Decoding Fright in Horror Gaming
By Nadia Scott
In the realm of gaming, horror stands out as a genre that evokes deep emotions in the minds of players, tugging on fears and capitalizing on shock value with a myriad of jump-scares, gory imagery, and spine-chilling audio effects.
It’s easy to chalk up a good horror game to its ability to grasp the player visually, immersing them as it does in twisted environments marked by blood-smeared walls, haunted corridors, and decayed faces. But where the genre truly excels is in its beckoning of players to explore the psyches of characters as well as spaces riddled with intensity.
Iconic Horror Game Franchises and Their Scare Tactics
- Resident Evil: A survival horror game franchise known for increasing the interest in zombies in popular culture, as well as its grotesque monster designs, blend of horror and sci-fi, and puzzle-solving elements. The game series spawned a string of blockbuster movies that helped bring the zombie genre back into the mainstream and inspired a variety of other titles blending action and horror.
- Silent Hill: This anthology series is known for its psychological horror style, with gripping narratives that delve into themes of religion, grief, and the corruption of humanity, as well as its immersive lighting and sound design. The series is also regarded as a pioneer in third-person 3D gameplay, setting the stage for other horror games that utilize this style.
- Amnesia: Known for its critically acclaimed storytelling and its terrifying monsters, the Amnesia franchise features four titles that explore landscapes taken over by dark forces. The franchise is known for its use of a sanity meter in some of its games, which monitors how long a character has been stuck in the dark or exposed to horrifying events, situations that result in a decline in their mental condition. As sanity lowers, the game environment becomes more dangerous, requiring players to find items that can build their sanity back up, as well as avoid situations that will lower it further. A variety of other games in the genre have since utilized this engaging feature.
Morbid Curiosity and the Thrill of Fear
What exactly makes these horror games so iconic, impactful, and interesting? The answer is that they satisfy the parts of our psychological make-up that desire to feel the thrill and rush of adrenaline this genre delivers. Humans possess an innate need to feel and experience the release of strong emotions, whether through screaming, crying, laughing, or another booming action. Horror games have the ability to pull these emotions out of us through their use of common human fears, intense storytelling, and shocking audio and visual stimulation that catches us off-guard.
While the games and their mechanics are a huge part of why the genre is so beloved, its popularity also says a lot about its fans. Morbid curiosity is one significant reason players immerse themselves in these terrifying gaming experiences, perhaps due to inner conflict about death, fears, or the supernatural. When we take a front-seat position in these games, we are set up for a potential exploration of self that runs bone deep, helping us to better understand how we feel about these large, sometimes intimidating concepts that rule the human experience.
Horror Games in the Classroom
While the horror genre might not appear to be the most traditional subject to explore in an educational setting, some schools have chosen to dive right in. The University of Victoria’s Department of Art History and Visual Studies offers a course titled Horror Video Games, described by the school as “an inquiry into the nature of fear and the grotesque in digital games as an interactive visual medium.” The course promises exploration into the horror tropes used in both mainstream and independent games by way of a variety of theoretical perspectives.
The Game Center at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts has a Horror Games course that explores iconic titles including Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Amnesia. These games are used as educational tools for the purpose of “tracing how their design aesthetics were formed via their relationship with horror fiction in the wider media landscape,” according to the university. Students deliver historical and critical analyses of games within the genre, reflecting on their use of specific audio-visual aspects and themes that create emotion-driven narratives and gameplay.
Game Design, Mechanics, and Immersion
Horror games employ various mechanics that play into morbid curiosity and the thrill of fear in order to immerse players in their worlds. Popular paranormal investigation simulator Phasmophobia uses voice recognition technology to allow players to interact with the game’s ghosts, who hear and respond to players’ voice commands like asking ghosts to speak through a spirit box or show a sign by throwing an item or knocking a painting off a wall. Crude or aggressive language can anger the ghosts, often prompting them to hunt the player. When a player is being hunted, the game employs ghoulish whispers, pounding heartbeats, and flickering lights to create the tense atmosphere of being followed by a supernatural force.
Five Nights at Freddy’s, another immersive title, positions the player as a security guard in charge of monitoring Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an entertainment and event business. But there’s a terrifying catch—Freddy’s is ruled by animatronic mascots that are possessed by the dead and become active and hostile at night. The goal of the game is to survive a timed shift from midnight to 6 a.m. without encountering the wrath of the animatronics. The animatronics are slowly approaching the player at all times, requiring the player to be on constant watch, observing them through security cameras and controlling steel doors to lock them into rooms as they attempt to get closer. However, there is a game mechanic that makes this whole process quite precarious. There is limited power available to keep the cameras and doors up and running, and the game keeps track of the player’s usage. If these tools are used in excess, the power shuts down, resulting in the player’s untimely death.
Prey (2006) is an excellent blend of survival horror and sci-fi, following Cherokee mechanic Domasi “Tommy” Tawodi, who gets wrapped up in an intense abduction by an extraterrestrial force known as the Sphere. This first-person shooter game delves into Tommy’s Indigenous heritage when he is transported to the Land of the Ancients, a place where he is given spiritual powers by his grandfather. These powers include revival after death, separation from the body to pass through objects, and help from his childhood pet, a hawk that becomes his spirit guide. Tommy’s spirit powers are a compelling feature that not only makes for interesting gameplay and design but also celebrates the representation of heritage and the importance of spiritual guidance in Indigenous cultures. Prey employed Indigenous voice actors Michael Greyeyes, who takes on the pivotal role of Tommy, and Crystle Lightning, both of Cree descent.
Virtual Reality and the Future of Horror Gaming
Along with several other horror titles, among them The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, Alien: Isolation, Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul, Phasmophobia, and Five Nights at Freddy’s can be played with virtual reality (VR) technology, in which players wear a headset that displays a three-dimensional version of the game. The use of VR in horror gaming is widely praised for its immersive capabilities and its ability to scare players as the room-scale, first-person position takes over their entire scope of vision. Providing an experience that can conjure the feeling of walking through a haunted house, VR brings players deeper into the game’s landscape, forcing them into face-to-face encounters with antagonists that seek to haunt, attack, or otherwise terrify them.
VR, and the game mechanics discussed above, have made waves in the growth and development of the horror game genre. But where can it go from here? It’s difficult to hypothesize how horror games will get deeper under the skin of players in the future, but with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact in gaming, the possibilities are seemingly endless. Imagine a game where a player inputs specific fears and AI steps in to create their perfect monster, which changes to become less terrifying throughout the game as the player works to overcome those fears, and mutates back when they fail to do so. Or, imagine a game in which augmented reality—an interactive technology combining computer-generated content with the real-world—uses the walls and characteristics of your home to create a gruesome landscape that makes you doubt what is real and what is not.
Wherever horror gaming goes from here, new technology seems to promise an ever-evolving landscape ripe for increasingly immersive and shocking experiences.
