Out
of all the genres of video games, few a more fascinating than the
survival horror genre. It is one of the few existing genres that has
the express purpose of eliciting a specific emotion. Because of this,
the genre has tougher standards and is more of an evolved and
practiced science than others. There are tricks and tactics
developers can ascribe to that are tested and true. With the release
of Resident Evil 6, which was very
poorly received by the gaming press and public,
the subject of horror has once again become relevant. This week, I
want to talk more about the genre. I will discuss what is, in my
humble opinion, the best way to invoke horror and why you will rarely
see new horror games outside of the indie scene.
One
of the first factors that horror developers must keep in mind is the
concept of atmosphere. The tone and layout of the environment is a
very key factor in this. Horror relies on the player feeling like the
environment is out to get them. They need to feel weak and oppressed
and the world needs to reflect that. To invoke this feeling of
helplessness, a developer can do many things. One of the easiest
things they can do is limit the resources a player has access to. By
giving players limited resources, developers force them to use those
resources as efficiently as possible. When confronted by a group of
monsters, the player would need to decide whether it would be more
beneficial to engage them, take the risk and try to run past them, or
retreat hoping to find more resources and/or find an alternate path.
Making a player decide this on the spot creates suspense and tension,
creating an oppressive atmosphere conducive to the feeling of horror.
Another strategy for building a scary atmosphere is to use unsettling
set pieces to creep out the player. Now, when I say set pieces, I am
NOT referring to the explosion-filled, Micheal Bay- like linear
levels in a Call of Duty game. Instead, I am referring to the
self-contained stories
told via the environment similar to those
common in Bethesda games. Using the environment to tell small stories
regarding the people in an area is a powerful narrative tool,
especially in a horror game. When it comes to scaring the player,
their own mind is the most effective tool a developer can use against
them. Knowing this crucial piece of information, a designer can
implant details into a room and maybe include a note or audio file or
two to draw a scene in the player's head. While the designer will be
able to create the general idea, the actual image will be generated
by the player's mind, which means that it will be custom tailored to
frighten them. This further creates an unsettling and frightening
atmosphere for the game.
Keeping
with the idea of using making the player draft up details in their
head, horror is often best achieved by showing as little as possible.
Obfuscation is a very valid method for supporting the idea of horror
in a video game. Many of the most successful horror games have worked
well because they embraced their technical limitations and kept many
details obscure. The most well-known example of this would be Silent
Hill 2. Due to the limitations of the original Playstation system,
Silent Hill 2 was not able to draw all the details of an area on
screen at one time. In order to compensate, they blanketed the area
just outside their draw limit with a dense fog that kept it out of
view. This, combined with the unsettling atmosphere, had the
beneficial side-effect of letting the players use their imaginations
when traveling through the titular Silent Hill and added to the
tension of what was going on in the game. The other way a designer
can force the player to use their imagination is through keeping a
minimalist mindset when designing the game. We humans are used to
living in densely populated areas for the most part. Thus, we feel
naturally freaked out when we see areas devoid of life. When a
designer deliberately places few, spaced out lifeforms (friend OR
foe) in an area, it invokes the Uncanny Valley effect. Seeing a
familiar urban setting without the familiar urban population is close
to what we are used to, but not quite close enough that we feel
comfortable. This also calls forth a feeling of isolation. One
man/woman, alone against overwhelming odds with barely any ability to
fight back is inherently terrifying. A good example of this is in the
free indie title, Slender. Though like any horror game, its
effectiveness depends on the person playing, the developer of Slender
was highly proficient at using few details in order to terrify the
player. Trapped in a small, enclosed, wooded area with exactly one
for, the Slenderman, players have no way to fight back and no one to
support them. This is about as bare-bones as a horror game can be
and, when it works, it works to great effect. When
my friends and I played the game, one of them
had to leave the room and go take a walk outside after playing in
order to calm himself down. Another jumped the moment I moved the
chair a few inches. This limited, but precise use of details and
obfuscation was highly effective, yet it is also the reason AAA
developers have such a hard time capturing the essence of horror.
Games like Dead Space and the newer Resident Evil games are funded
with multimillion dollar budgets and top of the line technology.
Because there are few limits, they make highly detailed models for
all of their monsters. With foes that well-rendered, it is far more
tempting to throw them all into the limelight and force players to
look at them than it is to keep them in the dark and let the players
keep their imaginations and sense of tension active. This makes it
hard for them to truly frighten the player beyond mere jump scares.
However,
despite all of this, it is important to do one last thing when
building horror games, and it is something that is critical to the
art of fear. For prolonged, enduring play sessions, which many gamers
can be prone to at times, being tense and on edge the entire time can
be incredible taxing in a mental sense. In order to avoid depleting
the player's mental stamina, it is important to give them well
planned and spaced-out areas of safety where they can take a breath
and relax. This gives them time to rejuvenate themselves, manage
their inventory, and plan out their next move without the overbearing
weight of an oppressive atmosphere. Generally speaking, these are
also places where the designer would offer the player the option to
save their game. While allowing players a chance to relax is a good
thing, rooms like these, where the player does not have to worry
about confrontation, serve a duel purpose: They serve as a contrast
from the oppressive atmosphere. If a player experiences nothing but
horrors and nightmares, they will slowly build up a tolerance to
them. When developers have these periods of rest, they expose the
player to a different stimuli and vary the atmosphere a little bit.
It serves to remind the player that there is an opposite to being
under constant threat, which in turn makes the threat that much more
terrifying. Done well, these areas can serve to make the player
scared to leave them. The player will know that they are in a safe
haven, but leaving will place them in a hostile environment again.
This leads to some players procrastinating and waiting as long as
possible to exit. While some designers may see this reluctance to
move on as a sign of failure, the opposite is true for a horror game.
If a player is too scared to leave a safe haven, then the developer
knows he/she did their job properly. This contrast between the safety
of an area of respite and the danger of the rest of the game is a
strong asset that ought not be taken lightly.
Horror
is a very fickle beast. It requires immense effort to uphold and
maintain throughout an entire experience. Even when it is done well,
it is all up to the individual players and their mindsets to be truly
effective experiences and will rarely yield similar returns to that
of a shooter with an equivalent budget and attention to detail. All
of the factors that determine the likelihood of AAA doing it and
getting it right work against it. When designing games that are
designed to invoke fear, developers need to be extremely careful and
use deliberate, well-thought out strategies for keeping players
engrossed in the atmosphere of their game. This is easier said than
done and is the main reason why many of the well-known titans of the
genre, like Dead Space and Resident Evil, have begun to shift from
horror to action. Even thought this is the case, fans of the genre
should not lament it too much. Humanity will always have a place for
horror in its heart and people will always be there to try to satisfy
that demand. Given that many old genres like isometric RPGs have been
seeing a resurgence of late, it is not implausible that even should
the horror genre fade (which is highly unlikely), it too will return
in due time.
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