Survival-Horror Genre Going Extinct?

Destructoid is running an opinion piece looking at the state of the survival-horror genre in games, suggesting that the way it has developed over the past several years has been detrimental to its own future. "During the nineties, horror games were all the rage, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill using the negative aspects of other games to an advantage. While fixed camera angles, dodgy controls and clunky combat were seen as problematic in most games, the traditional survival horror took them as a positive boon. A seemingly less demanding public ate up these games with a big spoon, overlooking glaring faults in favor of videogames that could be genuinely terrifying." The Guardian's Games Blog has posted a response downplaying the decline of the genre, looking forward to Ubisoft's upcoming I Am Alive and wondering if independent game developers will pick up where major publishers have left off.

Comments

That's just what they want you to think

[Anonymous Coward]

And then an other genre comes flying out of an air duct or dark corner!

not for me

[ILuvRamen]

I think most people are like me after playing regular FPS games. I don't get scared, I just get motivated and angry. They're like "oooh, are you gonna make it out alive" and I'm thinking "umm yes, and I'm gonna drive this motorcycle so far up that zombie's ass he'll be farting exhaust fumes. Then I'm gonna go BOOM HEADSHOT, BOOM HEADSHOT! Then I'll scream 'THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES!' and then break out the window all actiony and we'll see what's what then! You can't intimidate or scare me!" It's really either that or actually act really scared and freaked out about whether or not you're going to survive the entire game and who the heck wants to feel like that for like 8 hours? You could just walk around New York City alone at night for free to feel that, and most people tend to avoid that feeling. So if they'd just let me scream "****ing zombies, DIE!" and give up trying to scare me, it'd be fine but then that's not really survival horror.