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.

Blogpost # 1 :  Set foot in the Nightmare Realm

Everybody likes to sleep, but not everyone likes to have a nightmare. Back when I first had a nightmare I was really terrified my whole body froze, my breathing became heavier than normal then I wrapped myself with my blanket. I didn't sleep that night because of the fear that the nightmare will be back and haunt me again. but as I grow up not only my fear of nightmares disappeared but also I started to get a liking to it. Being obsessed with nightmares like me I had some positive and negative effects, the positive effects is that you will have less fears , your imagination will expand and you will be able to conquer your fears and on the other hand are the negative effects which is you may not be able to socialize, some people will call you scary and weird and you may not be able to differentiate reality from nightmares.

Now we’re going to define what a nightmare really means. A Nightmare is a dream that

Can cause a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also

despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain some situations of danger,

discomfort, psychological or physical terror. Sufferers usually awaken in a state of distress

and may be unable to return to sleep for a prolonged period of time .Nightmares are just

psychological and behavioral imbalances that reminds us that we need to change something

 in order for them to go away. From the definition itself a nightmare is a bad thing but people

 often judge something without even getting a chance on knowing what they really are, so to understand them better we need to get to the beginning.

For us to know nightmares better we need to start on the question “why do we have nightmares or bad dreams and based on what I’ve read on Brie Cadman’s article entitled Six Reasons We Have Bad Dreams on the website divinecaroline gave me an answer that I have been  looking for.

According to Brie, there are six reasons on why we have bad dreams. First reason is anxiety

 and stress, often as a result of traumatic experiences in life, something that makes your

 heart pump, depression and seeing a terrible incident. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

 is also a common cause of recurrent nightmares. The second and third reasons are based on

 foods and the foods that give you nightmares are spicy and fatty foods. Because of the capsaicin  (the element that makes the chili spicy) it makes your temperature rise and the rising of temperature is one of the main causes of a nightmare. Eating fatty foods within the day  increases the quality and quantity of your sleep so it means that the more you sleep , you will get  a higher chance to get a nightmare. Fourth and fifth reasons are Alcohol and drugs,  Like eating fat foods , drinking alcohol increases the quantity of your sleep and it also increases the quantity of nightmares. As for the drugs, Some actually has a nightmare trigger for a side effect. For example the drug called ketamine is used for anesthesia  but may cause dream unpleasantness. The last reason in having a bad dream is because of illnesses such as fever and flu and they could  also trigger other sleeping disorders such as apnea and narcolepsy.

While reading through Brie Cadman's article she said that "While bad dreams and nightmares are considered normal responses in dealing with everyday experiences, the IASD recommends consultation with a therapist if they last in intensity and severity. But trying to eliminate these six factors first may be the best place to start in your quest to sweeten your dreams and chase the nighttime demons away." 

Well it's true that nightmares are considered normal responses in your everyday life because we sleep everyday and while we sleep, we are vulnerable to the nightmares that might bump into your dreams and she also said that  if you really have a serious case of nightmares it is probably the best decision to consult the doctor to check if there is something wrong with you. For me I like having a nightmare because it gives me an opportunity to conquer my fears and if I conquered that fear I will no longer be afraid of it and the nightmare behind it but majority of  people really want to have sweet dreams  for them to sleep comfortably because they don't know how to conquer their fears using nightmares or they really have a phobia on those kind of things.

After reading that article, I was enlightened because I love eating spicy and fatty foods at night and now I know the reason why I always have a nightmare but now it doesn’t really bother me anymore because I had a lot of experience dealing with nightmares I started to get a liking to it. So whenever I eat spicy foods at night I also get nightmares, it’s a win-win situation.

Again, browsing for interesting topics in nightmares I saw another article that got my attention, it's from livescience and it is an article with the title of 5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams by Jeanna Bryner  and you could read it here at  In this article she didn’t directly mentioned how nightmares affected it but the articles that she wrote there can be connected to nightmares.

First is when she wrote that Violent Dreams Can be a Warning Sign, this means that a shocking nightmare that features some parts of your everyday life could somehow end up saving someone’s life or maybe even yours. Then next is that Night Owls has More Nightmares, they have more nightmares because  of the night owl’s sleeping habits and their hormone called cortisol that increases stress level and blood sugar, suppress the immune system and aid in fat and protein metabolism so the more stressful they are the more they sleep as for humans if we sleep more then there will be more possibilities to have nightmares. Then the last topic in Jeanna’s article that caught my eye is the topic that says You Can Control Your Dreams, well based on experience I am a lucid dreamer meaning I can freely control my dreams and nightmares into the way I like  but there are some down side to this because with you controlling everything on your mind will be swarming like bees and if you kind of thought of something that scares you its alright it will just pass by like nothing happened. She also connected gaming and lucid dreaming because if we are spending a lot of time in virtual reality then it’s like practice for lucid dreaming, she also stated that gamers are always used to controlling their game environments so that’s why they control their dreams as if they are controlling a video game character.

Jeanna Bryner also said in her article that ""Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams." Jayne Gackenbach's past research has shown that people who frequently play video games are more likely than non-gamers to have lucid dreams where they view themselves from outside their bodies; they were also better able to influence their dream worlds, as if controlling a video-game character." 
 
 As a gamer I experience lucid dream and even if all the things that scares me the most is in there, it just passes by . At first lucid dreaming is quite scary and you will just want to wake up if you panicked because of the swarming ideas in your thoughts that turns into your own reality. In lucid dreaming you are the main character and you create the game that you live in and that this dream is just like reality but better because you make your own rules.

 There are still many things that we don’t know about nightmares so don’t judge them just because of their bad reputation. There are still perks in having nightmares and it is never too late to like nightmares. Maybe someday, they might save your life.