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Survival-Horror Genre Going Extinct?

Posted by Soulskill on from the scary-proposition dept.

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.

32 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. That's just what they want you to think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:That's just what they want you to think by Jerek+Dain · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      I would say Left 4 Dead fits that bill nicely. It has some of the survival horror basics, but in a fun, fast-paced, co-op, action way.

      --
      Conversations tend to be so much more civil when there's a chance the other person might snap and kill you.
  2. Gaming article composition Algorithm by pm_rat_poison · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How to make a gaming article when you have no original material:
    a.) roll a d6

    b.) According to the result, choose one of the following:
    1.) PC
    2.) Adventure
    3.) Single Player
    4.) Survival Horror
    5.) DRM-free
    6.) Windows-only

    c.)Insert result in following sentence: Is this the death of $getrandomstring() gaming?

    1. Re:Gaming article composition Algorithm by theilliterate · · Score: 2, Funny

      Is this the end of Zombie Shakespeare?

  3. Change is difficult by pizzach · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know if I 100% agree. I a lot of people complain immediately when they don't get the standard fare. A number of these same people are responsible for the Playstation DualShock controller not changing in any really noticeable way for 10 years. The result: Resident Evil 5 is turning into a Halo style first person shooter.

    --
    Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
    1. Re:Change is difficult by Stormwatch · · Score: 2, Funny

      A number of these same people are responsible for the Playstation DualShock controller not changing in any really noticeable way for 10 years.

      The DualShock was never much good in the first place.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    2. Re:Change is difficult by mollymoo · · Score: 3, Funny

      The analog sticks on the DualShock 3 are a good 2mm further apart than on the DualShock 2. If you turn it upside down you'll notice the L2 and R2 buttons are now pseudo-triggers to ensure your fingers slip off them at a crucial moment even more easily than before. It only took me a several minutes of careful side-by-side comparison to notice those differences. The DualShock 3 is revolutionary I tell you, revolutionary!

      --
      Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
  4. Same problem as movies. by B5_geek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    True horror/fright can only be produced by ones imagination. While Hitchcock understood this and did a decent job of using it only books ever get it right. Instead today as with movies you mostly get sub-par lighting that hides things from your view.

    Remember the mess that Doom3(?) was that you couldn't hold your shotgun and flashlight at the same time? The game imposed a limitation on you that felt forced and limited the submersion.

    One game that got it right; Thief. The suspense of trying to sneak, and then panic heart-attack when you step on a squeaky floor!

    I have played Alone in the Dark, and many others in the genre but none have ever had me wound-uptight as Thief did.

    --
    "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
    1. Re:Same problem as movies. by KDR_11k · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Uncertainity is a good source of fear IMO, in a game it's not that scary when you see a huge monster stand in front of you, it's scarier when you know there's a sniper hiding somewhere in the area. Having to react to an event that can happen any time (enemy found between the rubble or something) or dying very quickly induces fear, it doesn't work when the enemy isn't dangerous enough (so you could take a hit or two before reacting and still be fine) or when you have enough advance warning (e.g. a long time between spotting the enemy and it attacking you).

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    2. Re:Same problem as movies. by MikeBabcock · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The chainsaw people in RE4 did a good job of giving me panic attacks. The game even tells you they're coming -- but since its nearly impossible to kill them without being well-prepared early in the game, knowing they're coming, or even from which direction doesn't help you avoid death the first few times.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    3. Re:Same problem as movies. by try_anything · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It also doesn't work if dying means you respawn one or two minutes earlier in the game. Call of Duty single-play mode is like this. I realized this when I realized that I never paused the game when I wanted to answer the door, talk on the phone, or get a drink from the fridge. I just left my guy standing there, and if he died, so what?

      When save points are so frequent, dying doesn't even impede your progress through the game unless you do it five times in a row. As a result, to make the game challenging, there have to be individual segments that are INSANELY challenging, which just makes you angry. You only get scared if dying once is a big deal. If dying twelve times in a row is what it takes to get a gamer's attention, he doesn't get scared. He gets angry.

      So, you go through the entire game never being scared. You're just bored, moderately engaged, or angry depending on whether the difficulty is too low, about right, or too high.

      Games that let you choose your save points, like the original Doom and Doom II, were much scarier, because you would limit your saves out of pride, and you'd also get caught up in the game and forget to save and then GAAAH I'M ABOUT TO DIE AND THIS IS REALLY SERIOUS! You panic about dying because it took half an hour of good play to get where you are, and if you die, you lose it all.

      If (like me) you were normally too proud to save in the middle of a level, it meant that there was a great buildup of suspense through the level, because you had more and more to lose the further you got. In checkpoint games, it doesn't matter where in the level you are, so there's no buildup and climax, no arc to the game at all except what they can build up artificially through tacked-on story elements.

    4. Re:Same problem as movies. by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      For me the last two good scares was F.E.A.R and Bioshock. Walking along feeling big and bad in Fear and then hearing that little "zzzzt" noise that let you know those fast moving invisible bastards were around, that was scary for me. And the first time I went after a Big Daddy was extra scary for me because I engaged by total accident. I was chasing a splicer and was going to pop it with my electro plasmid and finish it off with my pistol when I flew around the corner and fired my plasmid...and completely missed the splicer and hit the Big Daddy square in the back. When that big bastard turned around with those red eyes I knew what a bunny must feel like when looking at a grizzly. Now THAT was scary.

      So I don't think the genre is dead so much as we have evolved away from the "cheap scares" of using the controls and camera angles to ramp up the spook factor. But as the author pointed out in trying to switch from the cheap scares style to something more modern some of the old favorites are losing their way. But I think that just makes room for new games that won't be tied down with the legacy of the original RE or SH. I personally can't wait to see what kind of new scares the game designers come up with.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    5. Re:Same problem as movies. by try_anything · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The kind of fear you're talking about is great, but I rarely get it from games. I treasure the memory of playing an "Aliens" mod for Doom. "Keep it tight, people." "Check those corners... check those corners!" You can't see anything, but you can hear the aliens breathing. Then SHRIEK they're in your face. It got to the point where my heart was going a mile a minute the whole time, and it took me a long time to calm down afterwards so I could sleep.

      Unfortunately my success at finding good horror games (and horror movies, for that matter) is so low that it isn't even worth trying anymore -- one good game in ten means paying hundreds of bucks to find a good game, plus the frustration of sitting through so much garbage.

      So, yeah, I do like the second kind of horror you're talking about, but I've kind of given up on it.

      As for immersion, I agree completely. Few modern games are really immersive. Note to game designers: There's nothing realistic about looking at a bush and not being able to figure out whether you can step over it, or looking at a tree and not knowing whether there's an invisible corridor that will prevent you from ducking behind it. Nobody in World War II died while trying to take cover behind a pile of sandbags that were un-jump-overable for the sole reason that they marked the edge of the battlefield. Level designers need to stop putting visual verisimilitude over everything else and once again start considering the verisimilitude of the whole experience.

      One aspect that all immersive games share is that you can almost always predict how objects and terrain will affect your movement. Gosh, just like in real life! That's actually more important to immersion than making the terrain look realistic. If you're examining every rock and bush as a game construct instead of perceiving it as a "real" object, then you're going to see the monster, scary noise, or eerie apparition as just another game construct. You think, "Well, here's a new game object. Looks like a werewolf. Let's figure out how to interact with it. I'll start by walking towards it and seeing what happens. I'll probably get killed, but I might as well be systematic if I want to figure out how it works." That's not an immersive experience :-)

      "Hmmm, there's a toddler sitting on the floor of my living room finger-painting with blood."

      Immersive game reaction: "What... the... FUCK is a mysterious toddler doing in my house? Whose blood is that!!?"

      Non-immersive game experience: "I wonder if I can jump over him?"

    6. Re:Same problem as movies. by hairyfeet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You must have better eyesight than me, because while I had no problems tracking them once they moved, locking in on them before that was a royal PITA for me. And I also had the "why won't you die!" problem with them. I finally got decent at one-on-one with them using the shotgun at point blank range, but 1 second off on your timing and you was going to be hurt bad. But if there was more than one and they tried to gang up on me, that was when I was doing a Predator and firing like mad trying to drop somebody, anybody before they just beat me into the ground.

      And that brings up a good point. For me to be scared in a game there actually has to be some risks. Too many of the games are now either giving you one or two "BFG" style weapons that as long as you have ammo for it is a turkey shoot, or they give you so much ammo on your regular weapons you can shoot more rounds than a Rambo movie and never run out. That is why I think Fear and Bioshock worked for me, because the invisible guys had speed and stealth and like you said were damned hard to kill, and even with the decent weapons in Bioshock a Big Daddy can still bring the pain if you aren't careful.

      But I think that what made RE and SH scary for me wasn't so much the cheap scares(although the dogs through the stained glass in RE was a good one) but the "Oh crap I am nearly out of ammo!" feeling I had throughout the game. It is kind of a shame that on most games nowadays you have to crank it up to "super extreme hardcore" difficulty just to get that same out of ammo feeling because they go so overboard with the rounds. But I agree trying to drop those invisible bastards was a nerve racking experience due to their toughness.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  5. Left4Dead?! by Doches · · Score: 4, Informative

    Umm...What about Left4Dead? I fail to see how the genre can be 'dying' if it includes a wildly popular new release? I mean, I guess you could argue that Left4Dead isn't similar enough to to qualify as a member of the genre -- but it seems like a perfectly valid (and, frankly, awesome) way to evolve the genre. Oh, two more words:

    Dead Space.

    Maybe you've just got a really, really narrow definition of what qualifies as 'survival horror'?

    1. Re:Left4Dead?! by p0tat03 · · Score: 2

      Neither Left4Dead nor Dead Rising are survivor horror games - both are *parodies* of survival horror games. Neither L4D nor Dead Rising have any truly scary moments, and instead use the zombified landscape as merely a backdrop.

    2. Re:Left4Dead?! by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 2

      Left4Dead is definitely not survival horror. Survival horror implies a very real, very high risk of death if you screw up. Left4Dead you can just spray and pray forever. It's a shooter, not survival horror.

  6. Silent Hill wasn't fixed perspective like RE was by Optic7 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Silent hill wasn't fixed, pre-rendered perspective like resident evil was. That's one of the reasons why I never got into RE, but I loved Silent Hill. SH was also so much creepier and suspenseful than RE.

    Another thing, isn't Left 4 Dead somewhat of a survival horror game as well? It's one of the top games right now yet there's no mention of it.

  7. It's Evolving by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At some point early on in Resident Evil 4, you encountered a door. Leon promptly kicked it open with his boot and you ran into the next room. It was a statement. The entirety of Resident Evil 4 was a statement. That statement was, "Survival Horror has Evolved". The evolution could be seen early on in games like Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis 2. Games like Dead Space are continuing that evolution. The genre is changing, not dying.

    If you want a genre that is truly going extinct, just look at RPGs. I'm still waiting for any half decent one to come out in the PS3. It's depressing when you think back to the genre's boom time of 1997-2000.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
    1. Re:It's Evolving by bonch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Fallout 3 has a lot of the same problems Oblivion did. Also, the writing and voice acting can sometimes be quite bad, and the plot sort of rushes and falls apart embarrassingly once you reach your father.

      It's also breakable. I killed Burke before he could kill the sheriff Simms. When Burke died, Simms promptly disappeared in front of me, and all NPC scripts still acted like he had died. That's when I knew I was playing a typical Bethesda game.

    2. Re:It's Evolving by Harinezumi · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's still SRPGs. For the PS3, Disgaea 3 and Valkyria Chronicles are both very much worth playing. And speaking of the 1997-2000 boom, they just released a new Fallout game!

  8. Don't worry by SirLurksAlot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Survival horror isn't going extinct, it's just waiting for the next sequel... and this time it's gonna be personal!

    --
    God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
  9. Have they looked at Left 4 Dead? by schwit1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Maximum PC reviewed Left 4 Dead and rated it a 10/Kick-Ass. Doesn't sound like the genre is doing that bad.

  10. No... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just because a couple of series that are notorious hallmarks of the genre arguably jumped the shark, it does not mean that the genre is necessarily in trouble. I don't know what specifically occurred in their development, but I do know the names drew a lot of attention. It's hard to avoid people coming in thinking 'it's pretty good, but we need to tweak it'. I have observed it in all sorts of long-standing products in all industries, some people manage to get a share of control that think they know what the customers would want better than the customers or the people who originally captured said customers' attention.

    That said, I'm not sure what I would compare to Silent Hill (I didn't think overly much of RE, except to agree that RE4 dispensed with what few aspects of RE I found frightening). Left4Dead is a fun game, but it isn't quite comparable. Without a substantial narrative, it just isn't scary to the degree or type that Silent Hill has historically been.

    I think the original Silent Hill team stepped away as they realized they were pretty much out of ideas on where to take things.

  11. not for me by ILuvRamen · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
    1. Re:not for me by p0tat03 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I know you've been modded funny, but I think that's actually quite insightful. Left 4 Dead has proven that "die zombies die!" type of survival horror can be immensely popular - even more so than traditional scare-your-pants-off games like Silent Hill.

      I know when I pick up a controller after a long day of work I don't want to be scared out of my mind - same reason why I have no great love for horror movies. If they were somewhat interesting in terms of story, sure, but like most horror movies, they are not - just a lot of pseudo-scientific Freudian psycho-babble by game designers who think they know horror. Yes, this applies to Silent Hill - they have perfected the art of scaring you, but not so much the art of writing a compelling storyline that isn't full of juvenile metaphors that's so thick you can cut it with a knife.

      So given the choice between run-and-gun fun with my friends mowing down hordes of zombies, vs. playing a game with a dumb plot and too many "LOOK, WHATS THAT SKITTERING IN YOUR PERIPHERAL VISION?!" moments, I choose the former.

  12. Survival horror, not action horror by FrostDust · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The reason games like Res. 4, Silent Hill Homecoming, and Left4Dead aren't proper survival horror is that your first reaction to seeing an enemy is to kill it. In the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill, killing everything in your path would result in you running out of ammo quickly, and/or taking massive injuries due to bashing them up close in melee.

    While you could interpret survival horror as being about, as the name implies, surviving scary situations, the genre is supposed to achieve this by making you feel vulnerable and desperate. This was achieved, as stated before, by limiting your supplies so much your were forced to sneak around and avoid enemies, or by making you dread the situation, fearful you could be overwhelmed at any moment.

    Silent Hill achieved both of these rather well, especially with the radio and flashlight. Keeping the flashlight off prevented enemies from finding you, but you could barely see. The radio would keep you on your toes, looking around frantically for the enemy the that is there, but you can't yet see. The general inhumanity and psychological implications of the monsters, as opposed to the zombies of Resident Evil, also added to the creepy atmosphere.

    Going through with the attitude you could kill everything would easily get you killed. Survival horror is about surviving because you do so against all odds, not because of good combat skills. So, as the genre evolves into action horror, it is definitely not the same as survival horror.

  13. Bring back the old franchises by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is going dead because there are no quality games being made for this genre.

    The Silent Hill series was great, but they stopped making games after SH3. SH4 was a different game with last minute changes to include the Silent Hill universe and had mixed reactions from fans, SH Origins and SH5 were not produced by KCET and had completely different American and European development teams. They both paled in comparison to earlier games in the series and reeked of shoddy effort.

    RE4, while a wonderful game and hugely successful, blended survival horror with the action of an FPS. Capcom showed they could certainly make next-gen survival horror games with traditional elements like Resident Evil 0 and RE: Remake, but they seem to have no intention of making more games of that type.

    Fatal Frame became more action oriented as time went on and the series is dead. Siren filled a very niche market and the new games appeal to some, but definitely not others.

    For survival horror to get back on its feet, Konami needs to make traditional style RE games in parallel with the new model that RE4/RE5 use. God knows I'd buy both types. Konami needs to regroup the people involved with Silent Hill 1-3 and make a new game themselves, without farming off the rights to talentless developers with only a handful of poorly made games under their belt.

    Survival horror is a genre that can come back at any time, providing somebody puts the effort into it. Other than Capcom keeping things going with RE5 (and its fun but untraditional stylings), there really isn't much more.

  14. Make up your minds by Trojan35 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I really don't get it. Everyone complains that games are the same. They're all the same. There's nothing new.

    Then, we get some really cool games coming out. We get GoW which takes 3rd person shooters viable (okay, so it's not that different). Stepping further outside genres, we get GH & Rock Band, a whole new way to enjoy music and video games. Going further, we get Ban & Kaz from Rare, which is an amazing vehicle/puzzle/action game. We get Dance Dance Revolution. We get the Wii and motion-sensing remotes. We get Wii Fit. And then we also get user-input games like LittleBigPlanet. All of these have either created new or revitalized old genres. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more that have been amazing.

    And now everyone's complaining that people aren't playing the old stagnant genres as much? It also ignores how successful games like Left4Dead have been? Or shoot-off genres like Dead Rising?

    This is stupid.

    1. Re:Make up your minds by ConanG · · Score: 4, Informative

      Don't forget World of Goo! That's a pretty original game.

  15. Clock Tower! by ardor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How can Clock Tower be missing here? Particularly the very first one running on SNES, which still gives me the creeps, even when watching youtube recordings of its gameplay (example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7N8Q69--Ws). This game is VERY VERY scary.

    --
    This sig does not contain any SCO code.
  16. I've got some hopes for this one... by Dr.+Manhattan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They Hunger was a good Half-Life mod, and they're working on a new one with the Source engine: They Hunger: Lost Souls. They haven't updated their progress in a while, but I still have hope.

    --
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