Jimquisition: The Ugly Secret of Horror Games

[Jimothy Sterling]

The Ugly Secret of Horror Games

It's Halloween, the day that St. Spooky was born for our sins. On this haunted occassion, Jim Sterling discusses what truly makes a horror game scary, and decides that the worse a game looks, the better it is at frightening you. Oh Jim, there are no tricks when you're around. You are only ever a treat. And sexy.

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[Use_Imagination_here]

Jim looks fucking weird in that mask.

(no I did not watch the rest of the video so relax mods.)

Edit: wait a second, i thought amnesia had pretty good graphics. But overall I can definately see his point.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I have to agree, and I believe the same can be said for movies too.

Jim Carpenter's The Thing is truly disgusting, the puppetry and special effects are brilliant at creating that 'not quite real' feeling, and because of that, it creeps me out far more than CGI ever could.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

I agree with your point Jim, but um... don't think I didn't notice that you spent 7 minutes essentially repeating yourself over and over.
We expect better from you sir.

 

[Wolfinton]

I have to agree, and I believe the same can be said for movies too.

Jim Carpenter's The Thing is truly disgusting, the puppetry and special effects are brilliant at creating that 'not quite real' feeling, and because of that, it creeps me out far more than CGI ever could.

I came to talk about The Thing and then you came and beat me to it. I agree with this man.

Also The Thing is one of the best movies in my opinion.

 

[Draconalis]

This was the best one yet.

I didn't have to look at his ugly face!

 

[wooty]

Agreed also, the weirdness of stop motion has always freaked me out, even from a young age that scene in The Terminator where hes chasing Sarah and Kyle through the factory is still etched in the fear bank.

Also, thank you for bringing the Clocktower series back to the forefront of my memory, I'm gonna go see if I can find it.......or obtain through slightly questionable means.

 

[CpnChaos]

This was a great episode! It seems to boil down to bad graphics = psychological, constant dreading fear and new graphics = "rollercoaster", haunted house scares. Both really have their place, but it serves well to keep both types very separate from each other and not confusing them.

 

[CpnChaos]

This was a great episode! It seems to boil down to bad graphics = psychological, constant dreading fear and new graphics = "rollercoaster", haunted house scares. Both really have their place, but it serves well to keep both types very separate from each other and not confusing them.

 

[Kuth]

Jim is on the right track, but he is dead wrong that a game needs to be ugly to be a great horror game. The games and things he pointed out were true, but I don't agree with his conclusion that a game needs to be ugly, in the sense that it needs to look like a piece of ass to do so.

What I do take away from it, is that current gens are not focused on the atmosphere so much as old horrors used to. That's why Amnesia is such a great game, it focused on the atmosphere rather then using game-play to scare the crap out of you. I think Yahtzee said it best when the best horror games are those that give you little to think about and let your mind fill in the blanks, because the brain will do a better job then any director or artist can to scare the shit out of you.

Hence why older games rock when it comes to scaring you. They didn't have many tools to work with and thus gave out that huge charm of scaring you while barely raising a finger to do it. Jim is off on a game ought to be ugly to work, it's an element, but I think that a good horror games pays great focus to the setting, pacing and shock factor. A horror game is supposed to be a virtual haunted house, with all the shocks and piss in the pants, that goes with it. Not ugliness, that comes naturally if you are doing it right.

 

[Fearzone]

A lot of good insights here. I found Quake 2 a lot more horrifying than the original Half-Life, even though Half-Life was widely recognized as having a more refined plot with better graphics.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I dunno if I agree.

I'd definitely say that, yes, psychological horror is better, and that having things too polished can make people lazy. Also, doing things "badly" can sometimes work very well.

But I wouldn't say that a game has to have strange inhuman monsters to be frightening, or that it can't be graphically well done. That would seem to imply that the real world just can't be frightening, which I'd dispute.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The original aliens versus predator game was definitely a creepy game, with the randomly spawning psycho aliens.

 

[Jennacide]

While I think Jim's idea holds true for most movies, there are a few exceptions to point out. Let's just go with zombies, since he brought them up: 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead. Both look really good, while keeping that gritty feeling. 28 Days Later is like the zombie art house film. And The Walking Dead has the most tension I've seen anywhere outside of Breaking Bad.

As for games though, you don't need to look ugly. The problem that most games fuck up and Amnesia got right is the feeling of helplessness. You literaly can't fight back in Amnesia, and that goes a long way. Dead Space and Resident Evil's greatest moments were the ones where you knew you had to run and couldn't fight back. Modern games, and this carries into the newest Silent Hill's, love to empower the player to fight back, which kills all horror. Old Silent Hill was scary because it was psychological horror, which Homecoming tried to attempt as well. While not as brilliantly written as 2, it wasn't bad. But it never felt that scary. Why? Because your hero was trained in combat and had enough weapons to fight the demons off.

 

[cymonsgames]

This was a great episode! It seems to boil down to bad graphics = psychological, constant dreading fear and new graphics = "rollercoaster", haunted house scares. Both really have their place, but it serves well to keep both types very separate from each other and not confusing them.

So help me, I actually like this episode and agree with the points.

 

[Dastardly]

The Ugly Secret of Horror Games

It's Halloween, the day that St. Spooky was born for our sins. On this haunted occassion, Jim Sterling discusses what truly makes a horror game scary, and decides that the worse a game looks, the better it is at frightening you. Oh Jim, there are no tricks when you're around. You are only ever a treat. And sexy.

Watch Video

While oversimplified for appeal value, the core point is very sound -- when you're using less, you have to use it more wisely.

I think the most basic problem with modern horror (movies, games, etc.) is that they're too direct, though. They're trying to scare us by "being scary." Or, perhaps more accurately, by "telling us to be scared." Since there are very few things that are universally scary, they rely on gore and pop-scares, which have diminishing returns.

What they are failing to do is recognize what causes "scary things" to actually move us emotionally. They're failing to create tension. Fear is too high-key an emotion to sustain... but tension? You can keep that going for a long time. And the longer you keep it going, the more impact the eventual scare will have. And tension is entirely about unfulfilled expectation.

The good thing about the audience is that they want answers. That means withholding those answers has power. You can use that to pull them along to the next unanswered question, and the next... and because you're winding up all this tension, your small pay-off moments along the way have a lot more punch.

The bad thing about creators is that they want to show everything. They want the audience to know how much work went into creating this monster, or that special effect. They want to make sure you know how much thought they put into the backstory. And the more resources they have, the more able they are to show off all that hard work. So they want to put all of that into the product... and in doing so, they give up the power of those unanswered questions.

 

[Bermuda Cake]

It's not the case that 'ugly' horror looks better, it's more that with less in terms of graphics to work with are forced to use other methods to convey scares. And saying that amnesia has bad graphics BUT has to use shadows to convey a foreboding atmosphere doesn't make sense - the graphics are what's giving it those shadows.

Also, a lot of horror comes from the uncanny - things that look close to us but aren't quite the same - doctor who does this a lot with creepy dolls etc, and that's pretty scary as well as having a high production value. This kind of horror isn't a cheap scare, AND it's not limited to 'ugly' movies - although, someone working with the limited resources could make an attempt at realism, which would look uncanny BECAUSE of the cheap production value.

So no, to say that 'ugly' horror looks better misses the point - a high production value can add to the sense of the uncanny, and it's more that 'pretty' horror CAN be used as an excuse to make bad horror.

 

[Something Amyss]

I think there's a bigger thread here about Production and laziness.

 

[LazyAza]

I don't think its impossible to make a high budget scary game, its just all developers suck at it lol. No one is willing to make a game that doesn't disempower the player anymore. Dead Space could be scary if isacc was really an engineer and all he had was say a wrench and maybe some power tools as apposed to; giant rocket powered laser annihilation cannon, that is supposedly, a tool, of some kind, that blows anything it hits clean in half.

Take away his guns, make him have to RUN to survive the monsters and bam, you have a scary high budget game.