The Last of Us, Story Layers and A Brief History of Action Games

By Thomas Grip on 07/05/13 04:29:00 am

This was orginally posted on the official Frictional Games blog. I have now finished playing The Last of Us and feel it has quite a few things worth discussing. Overall it is a great game and there is a lot that can be learnt from it. Especially noteworthy are the nerve wrecking encounters. When at its best they top even the ones in Resident Evil 4 (2005), which I think features some of the best action gameplay ever. It also manages to use just about every trick in the book to tell its story. It is a very solid package and masterfully crafted. At the same time, while wrapped in an emotional plot, it is really just a game about combat and part of, what I think is, a worrying trend in video game storytelling. Before The Last of Us can be properly analyzed, we need to go back to the early days of the game industry. At the beginning of videogame history, games were just about doing a few simple actions over and over. These games did not have a recognizable story as such, but simply provided a rough context for the action.

In Asteroids (1979) the visuals consisted of simplistic line drawings, but in the mind of the players they controlled a spaceship blasting incoming chunks of rock. While this thin veneer of story was not really important for the game as such, it greatly enhanced the experience. This was clearly shown in early advertisements where the screenshots are small and concept art showing off this fantasy takes up most of the space.

For the remainder of this article I will refer to this extra high-level

concept as the story layer. This essentially refers to any part that does not directly support the core gameplay but is there only there to add an extra sense of purpose and narrative. Important to note is that the gameplay can still incorporate parts of the game's story; all of the narrative experience does not reside in the story layer. While these high level concepts were (and often still are) very simplistic, it is pretty clear that they are essential. There are very few games that do not share this quality and just go 100% abstract. Even a weird game like pacman has some form of story layer to it.

This slowly gave rise to storytelling in action games. Rudimentary plots were added, for instance a summary of the background story at the start, and this eventually expanded to cutscenes in between the levels. The extra story content was not connected to the gameplay as such but simply provided context and rewards. But while it did not directly influence the gameplay in any meaningful way, cutscenes and an explicit plot could still improve the feel of the game.

The biggest evolution in storytelling came from Another World (1991) where the story layer and gameplay fit almost flawlessly into one another. No longer were the narrative elements superficial, but instead carefully ingrained with the gameplay. Actions that were made in gameplay smoothly transitioned into a cutscene and vice versa. The interactive scenarios were also carefully designed in order to make sense in the games story. Despite this tight coupling, it is important to point out that the focus of all gameplay segments was still about challenge and "fun". The game contained a number of mechanics and each section tested the player's skill in one or more of these. While the non-interactive plot elements improved the experience, they were still not crucial. Were the story layer to be taken way, the gameplay sections would still work fine in their own right .

Another World was a ahead of its time and it took a lot of years before the rest of the industry got up to speed. But when it did, the idea to close the gap between the gameplay and story layer really caught on. Earlier, the story layer had mostly been seen as an extra, but ultimately superfluous, feature. But it rose in prominence, and was seen as increasingly crucial. Along the way, a host of new ways to add a story layer emerged. The audio logs from System Shock (1994), in-game cutscene from Half Life (1998) and the omnipresent narrator from Portal (2007) are probably the most important ones. All of these provided tools to merge the two conflicting elements. Along the way, the complexity and maturity of the story layers increased as well. Even though modern action games now come with a wide variety of stories, the basic format is still the same as in the early days. The player is given a narrow set of mechanics that needs to be skillfully used in order overcome the challenges provided. On top of this is an extra narrative wrapping, the story layer, that helps shape the experience into something more meaningful. This is a recipe that most recent high profile games use, including Dead Space (2008),

Uncharted (2007), Tomb Raider (2013), Halo 4 (2012), Portal 2 (2011), Bioshock (2007), and many more. Here is where The Last of Us comes in; it is the latest step in this evolution. It is probably also the game that, so far, managed marry the gameplay and the story layer most elegantly. This makes it into an emotional journey, but it is crucial to remember its pedigree. It is still an action game with an additional story layer.

Just like a number of recent games with narrative ambitions, e.g. Spec Ops (2012) and Hotline Miami (2012), it takes the gameplay as a starting point for the story. This is different from a game like Uncharted where the high concept came first. In Uncharted's case it was to replicate an Indiana Jones-like adventure movie. Because of this, the gameplay's need for constant bloodshed has a hard time fitting the happenings in the story layer. This caused a very noticeable discrepancy in the game's narrative, the so called "ludonarrative dissonance". The game's protagonist would slaughter hundreds of people and afterwards crack a joke and worry about his relationships. But in a game like Last Of Us, the violent gameplay is taken as a given and the whole world shaped accordingly. The game is set in a story where butchering hundreds of people makes sense, giving the holistic experience a strong feeling of consistency.

There are still a few problems between of the story layer and the gameplay, but on the whole the played narrative is quite coherent. It has been rightly celebrated for doing this, but few voices have been raised by the troubling development it is part of. If we agree that The Last of Us represent a high note of videogame storytelling, an example to follow, then our boundaries for telling stories are very narrow indeed.

The game has a lot in common with the recent Spec Ops: The Line. Both feature a dog-eat-dog world, takes place in the destroyed remains of a city, and have you play as violent and deranged characters with no qualms about butchering countless people. Both of these games have also been praised for their mature and intelligent storytelling. And sure, they both feature deep and nicely portrayed characters, but what it all really boils down to are neat ways to justify a lot of violence. If this represent the future of videogame storytelling, then we are doomed to play as broken, murderous protagonists living in worlds populated by antagonists. When faced with the problem of reconciling a character like Uncharted's Nathan Drake with the massive violence, the proposed solution is simply to make the character better fit with the killing. I

find this close to giving up on the problem altogether. In a way games like Uncharted are, despite their gameplay and story layer discrepancy, much more interesting as they try to be about something other than raw survival. Embracing that videogames is all about violence feels very cynical and uninspiring to me.

It is also crucial to keep in mind that the core gameplay has not changed much over the years. These games are still about doing a few actions over and over. When these actions do connect to the story, like they do in both Spec Ops and The Last of Us, it is not so much because they are proper narrative devices, but that the story has been shaped to fit with them. The repetitive action is still king, the need to have a massive body count is still a must. This is not bad as such, I thought Last of Us was a great action game. But, I have problems with it being seen as good interactive storytelling, it is

really just good usage of the story layer. This might seem like play of words, but there is an important aspect to have in mind: Like games of the past, The Last of Us would have worked very well with its story layer removed. When taking a closer look at The Last of Us, its action heritage is quite evident. It is very clear that at the core lies a straightforward game about looting, sneaking and killing enemies. Here are a couple of examples:

The goal of the player is always to go forward to a place highlighted early on. Once there, a cutscene takes over and reminds you of your next goal. It is basically a modern incarnation of the the ancient "walk left to right"-mechanic.

Every non-combat challenge of the game is a combination of a few simple elements: ladders, planks, pushable dumpsters, floating pallets and generators, all used in predictable and streamlined ways. This is typical of what you see in old actions games; there are a few well tested puzzle devices that gets reused throughout the game.

During gameplay, NPCs turn into combat objects and are streamlined to support the action above everything else. This is evident in how they do not affect your ability to sneak, can stand a lot more damage than the protagonist, have infinite ammo supplies, etc.

The game features plenty of looting and crafting which is just a revamp of what we have seen in Dead Space, Resident Evil 4, and many more. It is there to give the player something to do when going through the world and is used as a way to provide more variety to the combat.

Environments where combat encounters occur are almost always crafted in such a way that it is possibly to know that a fight will ensue long before it actually happens. Strategically

scattered bottles, carefully placed cover spots and early depots of ammo are among the things that hint that the game is now all about making sure the core mechanics of an encounter work.

There is more that can be pointed out here, but I think this is enough. The takeaway is that this is the core of the game; all of these elements are what sum up the game's underpinnings and what provides the central experience. I think it is an incredibly important point. Before we speak of the game as some highpoint in storytelling we must realize where it comes from - it is an old fashioned action game. And if we do not realize this, we will be stuck in a dead end, because there is not much in terms of storytelling that can be done with this. The Last of Us probably represent as far as you can go with stories that are based on this foundation.

This is when things get interesting. We can now see that the emotional narrative is not part of core gameplay, but comes from a totally different direction. Here The Last of Us has a lot that can be learned from and be inspired by. First of all, the game uses just about every trick in the book to get

the story across outside of the cutscenes. And not only that, pretty much every one of these elements has an excellent implementation:

Notes. The game feature scattered diaries, audio logs, manifests, letters and more, almost all of which have believable content and placement. They also have great length so they feel very fluent to pick up and read through.

Overheard conversation. This can either come from hostiles in combat situations or from the characters in one of the few non-violent section with other people. They are effectively used both to convey the state of the world and to give more information about the characters.

In-game cutscenes. In a few areas, events takes place as you walk past them. For instance, at one location the military can be seen rounding up infected people. And if you go in for a closer look, the armed personnel act accordingly and push you away. This makes the scene feel alive instead of becoming some kind of carnival ride (as was the case Bioshock: Infinite (2013), for instance). What I also think makes them work is that the game use these events sparingly and make sure they happen in appropriate places. For instance, in the above military scene it makes perfect sense why the player cannot get close to the civilians.

Artifacts. Various artifacts can be picked up that tell something about the world. These are things like maps, dog tags, photos, etc. All help to build up setting and are lot easier to fit in than notes (which easily feel contrived).

Protagonist and partner banter. As you walk through the environment there are conversations back and forth between the protagonist and his partner (for most of the game a teenage girl). This is also one of the few places where some of the responsibility is placed on the player. Once a conversation starts, the protagonist can be made to go off in whichever way; it is up to the player to act in a way that makes sense.

Because of this a lot more and varied content can be put in these dialogs.

Graffiti and billboards. Here and there, texts are placed on the walls that help explain what has happened to a place or to just give some more texture to the environment. Survivors scratch words of warning, a settlement have lists rules and so forth.

Environments. The environments themselves is a great source of the storytelling. Abandoned homes, fortified warehouses, etc, all help to build up the world the game takes place in and tell the story of what has occurred.

None of these are new or revolutionary tricks, but they are put

together really well and are never overused. It is so easy to just use

one trick for everything, but Last of Us show restraint and use its

devices where appropriate. Much of the time these devices work in

tandem and that is when they really shine. A common example is

walking around in a derelict building while the characters comment

on the surroundings and notes found; this really increase the sense

of presence and feeling of being inside a narrative.

One has to have in mind that the world of Last of Us fits perfectly for

the above devices, but there is no inherent problem with using them

in just about any sort of story. Also noteworthy is that, apart from the

overheard conversations, the narrative devices have very little

connection to the core gameplay; they are all part of the story layer.

It is incredible how many elements that make up this layer now.

What began as a simple intro text or just a painted image is now a

large collection of systems. While the story layer was once a fragile

structure, merely having a supportive role, it is now so complex that

is can pretty much stand on its own. In fact, that is just what it does

a few times in The Last of Us. And it is now that we enter the really

intriguing territory. We have now come to a point in the evolution of

videogames where a once upon nonessential element has gotten

enough substance to branch off and become something in its own

right.

The best example of this is The Last of Us' opening. Here the player

takes on the role as a young girl who finds herself home alone while

it becomes increasingly apparent that something terrible is

happening in the outside world. Just about all interactions here has

something to do with the story and minor details like the girl's

animations help set the scene. It features just about all the narrative

devices mentioned above and uses them to tell the player a story

through play.

The opening is also a good showcase for how and when to use

cutscenes. I normally see the goal with interactive storytelling is to

let the player play from start to finish. However, in order to play

certain parts properly you need to be in the right mood and have

certain background information. The opening cutscene helps

establish just that, and makes the gameplay so much more effective.

While I still feel that cutscenes should be used sparingly, I am

thinking more and more that it is wrong to dismiss them entirely.

Many interactive scenes are not just possible to jump right in to, but

require some kind of setup. Many times this setup is just not

possible to play through, and needs to be carefully directed. In these

cases a cutscene is required and lets the player play through a

scenario that would not be possible otherwise. I think the main rule

is just to make sure that the interactive part is where the engaging

actions occur. The cutscene should not be the main attraction, it's

role is merely to be there as support. It is also worth mentioning that

the opening cutscene works so well because it happens at the start

of the game; the player has not become used to being in charge yet

and is much more willing to be passive.

The next great story layer sequence is the deer hunting scene. Here

you are hunting a deer in order to get food. The first arrows are not

enough to bring it down, so you need to find it again and take

additional shots. As you are doing this, you will eventually figure out

that the best way to find it again is to follow its tracks. Having hit it

once the deer will also leave a trail of blood, making tracking easier.

While following the wounded animal you will eventually find yourself

right outside a previously unseen building, the deer lying dead

nearby. By letting you track the deer, the game has managed to lead

you into finding a new location all on your own. This transition is

really awesome and great way to progress the story simply by

playing.

One could argue that this scene use the combat system and

therefore part of the core gameplay, but I argue that is not really

correct. It does use some combat mechanics, but the scene itself

contain none of the dynamics of an enemy encounter. Therefore I

think it is okay to say that this is scene is almost purely part of the

story layer.

The final sequence I want to discuss is the giraffe scene. Like the

previous scene, it is quite simplistic but extremely effective. It starts

with the protagonist's companion, the teenage girl Ellie, getting

excited over something she has seen and then running off. This

starts sets up a mystery, and gets the player curious over what it is

she has spotted. She continues to run ahead of you, seeing the

mystery object more times and getting increasingly excited. You run

after her, but are never able to get a peek of what it is she is seeing.

Finally you come to an opening and see that what she spotted is a

herd of giraffes. It all ends with a serene scene as the couple watch

the herd walk among a city block overtaken by trees. The build-up

and final comes together very nicely.

Worth mentioning is that part of the power comes from all the

hazards you have had to face earlier, but I do not see that as

evidence that the core gameplay played an important part. These

hazards could just as well have been made using other techniques.

The scenes I have described takes up a tiny part of the The Last of

Us. Most of the game is about combat, looting and solving repetitive

puzzles, elements that you are expected to find in a classical action

game. But these sequences and a few others shows that there is

much more to this medium than repeating a core gameplay

mechanic. The truly poignant and yet fully playable moments of this

game is a testament to this.

So when talking about how well The Last of Us does storytelling, it is

not productive to discuss how consistently it manages to merge its

gameplay and story layer. I hope to have shown that this is a dead

end. What is important are the other things, the elements that used

to be fluff but has now become a force to be reckoned with on its

own. There is a lot to learn from The Last of Us, but it is important

that we look in the right places. It might be an classical action game

at heart, but also contain elements that show the way forward.

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us In case you are in need of more info on the game, wikipedia is a good place to start. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlBrenhzMZI To get some more insight into the workings of Spec Ops: The Line, I recommend this Errant Episode. It is an excellent overview of how the game uses its violence to send a message. http://frictionalgames.blogspot.se/2013/04/thoughts-on-bioshock-infinite.html In case you enjoyed this critique of The Last of Us, you will probably also like my thoughts on Bioshock Infinite. There is a lot of similar topics discussed. Notes:

My history of videogames is a very quick and dirty overview. For instance some early games like Project Firestarter have some of the story integration seen in Another World, but I skipped those in order to make it a bit more clear. Also, many of these early games never really caught on and did not have nearly as much influence as the games I mention. I would have liked to do a more in depth article on the history of violence and storytelling in games, but not sure I will have the time in the near future, so this will have to do for now.

Once the story layer got more prominent the discussion about "story" versus gameplay started to grow. Many people thought that the extra story segment was really distracting and that

games should only focus on the core gameplay instead. I cannot recall this discussion ever being about the incoherence between the two, but simply that the extra story elements were not very engaging. It took a lot longer for the idea to pop up that there was a sort of friction between the story layer and the gameplay. It was not until the story layer had grown quite a bit until the idea of "ludonarrative dissonance" was brought up. First coined by the Far Cry 2 (2008) lead designer Cliff Hocking, the core issue that it address is that the storytelling layer and gameplay disagree with one another. This of course has always been the case, but in a game design equivalent of the uncanny valley, it did not become apparent until the gap was small enough. So while the problem is true, the whole idea is kind of a truism. The gameplay and story layer has always been separate elements, and are conflicting in their very nature. I am not really a big fan of the term, as I think it is a bit backwards way of thinking. If the goal is to do interactive storytelling, all is already lost once you start dividing gameplay and narrative into different categories.

As I played The Last of Us, it also hit me that sometimes cutscenes work best when you there is no need for interaction. First of all, it makes the project so much easier to manage. Scenes with extensive dialog often require quite a lot of preparation and if they are to be highly interactive, then there is a constant need for tweaking. If the interaction is very simple (like button mashing), or not present at all, then you can evaluate these bits of the game at a much earlier stage and save a lot of headache. It may also be good for the narrative if the player does not have anything to do during certain sections. In most cases a real life dialog is not a very active experience as many utterances come almost automatically. So not having much for the player to do might actually feel more natural. Also, if the

player is forced to perform actions then it might detract their attention from what is being said. So instead of trying to make the dialogs highly interactive, it might be better to just make sure they are short and keep them free from gameplay. This is actually an approach that we are taking with our new Super Secret Project. We scrapped many of the more wild initial approaches because they were too hard to do and often made dialogs less engaging.

An Investigation into the Effects of Horror Games

By Darren McKettrick on 09/09/13 12:30:00 pm

Introduction

“It isn’t what you see, but what you can’t see. It’s the suggestion; the subtle teasing of the subconscious; the lonely creaking of the floorboard resonating throughout an empty hallway; the slow advance around the corner; the swelling sense of dread as the ever-present evil looms near refuses to reveal itself. Fear is not an adrenaline rush. It’s that helpless feeling of be alone in the dark.” [Fahs, 2008]

This introduction to Travis Fahs’ Alone in the Dark Retrospective illustrates the direction of this project. The horror genre has featured in games since its creation. Going back to the text based game Zork (1980) a section of the game had the player stumbling around a dark cave scared of being eaten by a Grue, a situation no one had experienced before in a game. Horror games then continued to be produced, including The Lurking Horror (1987), Alone in the Dark (1992), Resident Evil (1996), Silent Hill (1999), F.E.A.R (2005), Dead Space (2008 and Slender (2012). Horrors present a new challenge to players after years of game where the player must learn new fighting skills; horrors required the player to escape from the threat.

Horror games are interesting to analyze for several reasons. In terms of emotional content, horrors can affect almost every emotion possible – raging from disgust to happiness, suspense and fear to relief. The emotional effects of horror can be seen as suspense, fear and worry, further studies suggests that horrors relies on monsters creating a feeling of horror and disgust.

This Dissertation will examine:

How players are affected by horror games - do their hearts start being faster, do they move about more, do they run from the room terrified

The psychology behind horror games – why are you afraid?

Which factors within horror game create the biggest scare – it is the atmosphere or enemies that make a player terrified or is it the relationship with the character

Definition

The aim of this project is to investigate how players are affected by horror games, and which factors within these games create the greatest scare from the player.

The Oxford Dictionary definition of scare is: “1 cause great fear or nervousness. 2 a sudden attack of fright”.[i]

The purpose of this project is, therefore, to investigate how horror games can cause the player to be scared.

Aims and Objectives

Research

At the research stage of the project, multiple sources will be viewed which will show the creation process behind horror games, the effects of horror games on people, the psychology behind the genre and how to improve horror games.

A number of critically acclaimed horror games will be played and examined to determine why they are rated as some of the best games of all time.

After all the research has been completed, it will be split into two different sections. The two sections are: Atmosphere and Psychological. The atmosphere section will detail the aspects that create a sense of dread and terror from the environment, sounds and non playable characters. The psychological section will examine the elements that are left to the players’ imagination.

The aim of this stage is to gather information that can be used in the creation of horror games. This information can also be used by the game industry for the creation and improvement of horror games or any other game where it could be applicable.

Testing

The testing section will require a number of participants to play several horror games. This experiment will be used to find the factors within the horror games that produce the biggest ‘scares’ for the player.

Research

The research section will focus on what makes horror games scary and the psychology behind horror games. After both sections have been researched and detailed, they will be split into two further sections which are: Atmosphere and Psychological. These two sections will reveal how each element can be used.

What makes a horror game scary – This section will look into the methods that are used within a game to scare the player. This could be the music that is used, where the game takes place or how combat is dealt with in the game.

Atmosphere – This section will detail which methods are used to create an atmosphere in a game. For example how the audio track could consist of a heartbeat, beating faster as the character gets closer to an objective.

Psychological – This section will examine the methods that will alter the player’s mental state. This could be done be the player thinking that they are being chased by an enemy when there is actually nothing chasing them.

The psychology behind horror games – This section will describe why a player feels the emotions they do when playing a horror game. For example, how the player feels empathy if a character is being chased by a monster and so will feel afraid as well.

Critically acclaimed horror games – This section will be a review of horror games which have been noted to be some of the best horrors created.

What makes horror games scary?

Ambiguity – In horrors it is the things that are left unsaid that will engage the player’s imagination. The player must be guided through key areas and key points of information, but they should have a hunch that something just isn’t right. For example, the introduction of Silent Hill 2 makes the player walk to the town. The area is covered in a thick fog so the player cannot see if there is anything in front of them until it is too late, and while walking, all the player can hear is the character’s footsteps, a minimal sound track and occasional sounds as if a dog is running near the character and growling. However, the player encounters no enemies, but because of the audio and visuals the player is put on edge.

Don’t show; persuade the player to scare themselves.

Strong Sense of Place – Within horrors there is a wide array of places that the player will instantly understand as a dangerous and spooky, for example abandoned schools, hospitals and hotels. If there is a ‘safe place’ within the game, this should not be used by the player as a hub or base, but as a place for them to cower in a corner and to contemplate the next horror. But if there is a place that the player must return to again and again, it is more terrifying when something about it changes. In the game Silent Hill 4 the player is given a home which they leave and come back to throughout the

game. As the game progresses, the room becomes vulnerable because enemies have the ability to invade it.

Within a horror game no place is safe.

Subtle changes to the environment – When something becomes routine within a horror game then it is not a horror anymore because the player knows what will happen. But if minor changes are made they can both excite the player’s curiosity and increase their fear. If the game is taking place within one building then items should slowly start to disappear, the music should change while progressing through the story, and if the character can receive messages they should eventfully become warnings that make very little sense.

The player must never feel as if they have mastered the environment.

Relationship with the Protagonist – This is essential. Most horror games use empathy as the emotion of choice so that the player feels for the hero, and will fear for the characters’ safety. But other kinds of emotional relationships can be used to create more opportunities to unsettle the player. In the video game Haunting Grounds, the player is cast as a powerless young girl who can only run from the cultists who are chasing her. This makes the game more frightening as the player often experiences distress at the girl’s circumstances. However, in the game Spec Ops: The Line, the player takes the role of Captain Martin Walker. Walker is a soldier who can defend himself, so the player should not fear for his safety. But the game forces the player’s choices and the degree to which the mental condition of Walker’s mind deteriorates, to express horror. During one scene in the game the player is given a weapon which can cause massive destruction, and told to use it against their enemies. But after doing so, the player learns that there is an unexpected consequence to what they have done. When the scene was being focus tested, after the players had realized what they had done, they were pausing the game and leaving the room.[ii] This

shows that both the player and the character are experiencing some of the same emotions about what they have done within the game, because the player who was controlling the character was oblivious to the consequences of their actions.

Fear Must Have a Purpose – Fear must be grounded within something real. All emotions are personal. Fear should be made personal by linking it to something that is mundane.

It should bring the fear home for the player.

Human Interaction – Bringing a human drama into a horror will deepen the player’s emotional attachment to the characters. However, simulating a human being within a game is a difficult problem; this can be overcome with simple actions. For example, in the game Ico the protagonist must hold a girl’s hand and guide her through the game. Without this contact the girl would be lost or taken by the monsters that are chasing her.

Anticipation – Horror games need a sense of anticipation. This must be drawn out for as long as possible. The player needs to know, at all times, that something horrible is waiting for them just around the corner. However, when the horrible thing actually happens all of the tension is lost. When the player has finally seen what it is they must face or overcome, something becomes defined which doesn’t need to be feared as much as the being their own imagination has created.

Combat – Combat in horror games should be simple. However, the player shouldn’t have full control over the situation, whether the enemy’s behaviour is hard to predict or the character is weaker than the enemy. Actual combat is not as scary as the implied threat of combat. If the game does require the player to fight enemies, the combat should be ‘up close and personal’. Defeating an enemy by shooting them from across the level does not add any sense of fear because the character is not in any real danger. If ranged weapons are used, having limited ammo ensures that the player is constantly afraid that they will run out.

Sound – Sound in horror games allows the game to scare the player even before they see an enemy. It also creates atmosphere and in some cases a build up of tension. The music is usually composed of long dawn out notes or repeats of harsh sounds mixed with soothing ones. Some music that is not in horror games can nevertheless instil a sense of dread in a player. For example, during the underwater levels in Sonic the Hedgehog, as Sonic started the run out of oxygen the music’s tempo would increase, which would in turn cause the player to start panicking. Within some horror games sounds are linked to certain events so that when the player hears them they will begin to get anxious because of the link they have made with the sound and the event. For example in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, when the player hears the Nemesis theme played, they start getting nervous because they know that Nemesis is nearby. If a horror game did not include audio, then it would not be as immersive or scary. This has been proven by Raymond User who created an experiment which investigates the importance of audio in computer games[iii]. In this experiment a number of participants are required to play a number of games while being monitored for physical responses. The participants played the games with, and without, audio. After the experiment was finished, it was discovered that when playing the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, there was a significant difference between the two groups. The group with audio had a significantly increased heart rate compared to the group with no audio.

Enemies – An enemy in a horror must either be unsettling, threatening or a combination of both in design. An example of this is the difference between a Werewolf and the Wolfman. To begin with they are both wolf based but they focus on different designs. The Wolfman is a twisted distortion of mankind. When you look at it you are afraid because you know at one point it was human and somewhere inside it there still might be a shred of humanity left. You are terrified because you can put yourself in its shoes and see it happening to you. On the other hand, the Werewolf has a complete

lack of humanity. It is a pure beast which just follows its instincts with rage and savagery. It is the unconscious thought of being haunted by something that will not show mercy and which is doing this for no peculiar reason other than its own nature. Another way to scare players in the enemy design is the use of innocence. In horrors if the enemy has a sign of innocence it will disturb the player. Innocence is scary for a number of reasons. It shows the fear of a person’s own children performing horrible acts against others, becoming something hideous, and the fact that most people’s own moral conscience would stop them from killing something like a child.

Atmosphere - In the Oxford Dictionary atmosphere is defined as: ‘the pervading tone or mood of a place, situation, or creative work’[iv]. This section will therefore detail the elements that create a tone or mood of a horror game. The elements are: - Strong sense of place, subtle changes to the environment; fear must have a purpose, combat and sound.

Strong Sense of Place – This factor creates a sense of atmosphere because of the player’s knowledge that most horror stories happen in an abandoned hospital, school, hotel or dark woods.

Subtle Changes to the Environment - As items start to disappear, the music starts to change and other characters start acting bizarrely, this will alert the player that something is not right.

Fear must have a Purpose – Something within the game should relate to the player, whether this is the setting, characters or story.

Combat – Depending on the setting of the game, a character will have to fight according to it. For example, if the game is set in the medieval ages the character will have to fight their enemies with swords or bows.

Sound – In the game Max Payne, during a nightmare-like sequence, the background music is a baby crying and if the player falls off the maze the baby will start screaming. This creates a very disturbing section of the game.

Psychological

This section will examine the aspects that affect the player’s mental and emotional states. It will examine the elements within a horror game that will change a player’s emotional or mental state. The elements are: - ambiguity, relationship with the protagonist, human interaction and anticipation.

Ambiguity – A horror game should never show what the enemy looks like at the beginning of the game. This will allow the player to create their own monster and will have the player scared at every corner while they wait for an enemy to appear.

Relationship with the Protagonist - By creating a relationship between the player and protagonist, the player will have an emotional connection to them and will feel fear when the hero is in danger.

Human Interaction – By having the player’s character interact with other characters within the game it will increase the player’s attachment to them.

Anticipation – Anticipation is the build up of tension. As tension builds throughout the game the player will become more and more tense until it can be released.

The Enemies aspect can fit within both sections. It fits into the Atmosphere because design and look of the enemy could be a reflection of the environment. For example, Splicers in Bioshock. Splicers are the citizens of Rapture, due to abusive ADAM consumption, their minds and bodies are mutated beyond repair and are dependent on ADAM. It also fits in Psychological because the enemies could show innocence which would cause the player to be hesitant when faced with them.

The Psychology behind Horror

Mirror Neurons – In the early 1990s, a team of neuroscientists made the discovery that a certain group of neurons in a monkey’s brain fired when it performed an action and also when it watched others perform actions.

Mirror neurons are believed to be very important for a human’s ability to empathize with others. Dr Marco Iacoboni says “Mirror neurons are motor cells. That is, they send signals to our muscles to move our body, make actions, grab a cup of coffee, smile, and so on. However, they differ from other motor cells because they are also activated by the sight of somebody else’s actions.” For example, a mirror neuron is fired when you reach for a drink, but also when another person is reaching for a drink. “By being active even when we do not move at all and simply watch other people moving, they sort of create an inner imitation of actions of others inside us.” [v]

Wondering how exactly this happens, Iacoboni and several others conducted a study (Carr,Iaconboni and Dubeau 2003).[vi] In this study they used equipment to monitor the brain activity of subjects who watched images of faces expressing different emotions. Upon seeing facial expressions mirror neurons fired, but also the neurons in the limbic system fired. The limbic system is a portion of the brain which is related to emotions. So in a way the subjects were actually feeling the emotions themselves to some degree.

The effect of mirror neurons can be seen in the game The Walking Dead, because the game frequently shows the player, the faces of the characters and their facial expressions. Therefore when a character in the game is angry or disgusted, the mirror neurons in the player activate as if they are making the expression themselves and so feel some of the emotions to some degree.

Empathy – Empathy is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”.[vii] Empathy

is the ability to understand another person’s emotional condition from their perspective.

The psychologist Mark Davis suggests that there are three types of empathy. The first is ‘Perspective Taking’. This is putting yourself in another’s shoes. It is used to understand where others are coming from, but not understanding their emotions.

The second type of empathy is ‘Personal Distress’. This is feeling another’s emotions. For example, while playing a horror game, you may start to feel scared when the character in the game is being chased or threatened. This process is called ‘emotional contagion’. Emotional contagion is the process where emotions are treated like a disease and spread. [viii]

The final type is Empathic concern. This type is what the majority of people think of when they hear the term empathy. It is the ability to recognize another’s emotions and understand them.

For an example of this in a game, during one scene in The Walking Dead the player has the task of giving the last four pieces of food to a group of ten people, all of whom have not eaten for days. Some of the characters are children, and one is an old man with heart disease. Throughout the game the player has made relationships with all the characters, so the player will feel upset if the people they do not feed get upset or angry.

Fight or Flight – The fight or flight response is a psychological reaction that happens in the presence of something that is terrifying. The body will prepare to either fight the threat or flee from it. It is also noted that this can happen even if the threat is imaginary.

This was first discovered in 1920s by Walter Cannon[ix].Cannon discovered that animals react to a threat with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system regulates our internal organs and controls some of the muscles within the body. So if there is a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system it means the body involuntarily takes over and causes the animal to either flee or fight.

This can seen in horror games in the experiment performed with this report. When the participants were playing the game Slender, some of them when seeing the monster for the first time would panic in an attempt to escape, which in most cases would end up with the character’s death. But the participants that remained calm had a better chance of escaping.

Research Analysis

It appears from the articles read and games played that it is important that the Atmosphere must be believable and that the story, characters and enemies should be a reflection of the protagonist’s mental state. For example, in Silent Hill 2 the whole town and its inhabitants are a reflection of James’s mental condition.

The setting should be as realistic and believable as possible so that the player will be immersed into it. For example, Bioshock creates a whole city which the player can explore. It is believable because from the audio logs the player can gather they had a sense of what happened to the city before they arrived and why everyone is crazy.

The enemies in the game should not be easy to defeat. This can be achieved if they have more amour or health than the player, have powerful weapons or they are greater in number. This should be done so that the player does feel fear for the character, however if the monster can be defeated, then make sure it does not take the player a long time to do so as they will just get irritated and quit the game.

Testing

The test will be an experiment. In this experiment a number of participants will play several horror game levels. During play the participant’s heart rate and physical reactions will be recorded and analyzed. The experiment will take place in a university lecture room. This was decided because the room had the capabilities to play the games and it had a black out feature so that the players would be playing in darkness.

The aims of the experiment are to examine horror games, see if there are any common features in them that will increase a player’s heart rate or cause a physical reaction and to find which elements in a horror could be classed as the ‘scariest’.

The design of the experiment is to identify which elements in a horror game are scary. This will be determined by the participant’s heart rate, physical reactions and the responses from a questionnaire, which will be completed after the experiment has finished.

Each participant will be asked before the experiment to fill in a form (Appendix 1)which will ask them about their previous experience with horror and if they have played any of the games beforehand. They must also sign a consent form (Appendix 2). After the experiment is finished they will again be asked to fill in a form (Appendix 3). This will ask participants which games they found the most and least scary and the reasons for this. The participants’ heart rate will be measured by a heart rate monitor which will be clipped onto the player’s ear or finger. (Appendix 4) Their physical reaction will be monitored via a video camera with audio recording capabilities.

The games that will be played for the experiment are Resident Evil 5, Dead Space 2, Silent Hill 3, Bioshock, Slender and Spec Ops: The Line. Each game has been chosen because they all have received praise from a number of game reviewers and each creates horror through different means.

Resident Evil 5 – During this game the player must survive while waiting for a helicopter to destroy a gate blocking their path. The player will face a large number of enemies and one boss-type enemy who wields a giant axe. The player starts the game on a hill which they must descend; the player then enters a house where a cut scene begins. In this they see another character being executed. The enemy leading the execution then sees the player and orders the crowd of people to attack them. The player can then fortify the

building they are in by pushing shelves in front of doors and windows, and gather ammo from the area. Eventfully the boss-type enemy destroys a wall of the building allowing other enemies to enter and the player is allowed to roam a bigger area. The player must then survive until the helicopter arrives to destroy another gate so the player can escape. If the character dies, the game is stopped. This level was chosen to see how players cope with constant attack from enemies while having nowhere to run.

Dead Space 2 – The player must complete the beginning of the game. During this the character the player is in control of is stuck in a straight jacket and must flee from enemies who are chasing him. The game begins with the character being interrogated and hallucinating. Eventually the character blacks out. When they awaken they are being released by another person who gets attacked and starts to mutate in front of them. The player must then escape. They make their way to an observation area where they are then grabbed by another character who holds a knife to their throat but releases them from the straight jacket and directs them to a locker with items inside. When the character turns around, the other person then cuts their own throat in front of the player. If the character dies they will respawn and continue. This section of the game was chosen to see how players coped with not being able to fight back against their enemies.

Silent Hill 3 – The section of the game chosen is the introduction. During this the player has no knowledge of where they are or what is happening, so it is up to the player how they proceed. The player starts at an entrance of an amusement park where there are a number of rabbit costumes all with bloody smiles. When the player leaves this area they go to a retail section where they encounter the first enemy. The player will eventually reach a rollercoaster and start to walk down the tracks, only to be met by a cart coming from the opposite direction. Once the character dies, the game is stopped. This game has been chosen to see how players cope when there

are no clear instructions on what to do and to see how players cope with the disturbing and unnatural atmosphere of the game.

Bioshock – In this game the player will play the introduction. The player must navigate the first area of Rapture during which they are given their first weapons and plasmids and introduced to the population of Rapture. The game starts with the plane which the character is aboard crashing into the sea. After finding a light house with a biosphere inside, the player descends into Rapture. When the biosphere resurfaces they see another character being killed by a splicer. The player then makes their way through the level while fighting a number of enemies. The player can respawn during the game. This game was chosen because of the atmosphere and how it creates a believable world.

Slender: The Eight Pages – In this game the player must search dark woods while looking for eight pages and being stalked by Slender. When the player encounters Slender, static will start to fill the screen until the only thing the player can see is static and Slender’s face. Slender will only start stalking the player after they have found the first page; the soundtrack will change to a beating drum. After finding the second page, short bursts of static will occur. The player will only have one life while playing. This game was chosen to see how players dealt with being chased by an entity which they cannot fight against or reason with.

Spec Ops: The Line – The player takes the role of a soldier who must use a mortar to kill a number of enemies. When all the enemies have been disabled, the player must then walk through the carnage they have caused. When they reach a trench they see they have mistakenly killed a large number of innocents. The player can respawn during play. This game is not classed as a horror game, but it was selected because it shows the player the consequences of their actions, and to see how players cope with killing a large number of innocents.

The hypothesis for this experiment is that the game Slender: The Eight Pages will cause the highest heart rates and create the greatest physical reactions because of how it builds tension and has numerous jump scares. However, the game that will be rated highest by the participants will be Silent Hill 3 because of its dark and unsettling atmosphere.

Control Subject

This participant has played all the games previously and has a high tolerance to horror since he is a fan of the genre. He is a 22 year old male, currently a student within the games industry and plays games for 6 – 12 hours a week.

He rated Slender as the scariest game that he had played. He chose this because of the high level of tension, the jump scares and excellent audio. The least scary game in his opinion was Spec Ops: The Line. He says it was not really scary - more psychological, and if he had played it since the beginning or had more knowledge of the situation, he might have been more distressed.

In the questionnaire he was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games he played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Out numbered Strongest enemy could not reach you when you were on top of the bus

Silent Hill 3 Chaos, not understanding of what is happening

Difficult controls and the camera

Dead Space 2 No chance to fight back

Felt scripted

Bioshock Excellent atmosphere Instant respawn if

you did die

Slender High tension and brilliant at making people jump

Low graphics and was laggy

Spec Ops: The Line Gore More of an action game than horror

While playing these games his heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 No significant increase

-

Silent Hill 3 At the end of the first cutscene and first encounter with enemy*

‘jumped’ at first encounter with enemy *

Dead Space 2 Increase when watching a patient’s interview **

-

Bioshock Increase when character first injects the plasmid***

Looked uneasy at injection***

Slender Major increase when caught by Slender

Swearing at the computer

Spec Ops: The Line Increased when seeing burnt person

-

talking to the player

*He later said he forgot about that enemy

**Not really a scary or disturbing interview and does not need to be watched to continue the game

***He later said he does not like needles

Participant 1

22 year old male, is a student in music technology spends 12-24 hours a week playing video games. He has played Resident Evil 5 and Bioshock. He has some experience with the horror genre and he is not easy to scare but also it not fearless. He rated Silent Hill 3 as the scariest game. His reasons for this are “It was the creepiest of the games played and was fairly hard to understand what was going on.” The game he rated the least scary was Spec Ops: The Line because it was more action based than horror.

In the questionnaire he was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games he played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Getting overrun More action based than other games

Silent Hill 3 The theme Enemy movements

Dead Space 2 The mutants Just had to follow a path and you would be fine

Bioshock The setting More fun than scary

Slender Not knowing where it is

Graphics

Spec Ops: The Line Trying to make you feel for your actions

More of a action game

While playing these games his heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 When grabbed by an enemy from behind and when hit by the axe boss

‘jumped’ when grabbed

Silent Hill 3 At the end of the first cut scene and first encounter with the enemy

-

Dead Space 2 Ally being mutated, when being chased and the throat cut scene

-

Bioshock First look at the Big Daddy and Little Sister

-

Slender Increase over time after finding the first page and when caught by Slender

-

Spec Ops: The Line - -

It should also be noted that the participant talked his way through each game.

Participant 2

Participant 2 is a 23 year old male who works in the engineering sector. He plays games for 5 to 12 hours a week, has played Resident Evil 5. He says he has some experience with horror and is not easily scared but is not fearless. He rated Slender as the scariest game; his reason for this was “Fear of the unknown” and “Things sneaking up behind you”. The game rated as the least scary was Spec Ops: The Line, saying that there was nothing sudden.

In the questionnaire he was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games he played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Turning around to find someone behind you.

Stand and shoot.

Sheva*

Silent Hill 3 Odd creatures Falling in holes**

Dead Space 2 Dark and things jumping at you

The beginning credits

Bioshock Dark and things jumping at you

The Irish man***

Slender Sudden noise and dark

-

Spec Ops: The Line Burnt People Non-burnt people

While playing these games his heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 - -

Silent Hill 3 At the end of the first cut scene, first encounter with enemy and death on the rollercoaster

-

Dead Space 2 First death* -

Bioshock None -

Slender First encounter, sudden sounds** and death

-

Spec Ops: The Line None -

*Participant died multiple times on the Dead Space 2 playthrough

**After finding the second page random bursts of static occur

Participant 3

A 20 year old student male, who has moderate experience with horror and is not easily scared. He has played Bioshock and Resident Evil 5. The game that was rated the highest was Slender. His reasons for this are the concept of the game, the simple mechanics made it hard to survive, the fact that you couldn’t kill the threat and the suspense of wandering around the map. The game he rated the lowest was Spec Ops: The Line. He chose this as the

lowest because it lacked driven suspense, it lacked an overall ‘creepy’ style and dark settings, there were no threatening or scary enemies, and difficult/mediocre game-play controls.

In the questionnaire he was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games he played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Relentless threat Game maps

Silent Hill 3 Creepy setting Realism of enemies and weapons

Dead Space 2 Gore and brutality aspect

Simple game-play, introduction

Bioshock Creepy enemies Soundtrack

Slender Suspense Building Graphics

Spec Ops: The Line Graphic cut-scene The games light setting and art*

*Participant means how the game is set in the day

While playing these games his heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 When hit by the axe enemy, on the run with low health and grabbed by an enemy to then be hit by the axe enemy

-

Silent Hill 3 At the end of the first cut scene and first encounter with enemy and death

-

Dead Space 2 -* -*

Bioshock -* -*

Slender When a page was collected, the first encounter and death

-

Spec Ops: The Line When seeing the burnt bodies of the innocents

-

*Video and audio data was corrupt

Participant 4

20 year old male works in computing. He has little experience with horror and is easily scared and he has not played any of the games before. This participant rated Bioshock as the scariest game because “it built up tension and you never know when the next enemy would show up.” Spec Ops: The Line was the least scary game because “it was not scary”.

In the questionnaire he was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games he played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Big zombie The zombies did not look like zombie

Silent Hill 3 Very haunted, Creatures did not

troubling place look scary

Dead Space 2 Very dark. Second part was scary because it went dark

Was not expecting much to happen since I’m in a straight jacket

Bioshock Dark didn’t know what was going to appear

Was scared the whole time

Slender When Slender appeared

Running around the woods

Spec Ops: The Line Was not scary Was not scary

While playing these games his heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 When surrounded by enemies and seeing axe enemy approaching, first fight and death

-

Silent Hill 3 At the end of the first cut scene and death

-

Dead Space 2 Hallucination* and death at the door quick time event

-

Bioshock First fight, the flooding tunnel,

-

watching the Big Daddy fight a Splicer, death and when trapped at the end of the level

Slender First encounter, when collecting the first page and death

‘Jumped’

Spec Ops: The Line Erratic beat when finding the innocents

-

*During the introduction cut-scene the character is being interrogated. During this he starts to hallucinate about the previous game.

Participant 5

22 year old female, is a student studying the performing arts. Plays video games for less than 30 minutes a week, has not played any of the games and has little experience of horror and is very easily scared. She rated Slender and Spec Ops: The Line as the scariest games, her reasons for these are: in Slender – “The atmosphere, and the unknown aspect it played on”. In Spec Ops: The Line – “the scary part was seeing what your actions have caused”. She rated Resident Evil 5 as the least scary game because “The atmosphere didn’t create any horror.”

In the questionnaire she was asked to identify the scariest and least scary aspect in each of the games she played. They were:

Game Most Scary Aspect Least Scary Aspect

Resident Evil 5 Nothing The game as a whole

Silent Hill 3 The music and darkness

The monsters

Dead Space 2 Nothing The game as a whole

Bioshock The darkness Everything else

Slender Everything, the atmosphere; the music, the darkness, the sense of the unknown

There wasn’t, everything scared me

Spec Ops: The Line Seeing what your actions had done

The actual game play

While playing these games her heart rate and physical reactions were recorded.

Game Heart Rate Increases

Physical Reactions

Resident Evil 5 Death of the butcher*, first encounter, grabbed by zombie and death

‘Jumped’ at every time the character was grabbed

Silent Hill 3 -** -

Dead Space 2 Hallucination and first encounter

Looked uneasy at the mutation

Bioshock Seeing Rapture for the first time and Splicer attacking the biosphere

-

Slender -** ‘Jumped’

Spec Ops: The Line When seeing the burnt mother holding her child

Covered face with hands and looked physically disgusted

*In the actual game the characters meet with a butcher beforehand who gives them weapons.

**She said that she had difficulties in other situations when her pulse could not be found.

Online Questionnaire

A questionnaire (Appendix 5) was posted online on a number of horror related or gaming websites asking for people to watch a number of videos and rate each one for how scary it. The videos the participants watched were playthroughs of the games and levels that have been discussed in previous sections.

The hypothesis for this questionnaire is that Silent Hill 3 will be rated as the scariest game. This is due to its dark, unsettling atmosphere, the vulnerability of the female character and the reputation that the game has. Because this questionnaire was conducted on online, a number of people might have already completed some of the games and might consequently be influenced by remembering sections of the game that are not in the videos and therefore rate it higher or lower according to their experience.

Each participant was asked their age, gender, if they were employed, and if so which sector they are employed in, how much time they spent playing video games and which horror games they have played. They were then asked to watch a playthrough of the games discussed in previous sections of this report (page 12 -13) and rate them on a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being not scary and 10 being terrifying. After watching and rating all the videos they were also asked what did they found scary about the game/s that they had

rated the highest and what was lacking in the games they rated the lowest.

Summary of Responses –

A number of comments were received about the games that were rated highest by the participants. Here is a select few:

“Bioshock succeeds in being scary because the player has no idea what's attacking the pod/elevator, has obscured vision and because the sight of Rapture has already set up an element of mystery and danger. By putting the player in the pod and giving them no weapon, they also provoke a feeling of helplessness. Dead Space has a moderately successful jump scare and makes the player helpless due to the bound wrists/lack of weaponry, which is great to induce a short term panic. The subsequent section exploring abandoned, dark rooms is good for inducing paranoia”

“Being alone and the general sense of paranoia emitted from the games. You never really knew what was going to happen next most of the time, and it made you worry. Even when you completed the game, you never knew what to expect. You could take a breath after the last page in Slender, but that didn't mean it was over.”

“The intent about both horryfying and scarying to death the player.Immersion -Great atmosphere. - Player encouraged to use their imagination. - In the Silent Hill the use of darkness removes the player's ability to keep tabs on what's going on. Anything can be out there in the darkness. For example at 5:50 in the SH3 video a sound effect denotes something is out there. We don't know what is could be or how dangerous it is, creating a tense atmosphere. "I hope Mr Satan isn't waiting out there for me.", "Oh shit, what was that. *I don't know*" - I liked the survival element in the ResE5 video in which the player had to barricade the room. Gives a great sense of being trapped.”

“Slender is a scarier game in my opinion. Darker atmosphere and a sense of being alone. The others feel that way, to some extent, but they add a lot of color, making it feel unrealistic. Slender seems like

it actually could be me really lost in the woods, sounds of natural things(crickets) add to the immersion. “

“Slender and Silent Hill are masters of atmosphere. Spec Ops is not like most horror games, but it's a chilling experience and one of my favorite games. Bioshock is nice, but doesn't quite measure up to the others.Being pitted against the unknown, with your mind creating various horrifying scenarios that *could* happen at any second. The feeling of helplessness, in which you have little to no way of protecting yourself against whatever is lurking in the dark.”

“A scene like that in a war game carries a lot of impact when you think about the popularity of other war games of a similar nature. Although we use it as escapism, Spec Ops manages to make an impact on the player through his actions, which highlights the reality behind the game. Although, I'll also mention that I rated this the highest partially due to the fact that I've played most the other options multiple times already.”

“Silent Hill games are known for being truly horrifying. The demonic creatures, tense atmospheres, disconcerting sound effects, and pounding music all combine into a nightmare of a game. I had only ever played Silent Hill 1 and 2 and those started off more slowly than this one. The abruptness of the enemies appearing threw me off and made the video terrifying.”

“Confined Spaces. I Have a slight claustrophobia, so i'm generally not a fan of those. Secondly, There's this feel of danger, generated mostly by good mixture of music, ambient noise and use of shadows, (but not overuse)”

A number of comments were received about the games that were rated lowest and deemed not scary by the participants. Here is a select few:

“Spec Ops isn't scary because during this segment of the game, the player has the power. Nothing in the section is threatening. This ties in with the intention of the game as a commentary on modern military shooters, which give the player all the power but ignore the

consequences of their actions. Spec Ops is a great game, and could definitely be described as depressing or emotionally draining, but scary it is not. On the other hand, RE5 IS trying to be scary, but fails, because everything is predictable in terms of how the enemy attacks and appears, and because nothing is left up to psychology - everything is in plain sight, so there is no 'fear of the unknown' element.”

“They gave you a lot of power. For example, its hard to be scared of jack in Dead Space 2 when you have a pistol that can set people on fire when you shoot them. I mean seriously? A game is only as terrifying as the player is powerful. If my ammo is limited, and my gun is only good for headshots, then my first option is going to be to run if I am offered it, and save the ammo for an enemy more ferocious. RE5 and DS2 did not do that, and really killed themselves by doing that.”

“Slender kinda sucks. Mostly because of it's over hype. Penumbra series (which for me are the most scary games ever made, especially the second one) used symialar mechanics( huge, easy to get lost enviroment hubs, monster the will chase you and you don;t really have any way of opposing them other then hiding and fleeing) but there it works, because monster are SOMEWHERE in the world looking for you rather then teleporting right in front of your face.”

“Walking about with a small armoury on your back isn't scary. Bioshock - Scary enemies that aren't much of a threat. Clunky movement - I've not played any of the Resident Evil games, but from an onlooker's perspective it looks horribly clunky to control. The super slow moving zombies seem like a result of this. - I'd much rather my character have limited abilities (such as ammo, running), than a limited and clunky interface. It breaks immersion. Jump scares, whilst effective, are super boring and often very predictable. - Doom 3 is especially bad at those, whenever entering a room I always cleared it out, walked past the conveniently place vent, turned around, shot the thing.”

“Personally, I find it hard to get in to a horror mind set when you're running around in the middle of the day, in an open environment. Furthermore, being thrown in to an area in which you just have to survive for a certain amount of time isn't at all scary when you're a walking steroid with a gun.”

“To me, scares only land if they're jump scares, because I'm a jumpy person. Horror doesn't really affect me because jump scares are cheap and psychological scares only have weight when you've become attached to the character they afflict.”

“The games with the lowest scores usually just rely on jump scares to scare you. That's not scaring me; that's startling me.Atmosphere and vulnerability. Seriously, just look at 2:48 of the Resident Evil clip. That's something that should be in a comedy. Chris Redfield is an ass kicker-extraordinaire and I feel sorry for anything that thinks it can take his tree sized arms on in a fight and come out of it with all of their body parts attached. Spec Ops is a great game but it isn't aiming for the kind of horror that these others try (and mostly fail) to achieve. Walker is the real monster here, so the only fear that the players feel is what they are helping him to unwittingly achieve. Something that both these clips have in common is that the protagonist is the one with all the power. The enemies should be scared of them, and thus the player, and not the other way around. Of the games mentioned in this survey, only Slenderman, Amnesia, and Silent Hill are what I would call legitimate horror games. Out of all the monsters in the other games, it's the playable characters who would be the most frightening to get into a fight with.”

“Slender is all about building tension but in that video the bloody slenderman took too long to turn up. I was too bored to be frightened when he bothered to make an appearance. Spec Ops the line looks fantastic and I will play it. But I didn't find it scary. If I was playing it I would feel really guilty about causing that suffering, but not frightened.”

“Spec Ops: The Line and Resident Evil 5 are both pretty tame. While both games have truly visceral scenes, they are not very scary. The scenes may shock people, but the impact is not horror, it is the violent deaths of the soldiers/villagers that might scare people. Also, I do not find the Slender games to be too scary. The model of slender to me looks dumb and I see no reason to be afraid if you're only adversity is a motionless model. Also, I believe that the Slender games have bastardized one of the coolest entities to come out of SomethingAwful/Creepypasta and that may be the source of my contempt for Slender games.”

(All comments and statistics can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JsglxtvaS-9LBq7_64P4LNQBcCIUWIt8g7wVmN-NiJk/viewanalytics#start=publishanalytics)

Analysis

Experiment Results – The results bore out of the hypothesis in that Slender: The Eight Pages produced the greatest physical response out of the participants but it was also rated as the scariest game. The game that was rated as the least scary was Spec Ops: The Line.

Participant Scariest Game Least Scary Game

Control Slender Spec Ops

1 Silent Hill 3 Spec Ops

2 Slender Spec Ops

3 Slender Spec Ops

4 Bioshock Spec Ops

5 Slender/Spec Ops Resident Evil 5/Dead Space 2

Spec Ops: The Line received the lowest rating; it gained this rating because it is an action game. Some parts of Spec Ops could be classed as horror or disturbing but the game as a whole is classed as action. Other reasons for the rating are that it lacked dark setting and there was nothing sudden. However, one participant did rate it has the scariest game her reason for this are “The realisation of what you had done, playing games you just get use to killing things. This game gave you consequences to your actions.”

Slender: The Eight Pages was rated as the scariest game and gave the greatest physical reactions. The reason for the physical reactions is because Slender is a jump scare game, the game relies on making the player jump to get its scares. This is achieved by the combination of the atmosphere and simple mechanics. The game takes places in dark woods shrouded in fog which will make the player uneasy. The audio in the game is just a repeating slow drum beat, the players footsteps and breathing, and the static which appears when Slender is near or randomly after finding the second page. The reasons for it having the highest rating were “The suspense of wondering around the map”, “shot quick burst of static creates a random element which will make people jump” and “the fear of the unknown”.

Online Results - When the results were all gathered and examined, the results were that Silent Hill 3 was deemed the scariest game with 26% rating it 8 out of ten. The least scary game was Spec Ops: The Line with 53% of the vote with a rating of 1 out of 10.

Silent Hill 3 was deemed the scarcest game this was mainly because of its unsettling atmosphere and the player having no sense of what to do or what was happening. As one participant says “The enemies and the environment are deeply foreboding you get the real feeling that the protagonist is at what little mercy they have to offer.”

Again as in the experiment Spec Ops was rated as the least scary game. The majority of participants in both questionnaires noted that it is an action game not a horror. As one participant commented, “It was action, what was supposed to be scary. Spec Ops seems like an action game here. The victims at the end, that was graphic not scary.”

Conclusion

At the beginning of the project, the stated intention was investigate how players are affected by horror games, and to examine which factors within these games create the greatest scare from the player.

During the research it was found that a number of factors are used to create scares but to create the greatest scare these factors should be used in conjunction with each other. For example in Silent Hill 2, the town itself is grounded in reality so gives the fear a purpose; it creates a strong sense of place and has excellent ambiguity, just what is out there in the fog?

The other characters within the game bring in human interaction; the protagonist must defend a woman during one section of the game and talks to a number of characters throughout. The relationship with the protagonist starts with James entering Silent Hill, at this point we know nothing about him and he is used as a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto, but as you start exploring the town you meet other characters who are seeing their own version of the town and in turn you start to question what James sees.

The enemies within the game all take after a characters mental aspects, for example the mannequins represent his sexual urges and one of the boss fights is another characters representation of her abusive father. These enemies both reflect the environment and the mental aspects of the characters and so make them the more terrifying. During one section of the game in a block of apartments you see what appears to be a man behind some bars as you get

closer, you cannot see exactly because it is dark and the figure is just out of sight. You cannot reach it nor can it reach you, and this builds up the sense of anticipation and ambiguity. After going into the adjacent room and leaving again the monster is gone, the sense of fear deepens due to the change to the environment. By using all of these factors together, a terrifying game has been created that has been rated by countless people as the scariest horror game of all time.

The experiment and online questionnaire were both successful. The hypotheses on both were only partially correct. The hypothesis for the experiment was that Slender would produce the greatest physical reactions, which it did but Silent Hill 3 was to receive the highest rating from the participants. Instead Slender was rated as the scariest. This was because Silent Hill 3’s introduction is scary but it becomes scarier only as the player progresses through the game. Slender puts the player on edge instantly located in a dark forest while being stalked by a monster and not knowing why they are there or what is happening. In the online questionnaire Silent Hill 3 was rated as the scariest game. This occurred with 26% rating 8 out of 10 for being scary compared to other games which scored lower.

Some problems occurred during the project namely the corruption of recording data, location issues, sickness and game selection. During one of the experiments the video and audio data did not save correctly and so was corrupted, rendering the data unusable. Two of the participants could not travel as one had a broken leg so the experiment had to take place in their flat which would have affected the results, personal illness lasted for several days but time was allocated for this event.

The selection of Spec Ops: The Line was seen as an odd choice by a number of people due to it being an action game and not a horror. However, some of the events in the game are horrifying. Additionally, the way the game forces the player’s choices and how you see the character’s mental condition deteriorates throughout the

game does make it into an action game that could be classed as a horror.

Bibiograohy

[i] Oxford Dictionary. www.oxforddictionaries.com. [Online] http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/scare?q=scare (Accessed:21/04/2013)

[ii] Polygon, Don’t Be A Hero – The Full Story Behind Spec Ops: The Line. [Online] http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3590430/dont-be-a-hero-the-full-story-behind-spec-ops-the-line (Accessed:25/04/2013)

[iii] Gamasutra, How Does In-Game Audio Affect Players? [Online] http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/168731/how_does_ingame_audio_affect_.php (Accessed:12/05/2013)

[iv] Oxford Dictionary. www.oxforddictionaries.com. [Online] http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/atmosphere (Accessed: 12/05/2013)

[v] The Psychology of Video Games, The Walking Dead, Mirror Neurons, and Empathy. [Online] http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2012/11/the-walking-dead-mirror-neurons-and-empathy/ (Accessed: 26/04/2013)

[vi]Carr, L., Iacoboni, M., & Debeau, M. et al. (2003). Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: A relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100, 5497-5502.

[vii] Oxford Dictionary. www.oxforddictionaries.com. [Online] http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/empathy (Accessed: 28/04/2013)

[viii] Psychology Today, Guadagno, R What makes videos go viral?. [Online] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-people-click/201304/what-makes-videos-go-viral

(Accessed:28/04/2013)

[ix] Walter Bradford Cannon (1929). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

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Fear Of The Unknown, Part 1

By Luis Guimaraes on 12/03/13 12:02:00 am

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

– H.P. Lovecraft

The famous horror master is frequently cited in discussions surrounding the subject of horror and fear in video-games. "The biggest fear is fear of the unknown". That's correct, we do fear the unknown... But what, exactly, is the unknown? Also, how does this Fear of the Unknown work?

In this article we'll be exploring some of the different usages of the unknown in horror games, trying to have a glimpse of it's inner workings and, if successful, open a path to further analysis and discussion of the subject so we can step every time closer to having this figured out.

There will be things that are commonly known and normally called by different names, for example, imminence is dubbed "suspense", and hints of the unknown is dubbed "mystery" or "negative space". That's all true and also correct, but the usage of those terms won't help our studies of the mechanics of how fear is originated and nurtured from the point-of-view of everything being about

information, which's what we're doing here. Also important to note is that all the considerations taken are based on observation rather than research, so feel free to come out and say that my assumptions are wrong about both the subject and the perceived misconceptions around it. It's an art and not a science after all.

Now, let's have some fun!

Unknown

The word itself conveys the existence of a lack or limitation of information, and this information can be about any of many aspects or details about the subject of which we are dealing information from. It can be about different parallel pieces of information, and it can also be in different levels of information. You can not know (lack information of) the name of a person, or not know what field they work on, or where they come from, or you can know they are sick and not know what illness they have (limitation of information).

The entire field of analysis in this article will revolve around the many ways information can be withheld from the receiver and how each piece of existing or missing information can affect the way our brains deal with information. When you have excess of information your brain will filter the bits deemed unnecessary or unimportant and work at conscious level only with the relevant bits to whatever you're having to deal with at the moment. Similarly, when the amount of information you're getting is limited and deemed insufficient to give the sense of security to work with, your brain will enter a state that amplifies it's extrapolation capacities, hence "fear of the unknown" is interpreted as "your imagination is scarier than anything".

Three bits of information most commonly withheld from the receiver to create the unknown in horror games - and commonly asked by players when ranting or discussing about what makes a great horror game - are informations about:

a) Image: the shape, figure, or graphic depiction of something – "it's scary until you see it", "you fear what you cannot see", "when I saw the monsters I stopped fearing them", "the sanity system is intended

so you don't get a good look at the monsters otherwise you stop fearing them", "the first hours of the game is the best", etc;

b) Presence: the location or whereabouts of something, and/or the confirmation of it's existence in the game's world and/or in the player's vicinity – "that feeling that you're being watched", "when the door opened and there was nobody there", "the part when the wind blows the candles", "the foot noises in the upper floor"; and

c) Imminence: the threat and/or likelihood of an event happening – "you don't know when something will jump out at you", "the sense that the bridge was going to fall".

But is our imagination alone what we should fear most? If that's the case, I must tell you, the amount of things you don't know about the world outnumber the amount of thing you know by an nearly infinite number of times! How many unharmed units of edible fruit of any kind exist in the world right now? What was the distance between the place you are now and the south pole of Mars in 2:45 PM of April 9th, 1743? Where will the clothes you're wearing now be 2048 months in the future? What are the chemical elements made of dark matter? You don't know! MuaHaHaHaha!

This is dread man! Truly dread!

Are you scared now? You should be! It's the unknown what we fear most, right?

But why is it we're not completely losing our sanities over this infinite number of matters we have no knowledge (information) of? "They aren't of any importance!", you must be saying right now, but the truth is, we don't even know if the things we don't know are important or not. But what if they are? What if our lives depend on it and we don't know? What if we knew all that at some point and for some reason it was all forcefully forgotten? If think about those questions seriously, things start sounding scary. That's because a full binary isKnown information doesn't sound relevant enough to warrant any consideration and from there, our brains won't get to the step where it'll calculate if the information received is plenty to supply our needs under the existing constraints of time pressure (perceived urgency), considered risks (perceived potential losses) and personal safety (perceived danger).

Only once hinted in the correct direction we consider the importance of not-knowing something. And you might have already guessed by my used of the word hint that it's not only about holding information, but also about about exposing information that renders the lacking information relevant. For easier referencing of this characteristic, we'll be calling the acknowledgment that there is a lack of further important information, by sense of unknown. Without the sense of unknown, it's virtually as if there's nothing unknown to begin with.

The catch is that the unknown is only present if we know about it. That's what the sense of unknown is. So the player must be teased into the fact that he doesn't know everything that should be known to increase his/her chances of making it out of the nightmare alive. Without teasing the player on the fact there is information of utmost importance being held away, one will not have a reason to fear it.

But here comes a problem: seasoned players will be used to games being "fair" by default, therefore if something isn't known it's not important information. If a horror game doesn't feature guns, what it's trying to tell you is that you can do it without one, therefore why would you be scared of being unarmed if the game will be balanced with that in mind? If a game has guns and plenty of ammo and suddenly locks you in a room with five monsters, what the game is telling you is that five against one is a fair fight, therefore why should you be afraid of them instead of them when it's instead them that should be afraid of you?

So how to keep the player from approaching the game with a happy-go-lucky attitude of simply not caring about what's not known? The solution this article is here to propose is the observation that knowledge is not only binary. It's by riding the line between known and unknown that we can give the player a sense of unknown, give it the meaning the want it to have and raise it's importance to the necessary levels that will focus the player into the helm of his own imagination.

Similarly as to how the information being withheld can mean many things, the ways the information can be withheld or exposed also differ and have different effects. And if they differ, we can categorize and label them for more clear usage.

The constitutions of information we'll be exploring in this article will be the:

a) Unknown: the binary lack of information - you either know it or you don't;

b) Vague: the ambiguous or incomplete piece of information - you have information but it's not key information; and

c) Uncanny: the presence of conflicting bits of information - you're not sure anymore about something you are supposed to know.

Note that information can also exist in different scales, we won't be exploring much about them as we'll leave this up to artistic interpretation and usage, specially because it's variable about what's the relevant information scale being dealt with at the moment. For understanding of what it means, you can for example see a person in the distance and not know which color this person's eyes are. That can either be a lack of information (unknown color of the eyes) or incomplete information (unknown details about the person as a whole) depending on what scale of importance is being considered. This aspect is very complex and varies a lot depending on context so it'll be a dimension we'll take for granted and leave apart while working on the other two already described. If any reader wants to complete this base-article with that, please feel free, and thank you!

In future articles we'll study examples of each combination – which are not necessarily the only elements of the two dimensions this article is out to explore.

Can you fill each combination with events from Video-Games, Movies and Books?

Antagonistic Horror Design, By Josh Bycer

Over the weekend I had something that I haven’t experience in a long time: a nightmare- Specifically a “wake up with your heart racing” nightmare. It’s been a while since a nightmare has actually made me wake up tense as I’ve reached a point where nothing really scares me in real life.

But enough psychological talk, the element of the nightmare that relates to game design is an unexplored area of horror in game design: antagonistic.

A Game of Cat and Mouse:

In my last post on the subject of horror design, I focused specifically on the protagonist, looking at alpha heroes. This time, we’re going to flip it around and talk about the thing (or things) that are trying to kill you.

Going back to horror movies while there are two types of protagonists, there are also two types of antagonist: horde and mastermind. Horde is where the hero is dealing with mindless creatures on the hunt, or some kind of rampaging monster as the

focus. We can include everything from zombies, to aliens and just about every Sci-Fi channel original movie.

If there is some kind of main villain who is either controlling them or is a monster itself, it is still considered a horde type as the main threat comes from it unleashing its minions at the hero. The necromorphs in Dead Space, while supposedly under control by the marker, were still left to run around and cause destruction.

A mastermind antagonist is someone with an actual agenda and not just about running around causing trouble. These characters will do their best to stalk their prey, get the group separated and are usually the stand out character in the story. Characters like Pinhead or Freddy Kruger as an example.

We could probably debate if the thing from “The Thing” would be either a horde or mastermind type monster. On one hand the creature did everything it could to blend into the group the best it could. But then again, it wasn’t that smart once someone found out and attacked it.

Incidentally, stories that feature horde type antagonist are ones where the hero is usually an alpha character, while the reverse is true for mastermind antagonist. The reason is that when the antagonist is the stand out character, the viewer becomes invested to see how they are going to get rid the survivors and how said survivors will hopefully get away.

This kind of cat and mouse game is one of the main sources of terror with mastermind antagonists: as you know someone is going to die, the only question is when. But for such an interesting take on the genre, it’s one we don’t see in video games often.

Evil AI:

Antagonist villain design is an interesting concept for a horror game as the player is not the one in control, but the villain. More importantly it would get around one of the biggest barriers of creating scary games: linearity. If you had a game where the AI

would actively track the player and do whatever it can to get the player into a trap to kill them, there would be no set attacks in that case.

Imagine playing a horror game where you could never really be safe as whatever you came up with, you knew the monster would be coming up with a workaround. I bet for a lot of people reading this that last statement made them excited about the possibilities but there are a few catches.

Haunting Ground was all about hide and seek from the chasing antagonist, while trying to solve the game’s many puzzles.

First is that there are very few games that go with the mastermind approach. With the only three that I can think of would be Resident Evil: Nemesis, Haunting Ground and the Clock Tower series.

But while each game did have a reactive villain, the titles were still largely linear.

You as the player had to complete tasks in a reasonable order and there were cases where the enemy would just show up at set points.

Trying to make a game with a mastermind villain in today’s setting is especially tough, as we have seen from most major developers that they believe that horror is out. Both Resident Evil and Dead Space

have become more action-horror then survival which go against the mastermind format.

The player should not be the one in charge just plowing through everything; they need to be weak and forced to react to the situations around them. But of course that goes against the concept of having an action based hero.

Now the tougher issue is on the technical side, as you would need a highly complex AI to effectively “play” the game against the player. Something like the AI director from Left 4 Dead taken to the extreme, but that is not an easy task. Strategy game designers, who make some of the most complex titles around still haven’t figured out a way to make a completely reactive AI.

And that is the key ingredient in making a horror game where the player is truly being hunted by a superior force: Where attacks are never predetermined and the path through the game is always different.

As mentioned, many major developers feel like the horror genre has been played out, but maybe they’re just looking at the wrong kind of horror. Left 4 Dead’s experiment with the AI director showed the basic concept of having an AI affecting the experience. Taking that and expanding on it could open the doors for reviving the horror genre in the eyes of mainstream designers.

Escalating Horror Games — The Pitfall of Survival Horror, by

Josh Bycer

Over the weekend I replayed Alan Wake which is one of my favorite horror games this generation. The game was billed as a horror title with action elements, much in the same vein that we see in games like Dead Space 3 and Resident Evil 6.

But there is one big problem that ruins the horror for Alan Wake and is seen in almost every horror game released: the designers fail to properly escalate the situation.

Terror-Rising:

In the past I’ve examined design of the horror genre from the hero’s perspective and the villain. Today, we’re going to focus on the situation itself and how it can raise or lower the horror.

Pacing is an important part of any horror experience, movie or game related. If you have nothing but terror for a long period of time, the audience will become use to it and get bored. However, if there is too long of a lull, then the audience will also become bored.

This is where escalating the situation or “raising the stakes” comes into play: The more threatening the problem at hand, the scarier the situation becomes.

It’s common in most horror movies where there is a mastermind villain, that they will go on a rampage that shows what would happen if they win. Or have them winning and the hero is pushed into a corner and forced to do something crazy to survive.

In horror movies about mindless monsters or surviving, the situation can be escalated on the survivor’s side of things. For example: Running out of food, someone needs medicine to survive; they have to get out before it’s too late and so on. In these cases, you don’t need to add new monsters or change their dynamic; instead the focus is on the problems of the survivors.

With video games however, we run into problems with escalating in two major areas.

The first problem is with the enemies themselves. Horror games normally only feature a small handful of enemy types to challenge the player. As always: The first time you fight a monster is scary, the 50th time, not such much.

But it doesn’t just have to be fighting monsters; it can also be just interacting. Both Alan Wake and Amnesia: The Dark Descent suffered the same problem in that regard. In Alan Wake, the player will be fighting the same 6 enemy types for the entire game. While Amnesia only had one basic enemy that they will interact with and another that only appears at select areas.

The more you see the same situation, the more acclimated you’ll get to it until eventually it won’t bother you anymore. To compensate, designers usually fall back on two ideas: boss fights and stronger enemy variants.

The use of light and shadow helped set the tone for Alan Wake but the developers did not do enough with it.

Boss battles in horror games break up the norm and do a good job of escalating. However the escalation only lasts for the length of the boss fight and then things return to the status quo.

Introducing stronger variations doesn’t mean anything if you are fighting the same enemies. Raising enemy stats is not the same as introducing something brand new to fight.

The other problem with escalation in horror games is that the designers only escalate one side of the equation: The player.

Giving the player more weapons or abilities is a standard form of progression seen in any video game. However this form of escalation is a killer to tension in a horror game. It’s hard to be scared when you just picked up a new shotgun.

Even if the designers do introduce new enemy types if they aren’t suitable threats then we run into the same problem as before: An enemy who is 20 feet tall seems scary, but not so much if the player has a quad-rocket launcher.

Playing Dead Space 2, I spent more time trying to come up with witty one-liners for my kills than actually being scared.

One area of horror that video games don’t normally tend to explore is the player’s situation gradually becoming worse. In zombie movies the main threat after the initial zombie attack is normally trying to find enough resources to live.

The problem is that with most horror games featuring action mechanics, reducing the player’s ammo supply will make the game unbeatable. As the player’s only recourse for survival hinges on them blasting away at any enemies that get in their way.

When trying to design horrific situations, the issue comes down to balance: How do you make the player feel stronger without reducing the terror of the situation?

Randomized Stakes:

I came up with an idea that became a part of my horror game doc that you can find in the portfolio section. In the game, after a specific event or time has passed, a “panic event” will happen to mix up the game. These events will introduce a powerful enemy or alter the game forcing the player to adapt.

Each event cannot be defeated by brute force alone, rendering any weapons or upgrades by themselves useless against them.

Boss battles are a temporary way of escalating the situation, but good horror design demands more.

Randomized elements are popular among rogue-like design and it is surprising that we don’t see any horror games that make use of them.

One of the major problems with horror design is that the linearity turns horror games into a one-play experience as once you know where all the scares are, there is no more horror.

The challenge of good horror design is maintaining a balance between the player and the threats at hand. If one side becomes stronger, then the other side must also grow to match. And keeping everything at the same level also doesn’t work as once the situation becomes routine, there won’t be any horror or tension.

The Three Senses of Horror: Sight, by Josh Bycer

In time for Halloween, I wanted to write some horror design posts to go along with the upcoming podcast dedicated to horror games. For this post series, we’re going to examine how three of our senses can be compared to the elements of horror design. And spoiler alert: Taste and smell are not going to be talked about for obvious reasons.

Sight Unseen:

The biggest distinction between a horror movie and a video game comes down to the pacing set by the medium. A movie unfolds the same way every time and was written and directed to run for a specific running time. Video games are a different story, they’re meant to be played for a varied time which is usually far longer than a horror movie.

This creates a major clash between horror and game design by the fact that the more you know about a situation or the rules, the less scary it becomes. When people talk about their favorite horror movies, they usually talk about the first one in a series or a standalone movie. And the reason is simple: It’s unknown.

You can’t detail a character or monster’s entire life in a two hour running time and instead have to focus on the situation at hand. Meaning, that the audience is just as confused as to what’s going on as the main characters are who probably being killed.

But once the audience knows how things work, the movie becomes less about horror and more of a dark comedy as you’re now following things from the antagonist’s point of view.

What’s worse is that the longer you watch a specific monster or series for, the more routine it becomes and you become acclimated to the situation. John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing is one of my favorite horror movies, but even I would become bored by it if it went on for six more hours. Simply put, there is only so much horror you can squeeze out of one situation.

And as AAA games continue to grow, this is why we’ve seen the Indie market pick up where major developers dropped the ball on terror.

Short and Scary:

When it comes to horror pacing, you can’t stretch out the experience without upsetting the horror of the game. During our upcoming cast, we each talked about our favorite horror moments in video games and podcast guest Chris Gardiner brought up an interesting point: Many of our favorite moments either took place in games when we weren’t expecting them or were just single sections lasting from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

The reason goes back to horror movie pacing and within that short time frame, you’re not given enough time to figure out what’s going on. All you can do is go with it and experience it much like the main character who is scared out of their mind.

But AAA development is running into the same problem when horror movies went mainstream: People wanted more of the same series and the quality dropped. You simply can’t sustain the same kind of horror over multiple iterations or hours.

Dead Space started out as mostly a horror title, but became more action oriented as the series went on.

Both Resident Evil and Dead Space as franchises are perfect examples of the problem with sustaining horror across multiple games. With both, the designers tried to escalate things such as the numerous alphabetical viruses in Resident Evil and turning Isaac Clark into a bad ass necromorph hunter.

But as time went on, both series moved more towards action based instead of horror, both from a design point of view and simply because you were always fighting the same enemies.

This is why Indie games or quick sections are usually the best places to find horror as you can make an experience last however long you want. And you are free to only make one game and not have to turn it into a complete series. And just like a horror movie, you can assault someone with a variety of insane creatures and situations and have it end before the player gets acclimated to the surroundings.

As when the game gets long enough that you have to start explaining things to the player, the magic is lost. Coming up tomorrow, we’ll talk about touch or the feel of the gameplay and how it can be used to generate terror.

The Three Senses of Horror: Touch, by Josh Bycer

Continuing my look at how our senses can help add horror to a game. Today’s post is about touch or specifically how gameplay can be used to create terror. However there is a fine line between adding tension and creating frustration.

Strong vs. Weak

Yesterday’s post about sight talked about how some of the best horror moments came when you least expect it and are gone before you can really make sense of it.

What that means in terms of gameplay is hitting the player with a situation removed from the rest of the game or effectively changing the rules of the game for a short period of time. For instance in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, the haunted hotel level mixed things up by removing all combat in lieu of exploration and introduced a “threat” that was stronger than a vampire.

Normally the player would be the strongest force in the room as an immortal vampire, but the developers switched it up and made the player feel vulnerable. By making a strong character feel weak, it was able to make what was normally an ARPG feel tense.

However, changing the rules too far can have the opposite affect if it is too much of a change from the normal game. An infamous example of mixing things up in an action game is removing all the player’s weapons and forcing them to sneak around to get them back.

In these situations, the designer is forcing the player who is use to an action game where they could fight their way out of everything and instead must now sneak around.

On our cast we discussed the change in tone that introducing zombies to the Thief universe had in the first game. Many people complained about both the tonal shift and the fact that the designers introduced an enemy who broke so many of the established rules of the game.

Resident Evil’s transition from horror to action may have improved sales, but removed much of the horror.

Moving from strong characters, there is a popular opinion that in order to have horror that you need to create weak characters.

This was the rationale for the PS2 generation featuring numerous horror games with teenage girls as the protagonist as they were not designed around being bad-ass heroes.

To translate that into gameplay, the designers shackled the player with things like poor controls, fixed cameras and a character who can barely fight if not at all.

The problem that I find in games like this is that by removing the player’s ability to manage their character, that the game becomes more frustrating and less scary.

Case in point Amnesia the Dark Descent, which I’ve gone on record saying that it was more boring to me than scary. As there was no choice to the encounters with the monsters: Either run or die. When the player isn’t in control and unable to make their own decisions about what to do then the game loses a lot in terms of tension.

On the cast we brought up as a great example of player defined tension with Demon and Dark Souls. While the series is not really about horror, the games do an excellent job of providing tense gameplay.

You never know what’s around the next corner or what the next boss is like and this can make a player question their resolve to go down that path or cross that bridge.

Remember, it’s not about making the player a bad-ass who can fight their way out of any situation, but giving the player enough control so that they feel like they can have some impact on what’s going on. Hiding, making distractions, an attempt to knock an enemy off balance, these are just some of the ways that a player can do something without being viewed as “powerful.”

Now there is so much more that I could go into detail about with horror design but a lot of it would be me repeating myself. If you haven’t looked at these yet, here are the posts I wrote about antagonist design and the general problem with co-op and horror design.

Before we end this part I do have one thing that I want to say about multiplayer and horror. If done right, I can see a multiplayer game working as a horror title which we talked about on the upcoming cast. The key point is that the players can’t be tied at the hip to each other and should be forced to split up.

Dead Space 3 featured co-op that was more about having a second gun than really increasing the horror.

Imagine playing an online game where you and your eight friends are being stalked by a Jason homage and are forced to explore an open world to find the means to fight or escape.

No one is the hero or safe and it forces the group to make that always difficult choice to split up. Picture someone having to decide to be bait at the risk of their own life to give the group a chance to escape and the idea opens up so many possibilities.

There is also the concept of having one player be the monster and stalk the other players and there is currently a game available on early access called Damned that is going that model. I haven’t played it but the idea sounds intriguing.

As with visual and pacing, getting the gameplay to go with creating a horror game is a challenge. And to wrap up this series, tomorrow I’ll be talking about sound design and setting the mood.

The Three Senses of Horror: Sound, by Josh Bycer

To wrap up this quick series on horror before our horror cast, I want touch on the importance of sound design with setting the mood and ratcheting up the tension.

Killing Them Softly:

Sound is as important a detail in horror movies as it is in horror games as audio can serve several purposes: Early warning, raising tension and going all out when the crap has hit the fan. But like with everything else when it comes to horror, it needs to be properly paced and composed for it to have its full affect.

People more versed (no pun intended) in composing and audio design will have a more technical explanation than what I’m going to talk about. Understanding the right music for the right moment is an art form in of itself and something that both horror movies and games these days can learn a thing or two from.

For me, I’m believer in the “less is more” saying when it comes to audio in horror. I’m not a fan of horror movies that have to have the soundtrack blaring whenever something is about to attack or worse, plays random metal songs as the monster attacks.

I find things personally scarier when there is no music and only the ambient sounds around the person or character can be heard. On the cast we talked about how much your own imagination can have an impact on horror and when you’re left completely alone with your thoughts; your imagination can run wild.

Another important part of sound design is randomized effects: Doors slamming, windows creaking and so on. Just like with visual and gameplay design, the more routine something becomes, the less impact it has. That’s why in my dream horror game idea, there will be no such thing as a soundtrack, and everything will be based on ambient noises which should be randomized. I want a pin drop to be like a nuclear bomb to your ears.

There is a lot more to sound design, however I don’t have the audio background to write about it. With that said, that wraps up this series and come back tomorrow for the horror edition of the Perceptive Podcast.

Postmortem: Resident Evil 4

By Yoshiaki Hirabayashi

In this reprint from the October 2005 issue of Game Developer magazine, Resident Evil 4 cinematics lead Yoshiaki Hirabayashi writes about the overhauls and challenges which faced one of the franchise's most notable entries.

The Resident Evil series has a broad fan base, and in order to meet players' expectations, we decided to create a totally new entry with Resident Evil 4. Because the series has been around for so long, we really wanted to address the feedback from both our fans and our development team in order to revamp the game. This meant looking at everything from presenting a new way to experience fear, creating more frightening enemies, implementing new ways of using items, and much more.

For this postmortem, we'll use one element, which was also one of our biggest challenges, as the archetype for the game's development: the successful creation of the title's graphical style. I'll provide an overview of what this entailed and how we were able to achieve it with some specific examples from the game.

What Went Right

1. Cutscene Integration

When we began the project, one area we focused on was how playable portions of games usually shift into atmospheric pre-rendered movies. This seemed like an area that, if done well, would improve critical reception. As gameplay shifts to a cutscene, the change is usually quite noticeable. It's possible that in that moment, players regard what is on screen as just imagery rather than a true

part of the game. The change might be appealing to those people who simply enjoy cinematics for the higher quality of the cutscene graphics, but in terms of keeping players focused on the game, it's possible that these moments interrupt the flow of the experience. We thought that if we could facilitate a seamless transition between gameplay and the in-game movies, people would be able to stay involved throughout the entire experience without interruption. Our solution was to keep the cutscenes in real time.

The action button system we implemented for Resident Evil 4 was very complementary to our use of real-time movies. By incorporating an action button into the cutscenes, we made it possible for players to interact with the in-game movies. In a traditional game scenario, players change from being active participants to bystanders as the cinematics begin and play out. The player might not pay close attention or might even put the controller down, and either way, that's not what we want.

2. Improved Technology

In the current generation of consoles, the technical capacity of hardware has improved vastly over the last, and our technology itself has also increased to the extent that we can maximize the full potential of that hardware. Technologically speaking, this advancement has made it possible to express scenes in real time that would have previously only been possible in pre-rendered cutscenes, for example those that incorporate complex facial animation. Up until now, we didn't have the processing ability or capacity to realize complex animation of the sort we have achieved in Resident Evil 4 -- it was simply outside the hardware's capabilities. We solved this issue through programming and by packaging data intelligently. The same solution was applied to areas that required a lot of special effects, such as projection lights and explosions.

Using real-time movies also made it easier for us to change elements of the story according to the game specs and design. For

example, in a pre-rendered situation, if a character or enemy in a movie had to be somehow altered, all the time and energy used to create it would have gone to waste. However, by using real-time movies, we could just rewrite a new model onto the existing model data.

3. Improved Workflow

Since we had to basically reinvent the series, we needed to improve our workflow -- converting data, managing data, and troubleshooting -- in order to stay on target. We needed to find a way to complete these tasks more efficiently, which was how we came to use the XML data management system. This workflow management method saved us valuable time that we were then able to apply to the creative elements of the game design.

Figure 1 shows the system we used for converting movie scenes, posting scene data, modeling, and making slight adjustments for texture data, among other things. The XML system allowed us to evaluate the total amount of data in order to assess whether there was an excess or deficiency to support it. The system also eased the process of making multiple alterations to the customized models in each of the game's many scenes.

Looking at our previous system (Figure 2), you can see exactly why our new system has helped us. The traditional development pipeline in Japan is still quite hierarchical: With the previous system, you needed a programmer to transfer data to the development tool, which put limitations on the programmer's work capacity. This situation caused a tremendous loss of time.

As opposed to the old flow, which put the heft of the workload on the programmers, the new system (Figure 3) actually resulted in the designers being able to contribute more frequently and more directly, thus minimizing the amount of time lost.

4. Believable Images, Appealing Characters

Creating believable images doesn't necessarily mean that the images need to be factual and realistic. Rather, they should engross players and be believable within the game's universe. For example, in Resident Evil 4, a long skirt or long hair moves naturally according to the motion of the characters, but in a slightly enhanced way. This effect helps to immerse players and create a suspension of disbelief.

If something swings in the real world, it also swings in the game; however, in real life, it might not move in such an exaggeratedly beautiful way.

We adapted the swings a little and brought the motion close to what players might expect, even though it isn't completely accurate.

In regard to creating more appealing characters, there's a wide range of opinions on the topic. In our meetings with Shinji Mikami, the game's director, he stressed that the most important factor in making a character appealing is to create believable facial expressions and gestures. Characters should exhibit appropriate feelings and expressions for a given situation, while also expressing their individual personalities.

With Mikami's goal in mind, we put a great deal of effort into making characters' expressions believable (see Figures 4 and 5), and to that end, each characters' fingers have joints that move and articulate, for example. Still, we wanted to focus on even more refined details. In order to achieve this, we used a very large number of face targets (or facial expressions) for each character.

At key moments, we conveyed the tension that characters might be feeling by using extra lighting elements to highlight a character's facial expression. We actually created quite a lot of facial expression patterns for the characters. We also used special higher-quality textures to make the expressions look as good as possible.

For Ashley, the main heroine, 36 facial targets were used in total, which is one and a half times the normal number. Regardless of the effectiveness of the increased targets, we couldn't have that much data for just one character, so we used a method called face target packaging. Even though 36 targets were prepared, they were not all necessary for each scene. We included targets required by each scene into models that implemented them on a scene-by-scene basis.

At first, I talked with a programmer regarding the amount of data which could be used for a character and decided to use 30 targets for each. We divided these into two categories (see Figure 6). One is the Standard Slot, which is frequently used and is the general default slot. The other is the Select Slot, which dictates less frequently used targets for each scene. We made one package with these two slots. Because the number of Select Slot expressions varied from scene to scene, we were able to efficiently manage the data allocation so there were only 30 targets in the package at any given time. By changing the package according to the scene, we were able to produce facial animations with higher quality.

5. Reinvented Gameplay

Even though the series is linked to horror, it also has become known for having strong gameplay and a high entertainment value. We wanted to make Resident Evil 4 appealing to an even wider variety of players by raising the game's level of entertainment. Early in development, through trial and error, we found that the game was scary, but had a low fun factor -- we needed to rethink both the gameplay system and the fear component. We restarted the project four times in order to ensure that this title would be interesting and fun for the consumer; there had to be more to the game than just fear.

In order to change the gameplay, we challenged ourselves to implement features and elements that had been impossible to realize previously, in terms of environmental interaction, graphical quality, and more frenetic action. We took the existing archetype of Resident Evil and added extra play value that would make sense

within that world. The main character's melee attacks were made to be more robust because he's a police officer and should be better at close-quarters combat than we had demonstrated in previous games. Enemies were made to be more intelligent and much faster; they can pick up weapons and open doors. Enemies also talk to each other, communicating plans of attack. This was used as a new way to inspire fear for the series, giving the player a feeling that he or she was up against a sentient and unrelenting force, rather than shuffling zombies, or simple monsters.

We had intended from the start to make the project something that we ourselves found intriguing and challenging. In demanding this of ourselves, and largely meeting those goals, I think we were able to provide an exciting game for the fans.

What Went Wrong

1. Freshen Up

The goal of any game's storyline is to expand the depth and perception of that game's universe, as well as to inform players of what they are to do. In Resident Evil 4, the storyline was primarily conveyed through our real-time movies. We had a hard time achieving our concept of combining gameplay with the necessary story elements that could evoke a feeling of believability within the in-game movies.

Games are a visual medium, and throughout the series, it wasn't always easy to create fresh concepts. It was even more difficult to develop visuals that would continue to advance the series. This is why we thought of a new direction for Resident Evil 4's development, which we call "complete concept changes." That is to say, we examined all the previous gameplay features and notions of fear and broke them down to change the entire concept for the game.

2. Data Constraints

Because this version of Resident Evil was far more action-based, we often needed to display a very large number of characters at once (see Cutscene Images A–D). As a result, we needed to carefully apply model textures for these types of scenes. Normally, an enemy character in the game has about 3,000 polygons and is about 400K of data space. There are some scenes in the game, though, that had up to 25 characters on screen simultaneously. We weren't able to adjust all the memory and image storage to the level that would be required for us to keep those 3,000 polygon models intact.

In order to address this issue, we decided to adjust the amount of data per model in each scene, and even in cuts within the scene. First, we would implement the model that required the most data (usually the closest to the camera). Then we adapted it by deciding how it would be drawn and processed, based on memory levels. Limiting the amount of data on all the models would result in poor quality, so we prioritized the portions of the models that would require the best modeling. We came up with three different

scenarios for how to distribute the data for texturing the models, which could then be used in various situations by combining them.

A normal high resolution model for a Ganado, a generic enemy in the game, consisted of approximately 3,500 polygons. Normally, it would be difficult for us to render several high resolution Ganados on screen simultaneously. Therefore, we created two additional variations of the model: mid-resolution Ganado, which are approximately 2,000 polygons, and a lowresolution model with about 1,000 polygons. These three models would switch depending on the situation. Textures were treated in the same way. High-resolution textures were 512x512 pixels, mid-resolution textures were 256x256 pixels, and low-resolution textures were 128x128 pixels.

As mentioned, these models could be switched depending on the situation, according to two conditions: how many models the scene required, and how much data was available for the given scene. We always attempted to be efficient with our data sizes, so we would reduce the model and texture data by taking into account the camera and lighting used for certain scenes.

3. Texture vs. Light

In addition to the models, we also adjusted textures for each scene. We sometimes faced problems with how to adjust the way that characters looked when different lights hit them. This happened especially when we used a lot of penetrating or spot lights. We solved this problem by creating textures for each scene or each cut.

Not only was this used for something as detailed as eyes (Figure 7), but was used widely, anywhere from the characters' bodies, to background objects. This texture adjustment was also useful in addressing problems with dynamic lighting situations, such as when dented objects were being lit too brightly. In cases when a model would only be seen from a distance and required little to no shading information, we reduced the data amount because the dimensions visually do not stand out very well, and the difference would not be noticeable. In another case, when a character's shadow would stand out due to the camera's position, we wouldn't use the low-resolution model, as it would not be capable of properly rendering the delicate lighting details. Instead we would use a high-resolution model with low-resolution textures, still keeping data use down.

4. Depth of Field

Another problem we had to address was related to depth of field within a given scene. One method we used is a blurring effect: We displaced several pieces of a given image at various depths of field

when no camera movement was happening. In this case, processing power was light, and the hardware was not overly taxed.

The more difficult scenarios came up when manipulating depth of field in a scene that required camera movement. In these cases, we specified a distance from the camera past which we would blur the image. We dynamically blurred the image itself, just as you would in Photoshop. The method was artificial, but it enabled us to convey a depth of field that appears in the actual in-game camera. The processing power was very heavy in comparison with the first case, and therefore, we used the blur only when we needed to move the camera and adjust the depth of field from a creative standpoint.

5. Multi-Camera Strain

Some situations required real-time rendered textures, which in turn required the use of multiple cameras. By using multiple cameras, the processing strain is increased by about one and a half times the amount used with just one camera. Despite this, we decided to use this method because the workflow system we utilized made it very efficient to adjust the images.

This technology was used in a scene in which Leon looks at a monitor on the screen. For the "video" displayed on the monitor, we didn't use pre-rendered movies, but animated scenes which were rendered to a texture in real time. With this method, we did not have to render character motion on the monitor in order to change elements of the scene, and so we were able to make changes quite easily.

Normally only one camera's data is used for one cutscene, but data from three cameras had to be used here (see Figures 8 A–D). One was the main camera, which projected the entire scene. The second was camera A, which created the image shown on monitor A. The third was camera B, which created the image displayed on monitor B. The screen images which were created by camera A and camera B were cached by memory, scaled down to a lower resolution, and used as the texture for the monitor. After that was done, we compiled the image for the main camera view. This technology was also used for reflections in things like sunglasses and car windows, with translucent adjustments to cached image data.

That's a Wrap

As you might have gathered, the development of Resident Evil 4 was not necessarily based on innovative new technology, but rather on efficiency. Our improved workflow and our intense focus on details in the game allowed us to achieve the level of quality we had challenged ourselves to produce. Restarting the game multiple times allowed us to take several fresh perspectives on the game, and the

survival horror genre as a whole. I think that ultimately we came up with something that was not only enjoyable, but which also helped to advance the series in a positive direction. The next Resident Evil is planned for next generation consoles, and will present a whole new host of challenges and opportunities. Hopefully we will once again be able to meet our own high expectations.