Nothing makes me want to write blog posts more than a badly written blog post. Not to point fingers accusingly, but AJ Glasser at Kotaku wrote the most half-assed article on “scary video games” ever. Two games and a movie does not cover scary video games. And as such AJ doesn’t even cover the original topic of what makes video games scary.
What makes Video Games scary?
In horror movies, books, and stories the most frightening thing is not the evil monster, the blood, or the creepy music. These help of course, but the worst part is: the loss of control. Why are serial killers like the Saw guy so scary? They strip away your control. The translation between movies and video games doesn’t work here though. As a video game player, by definition, you ARE in control. So how does a designer strip away the feeling of control while allowing you the ability to control?
Example 1: Resident Evil
I know, shooting fish in a barrel here. Is it bad this game didn’t even get a *mention* in the Kotaku article? Resident Evil was all manner of a scary game. Ask anyone who has ever played it or just say two words : dogs – window. That’s no even a complete thought and yet everyone who played that game will *shudder* at those two words grouped together. Resident Evil was the huge survival horror game by which all other survival horror games since are measured. You play a group of SWAT equivalents that are sent to investigate this creepy old house with a serious zombie infestation that it turns out was caused by the super secret lab below the creepy house.
Way #1: Resident Evil limits the number of times you can save the game. You have to have a printer ribbon and there are only a few of them in the game. Talk about taking control away from the player. Suddenly every choice becomes critical, every death the possibility of having to re-play half an area. Those ugly pixelated zombies are far more scary already.
Way #2: Camera. Cameras and controls in games are the most re-worked and argued about part of the game design. RE does a great job of having a “user hostile” control scheme and camera. The fixed camera position makes it very hard to see around corners and target those slow lumbering zombies.
Way #3: Atmosphere. Okay this is kind of broad, but roll with it. The creepy music, the black crows flocking and making noise, the wind, the branches, the dark rooms, deep shadows, low drones… It all adds up to a very “hidden” environment. Light areas where you can see everything are far and few in between, so the fear of zombies rarely lets up. If you are afraid of dying, then you fear the places where your knowledge is imperfect.
Way#4: Throw away the rules. This is where those dogs come in. Zombies attack in dark hallways, move slow, and are proceeded by noise. As the player, you *learn* this. It is always true. Until it isn’t. I have a very vivid memory of watching my brother playing this game and entering said hallway. The creepy music fades, the lights are on and bright, you can see all the way to the end. He stopped dead in his tracks as if some second sense said, “It’s a trap!” in an Ackbar voice. He edged forward a step or two several times, reaching the point between the two windows on the right wall. “Huh.” He mumbled and shrugged, finally stepping forward at a normal pace to reach the door at the end of the hall. When two vicious fast moving zombie dogs come bursting in the window in a loud crash of glass and proceeded to turn my brother into kibble. I was suddenly joined by my brother, crouching behind the couch. Scary.
Example 2: Eternal Darkness
Eternal Darkness is a third person action game that places you in the role of different characters throughout history fighting some Lovecraftian Old Gods. Eternal Darkness deals with some pretty standard horror themes. But the game truly revolves around the Sanity Meter. Every time your character encounters something that falls outside the bounds of “real” they lose a bit of their mind. The more mind you lose, the crazier things get. The developers put a great deal of time and energy into creating a ton of “insane” effects. Bugs crawling on the screen, your character’s head exploding, the sound turning up and down. They made the game more about messing with the player than about killing the player. They also discovered the true terror button for gamers. Losing progress is bad, and drives the fear of death in games. But losing save games? One of the insanity effects included telling the player while they were saving that instead it was deleting all saved games on the memory card. I have to be completely honest, I launched myself across the room, over a coffee table and into a pile of games, movies, and controllers to rip all the memory cards out of the front of my Gamecube. Pure heart pounding, sweat drenched terror. And then the game is all like, “Just kidding. Progress saved.” It was the first time I ever had to walk away from a game and go calm down. I feel faint just thinking about it.
Example 3: Silent Hill 2
The Silent Hill series took a good idea RE had and then went nuts with it. Isolation, hidden information, bad camera angles… take all this and add:
Way #1: WTF was THAT? This pretty much defines the enemy development in Silent Hill. If you aren’t asking what that thing was you just fought, they re-worked the enemy until you did.
Way #2: Fog. It seems so simple and logical. Hidden information takes away control, so they take away your ability to cognitively connect a space. Even with the map I would have a hard time finding my way around. The fear the spawns from running into Pyramid Head or one of the mannequins at every disoriented turn.
Way #3: I did what now? As you play the game, you have a radio that gives bursts of static every time an enemy is near. Which is creepy enough. Until you hear over the radio that there is a person on the loose killing people. As you play through the game and hear more bursts you begin to realize that the murder is YOU. All those mannequins… yeah those were people. You were just too effected by Silent Hill to notice.
Way #4: Little Girls are creepy. Enough said.
So what other games have done it too?
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Two words. Shadow Temple. Let’s throw you in a super creepy dungeon and then take away your ability to see. Unless you use this little lens. Which takes away your ability to fight. Well played Mr. Miyamoto, well played. The loss of information along with the loss of defense makes this level exceptionally tense. Not only are there hidden enemies and hidden paths but also somethings that appear to be real aren’t.
Bioshock: Ask anyone who ever accidentally hit a big daddy while fighting a splicer. Big daddy fights are things you plan. You pick a location carefully. You set traps. Then you engage a big daddy. When you don’t plan ahead, you learn you are not in control. Bioshock also loves spawning monster’s behind you, but this really only works because they don’t attack until you turn around. One minute you are playing with a vending machine, the next minute, you got a face full of splicer who was formerly a ninja. Sander Cohen’s insanity with the paper mache splicers is pretty creepy too, because you see them as a part of the scenery then they become a part of the danger. Also note the Creepy Little Girl truth.
Persona 4: Taking control away from the player can be as easy as having the game not make sense. As far as gameplay goes, Persona 4 is a solid rpg/collector/social game but the true quality comes from the story. You finish the game because of the story. The scary thing is though, even in the end, it doesn’t make sense. All those people died, your character went through all that pain, agony, and flaming hoops for what? Some deity’s amusement.
World of Warcraft: Stop nerd raging and lets think about this logically. WoW can be a scary scary game. Creepy Little Girl Truth happens here too, her name is Pamela Redpath and she “lives” in Eastern Plaguelands. Ever been to Karazhan’s hidden crypts? You Tube it. It is an unfinished area of the game hidden under Kara. The sense of creepy is amped by the knowledge you aren’t supposed to be down there, the emptiness, and the names of the locations. If you don’t want to go out of bounds, go to Duskwood, and hang out in the Catacombs under the cemetery. Turn the music down, and the ambient up. Can you hear it? There used to be a great quest in Theramore where this guy asked for a knife to cut up meat. If you went into his yard, there were bloody bits of what *might* have been human. For those like me, who run on auto pilot, falling off a bridge in Thunder Bluff can be a frightful experience. (I managed to get my husband to sprint into the room thinking something bad had happened to me.) Add in a good healthy dose of fear when it comes to dying and every pull can become an exercise in raising goosebumps.
The common way of making someone experience fear revolves around this idea of taking away their control of the situation. Whether that is actual control through user hostile controls and camera or simply hidden information, add this to a creepy atmosphere and you have the beginnings of a video game fright fest.