncanny experience. That's why a well-made horror game feels so claustrophobically like being locked inside a really bad -- by which I mean a really good -- nightmare." Do you agree? Is your favorite scary tale a movie ... or a game? (Silent Hill, I'm looking at you.)
The thought of playing a video game in no way fills me with the same sense of horror as the thought of watching a Uwe Boll movie based on the game.
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I've never been scared by a movie, ever. But I almost soiled myself the first time I played Resident Evil (the part where the dogs jump through the window in particular).
I don't agree. While you're playing the game, you have some sort of an adrenaline rush, that effectively makes you immune to any kind of scare the developers might devise. That, and the inherent stupidity of the monsters you'll encounter surely makes them less of a threat.
But, on the bright side, it's easier to make a specific mood in a game, and make the player be afraid of that, for example - I was absolutely scared of playing Ultima Underworld alone when I was about ten or eleven. There was something in those dark corridors, bones lying around, and the music that provided the tension needed to scare the hell out of me. And it works today, too. Not in the way Doom3 would like us to have, but, for example, BioShock manages to capture the freaky atmosphere perfectly, making you look around your shoulder far more often.
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You know a demon's going to teleport into the closet when you do! Video games just provide a better environment for horror. Yes, the whole forth wall thing, but also the environment you play in. You often play them alone, in a dark room. You choose how long the suspense lasts before you pickup that gun. In the end, however, you do pickup the gun... and when nothing happens; it gets worse because the environment didn't react the way you expected. Until you turn around of course.
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I heard good things about Alien Doom so when I finally downloaded it I turned off the lights to get the most from the experience.
For the first 20 minutes or so you are creeping through corridors, always wondering what might appear around the next corner. Nothing much actually happens except that the corridors gradually become more and more covered in alien slime. You go through several levels without actually seeing any enemies, even though you know you must be getting closer to their lair.
All of a sudden an alien jumps at you out of nowhere.
I have never before and never since been more scared by a computer game.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The original Half Life was a really classic example of this. You could make a decent monster movie along the same plot, but you wouldn't have quite the tension.
EG, the tension where you are creeping through the silo with the giant tentacles, the first time you meet the big shark-thingy, the elation and then horror as the marines come, etc....
A movie wouldn't be nearly as immersive.
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Why exactly would a game be inherently better than a movie for the horror genre? Hell, a novel could be just as effective as either one of those mediums.
It comes down to good writing. The reason most horror movies aren't particularly effective is because the writing is such garbage. If these writes were to produce scripts for games those games would be equally ineffective at being scary.
If anything, I'd argue that it's easier to make a good horror movie than it is to produce a scary game. It's very easy to manage pacing in a movie. The entire thing is nicely packaged and the director has complete control over the movie. With a game, in addition to the underlying plot a creator has to be concerned with how the gamer interacts with the game. How to convey the proper atmosphere and provide appropriate challenges without making the game tedious.
Ultimately, this is the problem I've found with nearly all horror games, including the Resident Evil series. The game hits a point where they're wandering back and forth trying to find something, or are given these odd tasks for the sake of providing some level of gameplay ultimately reminding me that I'm just playing a game. With a movie or a novel, I know it's fake, but I don't have to worry about some gameplay mechanic disrupting the experience and thus it's easier for me to become engrossed in the story.
For me the experience of watching a movie is usually so far removed from that of playing a game that I can't directly compare them. While a movie can use a particular character or characters as surrogates for the audience, youre essentially watching things happen to other people. You can be sympathetically scared for them, but you don't really feel scared for yourself.
When you're playing a game, that avatar on the screen is, for all intents and purposes, you. You're not just watching some movie star go down the stairs to their doom, you have to choose to go down those stairs yourself. The experience of that sort of scare is very different, and to me much more personal, than the one-sided character/spectator relationship in films and such.
The only experience that for me sort of blurs that line between those two types of scares is listening to an audio play, such as radio drama or Big Finish Productions' audio CDs. When I'm listening to one of those I usually have my eyes closed and my imagination turned up high, and thus tend to see things from more of a first-person perspective in my mind's eye. A good horror story on audio can therefore approach the levels of immersion that a good video game provides, without being interactive.
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Silent hill sums it up perfectly, the movie wasn't too far removed from the games, but the movie isn't scary compared to the games and it's for 1 simple reason. Movies will continue no matter what, you can walk away and shrug and they will still play. Where as in a game you take control and must continue the fear to continue the plot.
Silent Hill games make you feel like at any moment you could be jumped by some insanely powerful monster and then it toys with you with the radio, a little noise here, a little growl there, is it just random noise or is a complete freak out monster about to maim you? who knows? These things get to us, we have no idea -how- to rationally deal with these things because they are beyond all logic, movies we can go "CGI" "Make up" "hero must survive" and then we play silent hill and suddenly it's "oh fuck, what the hell is going on?"
One thing I would note is the cultural differences, Japanese horror tends to work on tension and supernatural things. Ghosts, bumps in the night, general feeling of unease. Where as Western horror tends to be more gore and shock, the gore and shock has long ago lost it's shock value to us adults, where as the feeling of tension is very hard to break no matter what.
Compare Resident evil (Western horror style) with Silent Hill (Japanese horror style) and you'll see one is scary for a while, where as the other continues to be scary even if you're in a safe room with nothing creepy ever.
And just because it needs mentioning. The mannequin beheading event in Silent hill 3 is the scariest moment I've ever had in a game, just insanely creepy even though it presented no danger to me, it felt like I HAD to leave that room or something would behead me next.
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