The Problem with Horror Games

If you look back through all of history, through all the scary myths and spooky folk legends, you’ll find a theme emerge. The theme of death. In the real world you only have one life so having it end is a pretty big deal, but in the world of videogames things are different. Death can have a lot of different meanings in videogames. Death can be frustrating, punishing, incentivizing, or even funny, but rarely do games treat death with the same fear that can be found in real life horror.

This different context for death poses a big problem for designers trying to create a horror videogame. On the one hand videogames can offer a greater sense of fear than movies or books because the player embodies the victim. It isn’t a character you like dyeing, it’s you dying. But, on the other hand, videogames can be mastered and the underlying rules of the game can be discovered and exploited. That’s exactly what happened in Layers of Fear, a horror game about an artist slowly driven insane. The game attempts to be scary without death, but without death there is nothing outside of the player’s willingness to suspend disbelief to keep them engaged in the fear. The player can eventually walk around every corner, and open every door with confidence knowing that whatever is on the other side won’t hurt them.

So a horror game without death gets boring, but a horror game with too much death can get frustrating. Alien: Isolation was supposed to be the Alien videogame that fans were waiting for, it was a genuine horror game instead of a horror/shooter where fear can be cured with bullets. It was going to be the Alien game players deserved, but its difficult AI brought so much death upon the player that the initial fear quickly got replaced with frustration.

The true horror genre of videogames is still very young. It all started with the surprise popularity of Amnesia, and has been evolving since then. Games with horror elements have existed for long before that; games like Resident Evil had many horror elements, but at the end of the day all your fears could be dealt with with bullets. Taking the gun out of the player’s hand and forcing them to experience the fear of helplessness is a truly new thing in videogames, and I wonder how it will evolve. But one of the central issues with this genre that designers will have to solve will be how to properly deal with the mechanic of death.

What do you think the right amount of death is in a horror game? Are there any horror games you think deal with death perfectly?

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4 Responses to The Problem with Horror Games

  1. jyl5807 says:

    I think there should be a death in the end. If not where does the sense of fear, which is the main purpose of horror game come from? Just like you have said, the player can basically do everything fearlessly because there is no penalty that comes along with it hence, there is nothing to be fearful for.

  2. rck5174 says:

    The way I see death in horror games is like an unplanned timeout. Kinda like the slow descent back to normality after a crazy climax of fear or excitement. However, every game needs some form of “death” or “death-like” punishment, otherwise the players will merely go about the game with reckless abandon. This is even more prevalent in horror games as part of the horror is getting caught by the bad guy. I dont think there really should be a limit on how much a player should die, it never really loses its touch on effectively scaring me when ever the bad guy/thing gets me and quickly disposes of me.

  3. Alexander H Nagl says:

    I do not play much horror games. But, I did play the Silent Hill P.T. demo when it was out. It blew me away and showed me how a horror game can actually be scary. Death is not necessarily necessary for a horror game. In that demo when ever the character was “killed” we would just jump slightly back in time. And the amount of times that the character died was only once or twice in that demo. What this proved to me is horror games need to take more of a cinematic approach with scaring the player. Forcing them down a path where they have no other choice. Since when we make the character open then door, we are facing the consequences. Even if we know better, because the game took away are ability of choosing another point.

  4. bcc5160 says:

    There should always be death in a horror, but too much and the player will be desensitized. A horror game that deals with death perfectly actual depends on the context. Zombies has a lot of death it as it zombies are the main antagonists.

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