In fact, the part where I see the monster, and is fighting it off with a rusty pipe or a TV I concealed in my pocket (heh), it usually the least scary part. The part where I'm in an empty room, and anything can pop out, anything, not even things that would kill you, can pop out, is the scary part.
The fear of something suddenly popping out, or something happening, lethal or not, is the scariest thing I face in video games.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this. In my mind, there's several kinds of fear and the one you're describing is what I'd call creepy fear. You know the serial killer's in the house but you don't know where he is, if he knows you're there or what he'll do to you. What does he look like? This is the point where the imagination takes control.
I know the real answer is somewhere in that twilight zone all gamers know: that blurry answer between "He's attacking me!" and "He's attacking Jill/Miku/Gordon!"
Why has no one brought up the Chzo Mythos yet. Arguably anything threatening alien, and ugly tends to be very scary. It's all in the atmosphere. Another game I recommend is Missing by Orchard l which ends up being intensely scary by the time it's over. And it uses still images! Lost in the Nightmare is also very scary. Play them if you want to learn more on the subject at hand.
Thank you. I will. And sorry I didn't reply to your post earlier. I somehow missed it.
Imagine this scenario in an adventure game. You come to a house. Friendly place with flowers and beautiful Victorian wallpaper and the friendliest people you've ever met. You stay the night there. You wake up in the morning only to discover your own bed is covered in blood, and the place looks sick and decrepit. There are nasty deep throaty demonic voices everywhere, tormenting you, playing with you, telling you to eat your eyes and claw your throat and other sick things. You end up trapped in the house, and a bunch of crazy scary things happens. Basically your basic jump scares and such. Anyway the plot twist is that the people in the house became possessed at night by evil spirits, and they killed you in your sleep. You find this out when you find your own body in the cellar. You are now a ghost, helpless, without anyone who can help you, alone and trapped to the house along with demons and horrifying spirits. The only one who can help you is a traveler who just wandered into the house just like you. You have to protect said person from being murdered as they slowly uncover the mystery and the truth about the people of the house. The people of the house disappear after a while, and the person gets trapped in the house with you, still alive. You also have to keep from getting taken over by demons when they come out at night. so not only do you have to worry about your fear and safety, but also the safety of the person who is slowly realizing your presence and wanting to help you escape.
Now in said scenario, it's the horror of the situation itself, plus the atmosphere, that makes the adventure incredibly terrifying and scary. And that's all you need. You need a good setting, a good story, and good characters, but above all you need great atmosphere. There is no escape is a great way to terrify you. You are completely alone is another horrifying aspect. Then there is The shining ray of hope in the person who might be able to save you. Then there is the Defeat of that hope and the Addition of hopelessness when he is trapped there too. There is also the Fear of the unknown and The terror of the malevolent power in the demonic creatures and The disappearing and reappearing monster into which the house's residents fit. And finally the The desire to live and the Fear of pain in the fact that everyone you are trapped with wants to hurt you. Maybe to add to it even more you could have the Defending spirit which is then destroyed leading to the Nowhere you can hide from us/me category of fear. All very bleak, and all things which are either essential or wonderful tools in the aid of the storyteller to present an atmosphere of abstract fear. Of course you can also make something too scary, and then no one would want to play it. Pretty much, though, you need to be able to create an emotional response in the player using psychological archetypes.
That's a very interesting post, but I'm wondering - and this is a consequence of the limitation my mind is currently looping in - but I'm wondering how you add a consequence for failure. The way you described your hypothetical game made me think of Hitchcock's Psycho.
One of the characters in that movie is killed on a flight of stairs. The way it's shot, you seem to be looking in from a window. You realize there's danger, that the character doesn't know it, and you see the killer a second before the character does.
This, plus, again, the way it's shot, it feels like you're looking from a window. I remember jumping and saying, "Look out, be careful!"
It brings up your argument about watching for someone, and I'm wondering how:
1. Your failure to protect this person affects the game: does he look out for himself on his own sometimes? Do you restart?
2. How you could adapt Hitchock's lessons from Psycho into a game.
The other thing I'm thinking of - and this was the idea that first prompted this whole thread - was how would you induce suspense at the moment of confrontation. There's a scene in the Doctor Who episode "Blink"
where a group of creatures called the Weeping Angels attack the protagonists. The Angels are deadly creatures that turn to stone when seen by anyone (the quantum-zero effect). In the episode, they are trying to open the Doctor's time-traveling phone booth to get the energy inside it; the protagonists are trying to prevent that by sending the phone booth back to the Doctor
. The way the episode resolves itself is very adventure-gamey, but you have to see it. I recommend you see the episode, but if you can't be bothered then this is the scene in question[/ur].
Also - probably a very subjective thought - I do not consider the interactivity of a game to be hindering suspense. In fact, I think the opposite is true, regardless whether the game has the possibility of death.
Still, it is death that could feel more artificial. Unlike movies or books, the story restarts until the character succeeds, which could render the idea of "death" altogether insignificant. In fact, we feel frustration if death sequences are too frequent or if we have to replay too much after our character's death. Very bad things from a game designer's point of view! The designer has a far better chance at succeeding at creating suspense if he relies on the "classic" narrative techniques.
This is the basic problem: how many times can you die before it becomes meaninglesS? How many times can you die before it becomes frustrating?
And the answer to inducing real suspense, as I said earlier in this post, is somewhere in that place where "I'm in danger" and "My character is in danger" blurs. The interactivity, I think, is the key. I've always believed that more blame should be given to the player than the character when, say, a beloved person dies, which is something they did brilliantly in Metal Gear Solid (the first one), as you said. Fear is the same way.
That's a very interesting post, but I'm wondering - and this is a consequence of the limitation my mind is currently looping in - but I'm wondering how you add a consequence for failure. The way you described your hypothetical game made me think of Hitchcock's Psycho.
One of the characters in that movie is killed on a flight of stairs. The way it's shot, you seem to be looking in from a window. You realize there's danger, that the character doesn't know it, and you see the killer a second before the character does.
This, plus, again, the way it's shot, it feels like you're looking from a window. I remember jumping and saying, "Look out, be careful!"
It brings up your argument about watching for someone, and I'm wondering how:
1. Your failure to protect this person affects the game: does he look out for himself on his own sometimes? Do you restart?
2. How you could adapt Hitchock's lessons from Psycho into a game.
I would make it to where if he dies another person comes to the house and you have to try to save them etc. That is if you survive the demons long enough. Basically. No restarts unless YOU die. If the characters die though, then you have to live with your failure. This ups the fear, dread, and misery a lot.
The other thing I'm thinking of - and this was the idea that first prompted this whole thread - was how would you induce suspense at the moment of confrontation. There's a scene in the Doctor Who episode "Blink"
where a group of creatures called the Weeping Angels attack the protagonists. The Angels are deadly creatures that turn to stone when seen by anyone (the quantum-zero effect). In the episode, they are trying to open the Doctor's time-traveling phone booth to get the energy inside it; the protagonists are trying to prevent that by sending the phone booth back to the Doctor
. The way the episode resolves itself is very adventure-gamey, but you have to see it. I recommend you see the episode, but if you can't be bothered then this is the scene in question.
And my thought is this: how can you make a game where you induce this suspense, establish the Angels as a real threat, keep the solution to the ordeal based on smarts and not brawn and yet not make it frustrating, lame, overly difficult or without true fear (because you can't die)? It's a tough one.
That clip was scary as hell. But I don't think it would be tough to do in a game. The obvious example for me to go to is the LeChuck fight in LeChuck's Revenge. The best example of fear faced with wit. Also the hotel room scene in Broken Sword, although you can't do anything during it, it's still scary for me every time I play it. You have to be able to relate to the fear and the situation. You have to make the player feel in danger themselves; terrified. Sure you can be calm after the game over screen but up until then you need to push it for all it's worth. Make the player forget the game over screen exists. Immersion.
So in your game, how does the protagonist's failure to protect their friend affect the game? And what happens when the protagonist himself is faced with the demons?
It affects the game in that you have to deal with the pain of their death. Let's say that in the game you get the best ending based on keeping the first person that helps you alive. There are about thirteen people and around the same amount of endings. There is a different ending and the worst and most awful is when you fall all the way down to thirteen. Actually I'll go as far as to say there could be a secret way to prevent YOURSELF from dying and get a secret ending for that as well. When the protagonist is faced with the demons anything could happen. When the sun goes down, then things would get really bad. I'd imagine they'd have to be the most awful things you could portray without making the player turn the game off. I think that while the living humans can only see a beautiful house, the ghost You can see a horrible dimension of pain and evil present within it, kind of like, I dunno, Hellraiser's world inside of a house. Therefore you, the player, are constantly tormented with images you don't want to see when the demons come out. Like the house is a huge slideshow of evil for all the worst things you don't want to see. There was a concept used in a book I read once about a machine that when someone was placed inside, they were gradually exposed to unimaginably horrifying images, noises, sounds, wind, etc. that take a psychological toll on their very mind, damaging their brain and driving them insane. A similar concept was used in the movie House on Haunted Hill and also sort of used in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So think of the house as a giant that, and the demons manifested in that. Danger and terror at every turn in every room. The worst place in the world. And I'm not talking about gore or stuff like that, but things that play on the very psychological mind and make the character feel terrible and awful until they can barely take it. A good instance of something using psychological horror like this is Neon Genesis Evangelion, Boogiepop Phantom, or Paranoia Agent. But again, the player probably wouldn't want to play that, so there would have to be limits on how far you go. A Japanese game probably wouldn't use limits at all though, but I don't find myself wanting to play many Japanese horror games. :eek: Again, this is all hypothetical. I don't think I could ever make or play a game like that.
On the flipside, you could portray the demons completely subtly and get away with a lot of horror too. Sometimes you don't need to push things at all. However in this type of world and manifestation, you would be constantly on edge and uneasy and you would always feel horrible, so when the demons did show up, the impact would be insane. The person you have to protect would only get a BIT of the scary side, and most of the danger to them or unease would be normal bumps in the night and the residents possessed and trying to kill them. I think a good example and frightening portrayal in this vein is in the movie Event Horizon. I personally can't even watch that movie, but I will admit the fear it creates is staggering.
This is the basic problem: how many times can you die before it becomes meaningless? How many times can you die before it becomes frustrating?
You can use the same death but have it come out of nowhere, and not let the player know when it's going to come. In other words don't just have it used in the same place every time. Some deaths can do that, but the scariest ones won't. They'll mix it up. Take LeChuck from MI2 again. Just having you not know in which room he would appear made it so much scarier. If you always knew that walking into the first aid room meant you would run into him, it would no longer be scary, as you could avoid that room all you wanted until you were ready. With how they set it up, there was no way to avoid LeChuck or possible death so you were always on edge.
Ooh, nice discussion. I'm gonna point out a few suspenseful elements from games I've played and hopefully reach some kind of conclusion.
The first one is Morrowind (yeah). Morrowind is not a scary game all in all, but the atmospheres have a tendency to be a bit creepy and you never know what to expect when you walk around the corner. There's also a specific sound that plays when someone hits you and it's ridiculously loud. It sounds a bit like smashing cabbage with a sledgehammer. The point however is that there's allmost complete silence most of the time and after experiencing the startling feeling you do your best to avoid it. This creates suspense (for me anyways )
I'm also going to point out the best horror game I've ever played, though not yet completed, Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the earth. Just imagine a first person shooter like half-life where you reach a checkpoint from time to time. This is a moment where you have reached safety and feel a sense of achievement and progression. In this game however, the gaps between these checkpoints have limited time puzzles with really creepy people trying to kill you. An example of a time based puzzle is when someone chase you and force you to do a set of things in a timely fashion. Autosaving becomes pointless this way because you have to do everything right from start to finish.
There are also a lot of suspenseful stealth elements. Basically sneaking past a bunch of patrolling bad guys who each walk in a specific pattern.
These games involve death and failiure, but let's compare them with the MI2 finale. It can be considered to be an element of failiure when LeChuck catches up with you. The scene as a whole can go on forever and there's no penalty for failing, but it's practically a series of small time based puzzles with checkpoints in them. If you fail to do it before LeChuck enters the room, you try again. That's basically what you try to avoid and why that scene is suspenseful.
One thing that always amuses me about Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is that it was made by the same people as Simon the Sorcerer (Mike & Simon Woodroffe).
Let's consider successful horror franchises, what do they generally have in common: a small/singular cast of characters you care about against an apparently unstoppable force, be it zombies, vampires, a serial killer, aliens, whatever. Which is incredibly similar to a blockbuster action film/game, the main difference being the build of tension.
With a horror game, there ha to be a state which leads to failure, which often ends up being death. The character in a horror game should be a cipher, Gordon Freeman in HL2 (Ravenholme), Isaac in Dead Space, the various protagonists in the Resident Evil series. Adventure game protagonists tend to be fleshed out, herein lies the problem. You need to create fear by means which aren't than personal.
With a horror game, there ha to be a state which leads to failure, which often ends up being death. The character in a horror game should be a cipher, Gordon Freeman in HL2 (Ravenholme), Isaac in Dead Space, the various protagonists in the Resident Evil series. Adventure game protagonists tend to be fleshed out, herein lies the problem. You need to create fear by means which aren't than personal.
I'm not sure I agree here. If I were to name the scariest games I've ever played, those would be the Thief games, and the protagonist there has a lot of personality and often talks to himself during missions. Sometimes Garrett's reactions to some of the scarier stuff makes it even worse, because you're given the pretense that he's not easily shaken, so when something happens that sets him on edge, you know it's bad news.
To continue gushing about Thief: I think they're pretty good at creating a suspenseful atmosphere without the threat of dying/failing. I mean, you CAN die/get caught, but there are plenty of things that can't hurt you or are just part of the scenery that are still incredibly creepy. Most of the scary/undead-themed levels (and even some of the non-undead levels) plop you down in the aftermath of something horrible, and you pretty much have to piece together what happened yourself using whatever environmental clues you can find and fill in the rest with your imagination. And as Brainiac pointed out earlier with that TV Tropes link, what the player imagines is probably way worse than anything the developers could have come up with (especially with the technology at the time).
I'm not sure I agree here. If I were to name the scariest games I've ever played, those would be the Thief games, and the protagonist there has a lot of personality and often talks to himself during missions. Sometimes Garrett's reactions to some of the scarier stuff makes it even worse, because you're given the pretense that he's not easily shaken, so when something happens that sets him on edge, you know it's bad news.
To continue gushing about Thief: I think they're pretty good at creating a suspenseful atmosphere without the threat of dying/failing. I mean, you CAN die/get caught, but there are plenty of things that can't hurt you or are just part of the scenery that are still incredibly creepy. Most of the scary/undead-themed levels (and even some of the non-undead levels) plop you down in the aftermath of something horrible, and you pretty much have to piece together what happened yourself using whatever environmental clues you can find and fill in the rest with your imagination. And as Brainiac pointed out earlier with that TV Tropes link, what the player imagines is probably way worse than anything the developers could have come up with (especially with the technology at the time).
I've only played thief 3, in which the only scary bit was the cradle, which specifically played on standard human fears: darkness and death.
From my experiences with the Thief series it is closer to the fear which is evoked, in Splinter Cell and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Enemies are fairly easy to kill, but so are you.
Comments
Yeah, I've been thinking about this. In my mind, there's several kinds of fear and the one you're describing is what I'd call creepy fear. You know the serial killer's in the house but you don't know where he is, if he knows you're there or what he'll do to you. What does he look like? This is the point where the imagination takes control.
I know the real answer is somewhere in that twilight zone all gamers know: that blurry answer between "He's attacking me!" and "He's attacking Jill/Miku/Gordon!"
Thank you. I will. And sorry I didn't reply to your post earlier. I somehow missed it.
That's a very interesting post, but I'm wondering - and this is a consequence of the limitation my mind is currently looping in - but I'm wondering how you add a consequence for failure. The way you described your hypothetical game made me think of Hitchcock's Psycho.
It brings up your argument about watching for someone, and I'm wondering how:
1. Your failure to protect this person affects the game: does he look out for himself on his own sometimes? Do you restart?
2. How you could adapt Hitchock's lessons from Psycho into a game.
The other thing I'm thinking of - and this was the idea that first prompted this whole thread - was how would you induce suspense at the moment of confrontation. There's a scene in the Doctor Who episode "Blink"
And my thought is this: how can you make a game where you induce this suspense, establish the Angels as a real threat, keep the solution to the ordeal based on smarts and not brawn and yet not make it frustrating, lame, overly difficult or without true fear (because you can't die)? It's a tough one.
So in your game, how does the protagonist's failure to protect their friend affect the game? And what happens when the protagonist himself is faced with the demons?
This is the basic problem: how many times can you die before it becomes meaninglesS? How many times can you die before it becomes frustrating?
And the answer to inducing real suspense, as I said earlier in this post, is somewhere in that place where "I'm in danger" and "My character is in danger" blurs. The interactivity, I think, is the key. I've always believed that more blame should be given to the player than the character when, say, a beloved person dies, which is something they did brilliantly in Metal Gear Solid (the first one), as you said. Fear is the same way.
It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned "The World's Shortest Horror Story."
"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a lock on the door..."
Think on that; there's different levels of horror in it. After all, Nothing Is Scarier.
:eek: That is amazing! Who wrote that?
The first woman unlocked the door. "As you're the last man on Earth," she remarked, "you're about to become very busy."
I would make it to where if he dies another person comes to the house and you have to try to save them etc. That is if you survive the demons long enough. Basically. No restarts unless YOU die. If the characters die though, then you have to live with your failure. This ups the fear, dread, and misery a lot.
That clip was scary as hell. But I don't think it would be tough to do in a game. The obvious example for me to go to is the LeChuck fight in LeChuck's Revenge. The best example of fear faced with wit. Also the hotel room scene in Broken Sword, although you can't do anything during it, it's still scary for me every time I play it. You have to be able to relate to the fear and the situation. You have to make the player feel in danger themselves; terrified. Sure you can be calm after the game over screen but up until then you need to push it for all it's worth. Make the player forget the game over screen exists. Immersion.
It affects the game in that you have to deal with the pain of their death. Let's say that in the game you get the best ending based on keeping the first person that helps you alive. There are about thirteen people and around the same amount of endings. There is a different ending and the worst and most awful is when you fall all the way down to thirteen. Actually I'll go as far as to say there could be a secret way to prevent YOURSELF from dying and get a secret ending for that as well. When the protagonist is faced with the demons anything could happen. When the sun goes down, then things would get really bad. I'd imagine they'd have to be the most awful things you could portray without making the player turn the game off. I think that while the living humans can only see a beautiful house, the ghost You can see a horrible dimension of pain and evil present within it, kind of like, I dunno, Hellraiser's world inside of a house. Therefore you, the player, are constantly tormented with images you don't want to see when the demons come out. Like the house is a huge slideshow of evil for all the worst things you don't want to see. There was a concept used in a book I read once about a machine that when someone was placed inside, they were gradually exposed to unimaginably horrifying images, noises, sounds, wind, etc. that take a psychological toll on their very mind, damaging their brain and driving them insane. A similar concept was used in the movie House on Haunted Hill and also sort of used in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So think of the house as a giant that, and the demons manifested in that. Danger and terror at every turn in every room. The worst place in the world. And I'm not talking about gore or stuff like that, but things that play on the very psychological mind and make the character feel terrible and awful until they can barely take it. A good instance of something using psychological horror like this is Neon Genesis Evangelion, Boogiepop Phantom, or Paranoia Agent. But again, the player probably wouldn't want to play that, so there would have to be limits on how far you go. A Japanese game probably wouldn't use limits at all though, but I don't find myself wanting to play many Japanese horror games. :eek: Again, this is all hypothetical. I don't think I could ever make or play a game like that.
On the flipside, you could portray the demons completely subtly and get away with a lot of horror too. Sometimes you don't need to push things at all. However in this type of world and manifestation, you would be constantly on edge and uneasy and you would always feel horrible, so when the demons did show up, the impact would be insane. The person you have to protect would only get a BIT of the scary side, and most of the danger to them or unease would be normal bumps in the night and the residents possessed and trying to kill them. I think a good example and frightening portrayal in this vein is in the movie Event Horizon. I personally can't even watch that movie, but I will admit the fear it creates is staggering.
You can use the same death but have it come out of nowhere, and not let the player know when it's going to come. In other words don't just have it used in the same place every time. Some deaths can do that, but the scariest ones won't. They'll mix it up. Take LeChuck from MI2 again. Just having you not know in which room he would appear made it so much scarier. If you always knew that walking into the first aid room meant you would run into him, it would no longer be scary, as you could avoid that room all you wanted until you were ready. With how they set it up, there was no way to avoid LeChuck or possible death so you were always on edge.
sequels never live up to the originals
The first one is Morrowind (yeah). Morrowind is not a scary game all in all, but the atmospheres have a tendency to be a bit creepy and you never know what to expect when you walk around the corner. There's also a specific sound that plays when someone hits you and it's ridiculously loud. It sounds a bit like smashing cabbage with a sledgehammer. The point however is that there's allmost complete silence most of the time and after experiencing the startling feeling you do your best to avoid it. This creates suspense (for me anyways
I'm also going to point out the best horror game I've ever played, though not yet completed, Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the earth. Just imagine a first person shooter like half-life where you reach a checkpoint from time to time. This is a moment where you have reached safety and feel a sense of achievement and progression. In this game however, the gaps between these checkpoints have limited time puzzles with really creepy people trying to kill you. An example of a time based puzzle is when someone chase you and force you to do a set of things in a timely fashion. Autosaving becomes pointless this way because you have to do everything right from start to finish.
There are also a lot of suspenseful stealth elements. Basically sneaking past a bunch of patrolling bad guys who each walk in a specific pattern.
These games involve death and failiure, but let's compare them with the MI2 finale. It can be considered to be an element of failiure when LeChuck catches up with you. The scene as a whole can go on forever and there's no penalty for failing, but it's practically a series of small time based puzzles with checkpoints in them. If you fail to do it before LeChuck enters the room, you try again. That's basically what you try to avoid and why that scene is suspenseful.
With a horror game, there ha to be a state which leads to failure, which often ends up being death. The character in a horror game should be a cipher, Gordon Freeman in HL2 (Ravenholme), Isaac in Dead Space, the various protagonists in the Resident Evil series. Adventure game protagonists tend to be fleshed out, herein lies the problem. You need to create fear by means which aren't than personal.
If you are interested Irrational games (Bioshock 1, System Shock, etc) did a short podcast on fear. http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-behavior-episode-5/
That reminded me, Frictional Games (Penumbra series) has an entire blog about horror game design.
I'm not sure I agree here. If I were to name the scariest games I've ever played, those would be the Thief games, and the protagonist there has a lot of personality and often talks to himself during missions. Sometimes Garrett's reactions to some of the scarier stuff makes it even worse, because you're given the pretense that he's not easily shaken, so when something happens that sets him on edge, you know it's bad news.
To continue gushing about Thief: I think they're pretty good at creating a suspenseful atmosphere without the threat of dying/failing. I mean, you CAN die/get caught, but there are plenty of things that can't hurt you or are just part of the scenery that are still incredibly creepy. Most of the scary/undead-themed levels (and even some of the non-undead levels) plop you down in the aftermath of something horrible, and you pretty much have to piece together what happened yourself using whatever environmental clues you can find and fill in the rest with your imagination. And as Brainiac pointed out earlier with that TV Tropes link, what the player imagines is probably way worse than anything the developers could have come up with (especially with the technology at the time).
I've only played thief 3, in which the only scary bit was the cradle, which specifically played on standard human fears: darkness and death.
From my experiences with the Thief series it is closer to the fear which is evoked, in Splinter Cell and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Enemies are fairly easy to kill, but so are you.
I agree.