Blogpost  # 2  : Surviving The Horror. Virtually.

Some people play horror games for the thrill, suspense and

the concept of “conquering your fears” and some people don’t want to play because they’re just too scared to play something like that. Even if im pretty much scared of everything I still have the urge to play or to watch horror games and after playing lots of horror games back then, it really didn’t bother me now and I use those games to fill up my imagination and I use them to become creative in making new artworks. I think being scared a lot of times allowed me to get used to it and now I could watch horror movies and play horror games without even getting scared.

For us to know more about horror games we should know the the main definition of the horror genre or on a more technical term it is "Survival Horror". Survival horror is a subgenre of action-adventure video games inspired by horror fiction that focuses on survival of the character. Although combat can be a part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less powerful than in typical action games, because of limited ammunition, health, speed, or other limitations. The player is also challenged to find items that unlock the path to new areas, and solve puzzles at certain locations. Games make use of strong horror themes, and the player is often challenged to navigate dark maze-like environments, and react to unexpected attacks from enemies.

As I was searching for a great article on Survival Horror games then I saw and article on the site Gamasutra which is written by Darren McKettrick that is entitled “An Investigation into the Effects of Horror Games” where they tackled and did a research on how does the survival horror game affect the player and the psychology of horror.

First thing is they tackled about how the players are affected by horror game and it came into conclusion that the more the realistic looking the game is the more fear will be given to that person playing it, like the game that they played which is called Silent Hill. In the game the protagonist helps a woman and then communicates with all the characters throughout the game and the scary thing about silent hill is that the enemies within the game all take after a character’s mental aspects for example the mannequins symbolizes the sexual desires of the protagonist and that the boss represented the father’s abuse in the main characters of the game. These monsters combined with the foggy atmosphere that adds up the ambiguity of the game to make it more unknown and mysterious that sums up into an excellent horror game that could pretty much scare the soul out of you.

The next thing that they explained is the psychology of horror and gave 3 subjects that affect that psychology of horror. The First one is the Mirror Neurons, mirror neurons are motor cells that sends signals to our muscles to move our body. A great example there is that when you see or feel the facial expression or the actions of the character you are playing then you will act the same way too, like when the main character is depressed your facial expression will become sad. So we really could feel the emotions or acts of the character that makes it more scarier when playing a horror game.

Second is empathy which means the ability to understand another person’s emotional condition from their perspective. In the article Darren gave the types of empathy. First perspective taking which means putting yourself on someone else’s shoes, next is personal distress when you feel somebody else’s emotion and last is the emphatic concern which is the ability to recognize another persons reactions and understand them.

Last is the term “Fight or Flight” which is a psychological reaction that happens in the presence of something terrifying because you will now know either you will kill it or just flee. This can still happen even if the threat is imaginary.

When i read Darren's article i saw an interesting phrase that he said, it is one of the factors on what makes a video game scary and that phrase is" Fear must be grounded within something real. All emotions are personal. Fear should be made personal by linking it to something that is mundane.". 

To make a video game more scary well sometimes they used the words "Based On a True Story" to make it extra creepy because it is grounded with something real and it gives a more spine chilling feel to play a game that is based on a true story. The next sentence states that all emotions are personal, we have our own preferences in happiness, sadness, fear, anger and other emotions so that's why in horror games they create a game wherein different people will agree to be afraid of something . On the last sentence we always have been afraid on something that is unusual,odd,creepy ... things like that because it is part of our instincts and on the early years being afraid of something helped us survive so that is why we are afraid of the unknown.

After reading that long article I now realized that the person gets scared because of  the fear of the unknown and that he somehow mixes reality with the game that he is playing because of the resonance of feelings and emotions of the main character and the player.

When i was browsing for the history of survival horror I saw an article on GAMEREACTOR  entitled The History of Horror: A Video Game Retrospective by Jon Newcombe and here he discussed and summarized the history of survival horror.

The first this he said in his article is the first horror video game that was ever created. It was the Haunted House for the Magnavox Odyssey and even if its graphics were not that gre
at it still made a good start for the horror game industry and they even made the game with just a plastic overlay for the tv screen and two blinking lights. 

Then Atari released the 1990 Xenophobe and it is inspired by the Aliens franchise. This game was one of the first steps the lead into the famous action horror survival genre because in this game as you progress the games get more gorier and the mood gets more suspense.

When the gaming industry gets larger, more consoles starts to appear like the playstation console which lead to a new era of gaming and the dawn of new games such as Clocktower, Hellnight and Overblood. Then became the dawn of the era of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, The two games that became award winners and the two games that brought the horror survival genre up.

Then Microsoft's Xbox featured Silent Hill, Fatal Frame and Manhunt series which made Xbox popular in a way. But then game developers creates less innovate content and fans are just tired of getting jumpscares, blood and gore, screams and other stuff that creeps you out and starts to find other things that interests them.

Jon Newcombe also said that "Visuals and audio had developed to a point where developers could generate realistic scares. Fans couldn't get enough. Sadly, horror developers started creating less innovative content, and fans started to turn their attention elsewhere."

For me generating realistic scares brings out the best in any horror game but i think it is just too much and game developers are getting tired of making another generic type of horror may that be some killing psychopath, ghost that haunts you or a monster in a tuxedo that is out to get you. Horror fans started to turn their attention away from horror because developers haven't developed a new spine chilling idea that could bring the fans back. We dont know what the future holds and maybe someday there will be more survival horror games that will sure knock the souls out of our hearts.

Playing scary game is always fun and exciting but when things get tough we should have cute cat pictures to peek on whenever we get stressed and scared on whats happening on the screen.