Why are Games Scary?
Michael Scott
The first time I was ever scared by a video game's content I was five or six. My friend was playing Mortal Kombat on his computer, and I was watching him play. I didn't have a problem with the blood drops or the people getting beaten to a pulp, I had seen action movies before. But what I wasn't prepared for was this.
Actually, that's STILL pretty disturbing.
When you KO an opponent on the Bridge stage you are given the option to uppercut your stunned adversary into a pit of spikes and impaled heads. I just wasn't ready to see a the face of a decapitated corpse frozen in agony.
I ran out of the room and told my mom right away. I was pretty scared.
I think video games can be scary in two ways, and these two ways are almost 100% unique to video games and to no other storytelling or entertainment medium. But I'll circle back to this later. Right now I want to talk about a few of the games that scared me, and the some members of the gaming community that reached out to me for this piece.
In terms of older games, the original Resident Evil on playstation had an undeniable spook factor to it. Its challenging controls and low-tech graphics actually emphasized the horror of encountering one of the game's relatively few enemies. But the lack of swarming of monsters made the ones that attacked you way scarier.
Note: Box art may not be actually representative of the product.
The creators of Resident Evil, put out a sequel as well as a dinosaur-themed horror game, no doubt inspired by the tense scenes in Jurassic Park as well as the atmosphere of the first two Resident Evil games.
Dino Crisis was much the same sort of beast. A heavy focus on puzzle-solving and navigating tight, enclosed spaces with limited defenses. More of a "terror" game, than a horror one.
Later games that experimented with horror themes, despite not actually being horror games in and of themselves had their moments as well. The Dreamcast cult-classic Illbleed was a game that I had played as a kid and had really fuzzy memories of to the point where I thought I had dreamed it. Turns out, I didn't.
o.o
This game had you controlling a girl in a booby-trapped amusement park, the titular "Illbleed", designed by her estranged father. On the search for her missing friends, the player must avoid enemies (that drain your health), scare traps (that raise your heart rate until you eventually die), and bleeding to death.
The game's weird sense of humor and its simplistic but disturbing environments created an atmosphere that was uniquely unsettling. Considering the challenge in finding this game, and it's relative obscurity, I recommend SuperGreatFriend's very comprehensive LP of the game.
Luigi's Mansion, also set with a horror backdrop was more or less okay for kids to play (except that one type of ghost that would straight up STRANGLE Luigi). But the game's music cues and spooky levels are memorable to this day. Not to mention the game had the SCARIEST door openings in any game ever.
*Holding breath*
Okay, well enough about me, for now. Let's hear from the community. I spoke to some personal friends of mine as well as members of the Escapist forum to get their take on the subject and here's what they had to say.
“Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
Retrieve the Yoto Swords
A cemetery level filled with unkillable spirits/undead that forced you to run through the stage defenseless
Hell for a kid
I ended up climbing a tree too afraid to peer down for over an hour before noping out
Shame as it was a fantastic level
One part forces you to drop into a corridor filled with ankle high blood where a pierced-by-several-arrows undead samurai roams
What a great set piece”
Gauche also shared with us the music, that I gotta say is pretty scary on it's own.
“Underwater exploration. The final boss of Ecco the Dolphin scarred me for life.
I literally cannot even play Subnautica. yeah that cartoony underwater minecraft fills me with more dread than anything Amnesia could throw at me.”
Everybody Loves Ecco.
...Oh please, how is this game scary?
Oh WTF!?
“First time was probably Hexen.
I’d played Doom before it and the worlds do face similarly apocalyptic cataclysms complete with zombies, but Mars was just the one research facility. Kronos was an entire thriving world controlled by three guilds before Korax turned the leaders of those guilds into his eternal slaves and everyone else except for you into some other kind of grotesque monster, the most common of which has two heads. Like with Mortal Kombat, there are lots of severed heads and other grisly body parts littered around most areas, including several entire impaled bodies. An entire world’s population has been mutated into hell-spawned atrocities and is out for your blood... and as their cruel master so helpfully tells you, they can smell it.
It helps even more that Kronos used to have a blue sky and healthy forests in the lore. But when the game begins, no map has any sky colour except pitch black and bloody red, and any trees or other plants you see will be dying. Any building you find will be in the process of crumbling apart. Every body of water that isn’t poison or lava will have vicious acid-spewing Stalkers swimming in it. That’s what Korax does. It’s what he is.”
WhiteFangofWhoa brings up the fact that sometimes the game itself doesn't have to be scary as long as the setting or the story is. The gameplay of Hexen, for those unaware, is basically identical to Doom or Marathon. Except with a different setting. Games like Bioshock and its progenitor Systemshock 2 also have this in their DNA. Sometimes a scary setting is all you need.
"I smell your blood, bro."
After reading a few of these it became clear that there were definitely some winners. F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon), Alien Isolation, and Fatal Frame were each mentioned by several users.
“Recently, Alien: Isolation. It’s a credit to the game that even towards the end I never really lost my fear of the alien, less for its movement or design (by now we’re all accustomed to the thing I think) and more as a symbol of instant Game Over. The sound design is fantastic as well.”
“its[Alien Isolation] the only game that did it to me as well to the extent i limited the play time to 3-4 hours at a stretch.. good stuff :)”
“The games to scare me the most;
Silent Hill 2
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
F.E.A.R.
I love a number of others, including Alien: Isolation & Dead Space, but wouldn’t say they truly scared me. Horror is one genre that games can do even better than film, I’d say; it’s to do with the interactivity, and the genuine chance of death. The ending isn’t assured, and that’s terrifying.”
Silvanus here actually hits the nail on the head. Remember those 2 things I said games have that movies don't? Interactivity. When something scary is happening in a movie, you can shut your eyes and wait for the monster to go away. But a game makes you pull the trigger.
You are and always will be responsible to what happens to the player-character. It's not a passive experience. And being the one to turn the jack-in-the-box crank that last time is the root of horror in video games.
...even if you're armed to the teeth
“First time I ever recall actually being scared of a game was when I was about two or three years old and I was playing Shadowgate for the NES. The reaper coming for me sent me charging down the hallway to get my dad to reset the game so I could keep playing...”
"Daaaaad. The Reaper is back"
Actually Kaijin stumbles across the second point I wanted to make and unfortunately this one is slowly disappearing over time. The golden age of horror games, according to this list so far seems to be the late 90s early 2000s. PS1/Early PS2/Xbox days. Older games were often only scary just because we played them as kids (and there's nothing wrong with that). And newer games often rely on jumpscares (arguably fine as well).
But back in the day, games were much more overtly...mechanical. New games are more polished, more realistic looking, and more fluid. Light reflects off of the dew on blades of grass and shadows realistically capture the different hours of the day. Games like Alien Isolation ARE spooky, but they're spooky due to the hard work and design on part of the developers. Games from this "golden age" were inherently scary. They loaded slowly, they were dark, and low-res. The FMV cutscenes were grainy and unsettling. The sound effects and recorded voices hissed with static.
The Ring (the movie) encapsulates the 90s horror of machines perfectly with the ghost who appears out of the CRT television sets. It's the grainy footage and muted colors that allow the ghost to cross from its world into ours.
While I'm not here to declare a winner, I will say that for me, Five Nights at Freddy's (and it's sequel) is the quintessential horror experience.
The much discussed and critically praised original game was programmed by a single person, Scott Cawthon. The story goes he had received criticism for one of his biblical themed games along the lines of "the characters look like bad animatronics at a chuck-e-cheese". From then he apparently set out to create arguably the most effective horror game of all time.
Five Nights at Freddy's has atmosphere, it has tension, it has gameplay, and it has a myriad of antagonists with unique behavior (similar to the pac-man ghosts). You play as a security guard doing the night shift at a pizza parlor for kids. The place is a little rundown and the anitmatronic characters aren't the most... friendly.
It's sudden and massive popularity, thanks in no small part to the youtubers who publicized it, lead to several sequels, a book, a movie deal, merchandise, and a serious amount of backlash from people who hate anything popular.
Don't get me wrong, if you don't like something, I'm not saying you're wrong for not liking it. But to deny the fact that popular things are popular for a reason is...silly.
Pictured: A silly person.
The second game does everything it can to build on the gameplay and the fictional universe that the relatively bare bones story from the first game takes place in. The 4 (or 5) antagonists from the original game get effectively doubled with each character with their own triggers and behaviors.
The design of the antagonists is changed slightly in that the original game was scary purely because "things out to get you" was a scary concept. In the sequel the animatronic characters are clearly mistreated and malfunctioning or maybe seeking revenge...
Peekaboo.
The fact that while games like Resident Evil 7 and Alien Isolation had huge budgets and high production values Five Nights at Freddy's does its thang for a fraction of the budget. Just like movies, it doesn't have to be expensive to succeed.
Everybody gets scared by different things but on top of being accessible, well designed, and original Five Nights at Freddy's and its first sequel capitalize on something that many horror games either overlook or purposely avoid. The horror of machines. The imperfection in something created by man seeking revenge on its creator, consciously or unconsciously.
Games like Tattletail have taken this idea and run with it and I think that's great. Go buy it, it's cheap and short.
And remember to treat your playthings nice, cause you never know when they're gonna turn...
So PLAY NICE.