Why scary games are never scary

[GamerMan316]

Everyone knows my thoughts on ''scary'' games being completely unscary, not because my scared gene was removed when I was young but because they are exactly that, not scary!!!

Anyway, I remember reading this a while ago and thought i'd post it to see what everyone thinks and so that everyone can disagree with it 


Why scary games are never scary
13 arguments and comparisons that cut the horror genre to shreds

They can be creepy. They can be disturbing. They can obviously be gross, gory and gruesome. On rare occasions, they can even be shocking enough to make you jump out of your seat... or at least shift unexpectedly from one well-formed couch groove to another.

Are videogames, however, really that scary? Not superficially, but deeply and viscerally? Do they force you to cover your eyes like a good horror movie? Do they inspire nightmares like a midnight ghost story? Do they torment your imagination the same way a walk through the woods or a cemetery could? Do videogames truly, honestly frighten you?

I don't think so, and here are 13 reasons why. Agree? Disagree?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.

#1 You can't die. Not permanently, anyway. The awful finality of death, and the terrifying unknown of what lies on the other side, is the only reason anything in life is scary. If all we had to do to survive is hit the reset button or wait through a quick load time, we would fear absolutely nothing... with the possible exception of boredom.



#2 You don't care about those who can die. Obviously, you can't be killed in a horror movie, either – the characters are the ones who die. On the big screen, however, we empathize with even the least talented extra or C-list actor, simply because we recognize them as fellow human beings. When a knife stabs through their flesh, we subconsciously imagine how we would feel if that knife stabbed through our flesh. The characters in games are usually too underdeveloped, both in personality and physicality, for us to view them as real people.

#3 The consequences are wrong. We don't avoid Pyramid Head and Big Daddy because they can disembowel us with large sharp objects; we avoid them because that disembowelment would cause us to lose five to ten minutes of progress. When they attack us, we don't scream out of pain; we curse out of anger that we might have to replay the level all over again. The dominant emotions experienced during horror games are anger, frustration and confusion, not fear, panic or anxiety.

#4 The priorities are wrong. When confronted with a mass murdering monster, your natural instinct should be to run like hell. In movies, books and campfire tales, the protagonists do everything in their power to escape the threat before finally, when no other option is left, facing down the threat. Since the very nature of gaming requires us to fight these bogeymen on a regular basis, we instead learn to set traps and detect weaknesses. The monsters become our prey, not our predators.



#5 The settings and situations are unbelievable. What's scarier? A monster stalking an abandoned space station or a monster stalking your own neighborhood? A killer with a silly pyramid on his head or a killer in a generic mask from the local department store? A comically oversized drill or a basic kitchen knife? Jason X or the original Friday the 13th? Videogames strive hard for creativity and escapism, but forget that a slightly twisted sense of the familiar is far more frightening.

#6 The heroes and weapons are unbelievable. Let's compare and contrast again. In the first Halloween film, an ordinary high school student is forced to fight Michael Myers with nothing but a metal coat hanger. In Dead Space, an armored engineer fights intergalactic zombies with plasma guns, flamethrowers and "supercollider contact beams." Sound like a fair fight to you? Overpowered protagonists and arsenals are fun to play with, of course, but they obliterate sensations that are crucial to creating fear, like helplessness and exposure. Plus, how can we project ourselves inside the scary experience if our avatar is so completely, drastically different from us?



#7 Technology isn't good enough. Hold up the most advanced game on the market and it still won't look as real as the oldest, grainiest, cheesiest horror movie. It won't match the mental images you conjure while reading a book or listening to a ghost story, either. The graphics are clearly just that – graphics. The animations may be "lifelike" and the sound effects may "surround" you, but those things grow less and less convincing the more and more you see or hear them. Don't forget the age factor. Nosferatu, a 1922 silent film, still freaks out modern audiences; Resident Evil, a 1996 videogame, couldn't scare babies a mere decade after release.



#8 Pacing is flat. A scary story should pull you in slowly, offering only hints and glimpses of the true terror that awaits you in the final act. The anticipation of danger is often more frightening than the danger itself. Games cannot afford this luxury. In order to appeal to action-oriented customers and sell the maximum number of copies, they must throw enemies at you constantly from start to finish. And with longer runtimes of 8-10 hours, that nonstop excitement inevitably becomes desensitizing.

#9 Repetition, repetition, repetition. The first time a zombie jumps out of a shadow, or a ghastly image flashes across the screen, it's pretty shocking, possibly even scary. The second, third, fourth and 167th time? Not so much. A game's programming can only handle so many scripts and enemy AIs, which results in the same gruesome "surprises" over and over and over again. Other mediums can change the formula as much as they please. No matter how many Nightmare on Elm Street sequels they make, you'll never know quite how Freddy Krueger plans to dispatch his next victim. He possesses an infinite bag of tricks.



#10 Immersion is never complete. Until virtual reality becomes an actual reality, you will always be distinctly aware that you are playing a videogame. You're cycling weapons, browsing inventories, upgrading stats, checking maps or searching for exits, entrances and shortcuts. Floating bars and numbers give you information on ammo, health and equipment. Even titles that lose the HUD or attempt to simplify the controls will still involve smacking plastic buttons and twiddling rubber sticks. During films and books, on the other hand, you sit passively and surrender control. You are at the mercy of the director or writer.

#11 Nothing is left to imagination. In Psycho's chilling shower scene, you never witness the murderer's knife pierce the victim's flesh. Alfred Hitchcock edited shots of the killer stabbing, the woman screaming and the bloody water (actually chocolate sauce) flowing until you simply thought you did. Most movies use quick cuts, strategic lighting, off-screen sounds and other red herrings to trick or tease the viewer. Videogames are rarely this restrained, preferring to spray every ounce of blood and gore they can render onto the display at once.



#12 Too much is left to the imagination. Although games are fine with horror clichés like red spray and flying guts, they're timid when it comes to the honestly disturbing stuff. The executions in Manhunt are inventive, sure, but none of that vaguely visible torture can top a close-up cinematic like the blade through Kevin Bacon's throat in Friday the 13th. None of the vaguely perverse creatures in Silent Hill can top a truly devious setup like the phallic "Lust" killing in Se7en. Why? Perhaps because parents and politicians hold R-rated movies to different standards and scrutiny than Mature-rated games. They don't seem to realize that the audience - and the age range of that audience - is one and the same.



#13 You can always pause. What other scary experience offers so many opportunities for breaks? The theater won't stop the projector because you're frightened. Unless you want to annoy your friends and family, the home theater won't stop either. Ghost stories are performed in one telling, haunted houses are traversed in one trip and scary books can often be read in one or two sittings. The illusion of a game is broken every single time you reload a save file, fiddle with the menus, walk away for a restroom break or turn the console off for the evening. Even if you somehow managed to play through the entire thing without pausing, the mere knowledge that you could pause if you wanted to is enough of a psychological safety blanket on its own.

[Astrex]

Speak for yourself I get scared from Resident Evil 

[Handshakes]

When I was a little one any game with zombies used to scare me good. They Hunger, Blood, etc. They all freaked me the eff out.

These days, the scares are few and far between. That said, in the game Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines there is a level that takes place in an abandoned hotel and the game basically turns into The Shining for a half hour. It is spooktacular.

Also, I haven't played it in awhile, but I recall System Shock 2 being kind of scary, just because you have a sense of being hunted down constantly.

[nCogNeato]

I'm going to agree with a lot of these.  I'm also going to say that most of these arguments can be made for movies as well.  If a game does not imerse you into the situation, you're not going to have an emotional reaction.  The same applies to a movie.  By ratio, I see just as many "non-scary" horror movies as I do "non-scary" horror videogames.



#1 You can't die. Not permanently, anyway.
I agree, but the same can be said for movies.



#2 You don't care about those who can die.
I agree, but the same can be said for movies.



#3 The consequences are wrong.
I agree, and this is where games and movie differ.  It's the basic divide of game and movie.  Movies are passive, games are interactive.  You're motivation to play a game is to make progress.  A possible remedy for this would be the Heavy Rain format:  if your avatar dies, you assume the role of another character.



#4 The priorities are wrong.
I agree, but I don't see an alternative.  It seems like the 'desensitization' to monsters happens faster in games than movies, but that's sort of because games last longer than movies.  If you progressed through a horror game for 5 hours without actually combatting a monster, you'd be bored out of your mind.



#5 The settings and situations are unbelievable.
I completely agree with this.  Horror games tend to not groung itself in reality, the same way most horror movies do.  Again, I have to say that the Heavy Rain formula would work wonders for the horror genre.  Slow-paced, consquencial realism is exactly what horror games need.



#6 The heroes and weapons are unbelievable.
Same as #5.  After catering to an audience that's accustomed to flying jetpacks and blowing up cities, it's hard for developers to see the benefit of low-tech realism.



#7 Technology isn't good enough.
That's like arguing an orange is not an apple.  Game development is not the same as live-action film.



#8 Pacing is flat.
Same as #4 & 6.  Movie audiences and game audiences differ, and require different elements to be entertained.  If a horror game has the same pacing and unfolding story as a movie, most gaming audiences would probably get bored very quickly.



#9 Repetition, repetition, repetition.
I agree, but I also defend this flaw.  If a 10-hour game contained the same number of surprises and tricks as 10-hours of Elm Street movies, the game would take 10 years to develop.  No thanks.  Game development requires structure and formula in order to provide 10 hours of gameplay.  If games were only 2 hours long, there would probably be no repetition.  But who would pay for a 2-hour game?



#10 Immersion is never complete.
Same as #7.  Apples and oranges.



My answers are now just repeating themselves.  I'm bored of this now.   

[nCogNeato]

These days, the scares are few and far between. That said, in the game Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines there is a level that takes place in an abandoned hotel and the game basically turns into The Shining for a half hour. It is spooktacular.

I remember exactly what you're talking about.  The game as a whole left me with much to be desired, but that hotel scenario has me creeped out for days.

The first time I played Silent Hill, I got paranoid walking around my neighborhood at night.  I kept thinking a demon-pterodactyl-thing was going to swoop down from a rooftop.

I also remember having nightmares after playing Fatal Frame (I think it's called something different in Europe).

[Failed]

You have to take the time to immerse yourself with a horror game, turn the lights down, set up the surround sound, lock the door. Make an effort to jump at shadows, worry about dark areas and sh*t your knickers when something big comes.

Theres no point in playing a game if you aren't going to immerse yourself. Wheres the fun in playing for detachment instead of escapism, you might as well play Farm World on FB.

[sambo]

I don't think I've seen a scary horror film in 10 - 15 years. What has been described, I can just as easily relate to today's horroh movies.
The best piece of horror in entertainment form i've witnessed in the last 10 years would easily be Silent Hill 2.

[Failed]

Parasite Eve, i played very little of it because i'm a big girl and i cacked several thongs.

[TaraJayne]

I am too scared to read this

[GamerMan316]

I am too scared to read this

It's not scary so you'll be fine 

[Failed]

I am too scared to read this

It's not scary so you'll be fine 

it's not scary to you, we're not all your little craigy clones.... we're all terrified of the dark, your the one who's gonna have to go outside and check the noise was 'just the cat' .... or was it?!

[GamerMan316]

The last time it was the cat, this happened!!



I don't mess about me 

[Failed]

CRAIG PAAUNNNCCHHH!!
CRAIG KEEEECCCKKKK!!!


Show me your movs , CAT!!!

[Astrex]

aahhh GM that's really sick! why would you post that?

[GamerMan316]

aahhh GM that's really sick! why would you post that?

It was making noises in the garden & disturbing the peace and tranquility of my home, it's no longer a problem.