Uh, yeah? Isn't that the definition of horror? Now if you're asking does a game intended to be of the horror genre, need horror to be FUN, the answer is no. It can fail at being a horror game and still be enjoyable.
Poll: Does a horror game need to be scary?
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I disagree. I don't find it scary at all, tense would be a much better word, but not scary. In modern horror, when something jumps out and screams at the camera, that can be scary. But that is more of a silly thing, than any kind of atmospheric thing. The atmosphere and vibe is what is important to me, rather than being scared.ninjaRiv said:
Short answer: No
Long Answer:
Depends if you WANT the game to give you a good scare. I personally don't consider a game "Horror" unless it's trying to scare me. Left 4 Dead never felt like it was trying to scare me, but it could loosely be considered horror. I wouldn't say Dead Space 3 won't have it's scary moments. Especially since the friend I intend to play it with is the biggest pussy every when it comes to scary games. He turned Amnesia off long before the first enemy game an appearance and never opened it up again. (This was about 5 minutes into the game, before he saw the shadow in the basement.)
Sure, Dead Space 3's Co-Op will spoil the immersion quite a bit, but I guarantee it'll scare me a few times due to how the earlier games did their jump scares. I'll also probably do a blind run with an IRL friend of mine so we get the best experience possible.
Then I suppose it is yet another personal/subjective thing, rather than any kind of concrete set-in-stone fact or objective.ninjaRiv said:
My reflex answer was, yes, obviously.
But thinking about it, probably not, a lot of the most famous horror films aren't at all scary. No-ones scared of Friday the Thirteenth, Jason is a punchline. The whole slasher genre is now pretty much a funny game you play with friends taking bets on who gets knocked off and how. Even the Evil Dead films, were they really scary? But they were entertaining as
So it's twisting the definition a bit, but if we say something is horror if it has elements that are used in scary films and based around some weird monster, with a threat of death, then yeah I don't see why we have to pin it in one emotional box if it fits others. There's got to be something about it, it has to contain elements that we would have at one point considered scary, and to be honest there should at least be a jump scare or something, but nowadays a lot of the draw of horror is a kind of indulgent man-hunt thing and Dead Space has an opportunity to be in on that market
But thinking about it, probably not, a lot of the most famous horror films aren't at all scary. No-ones scared of Friday the Thirteenth, Jason is a punchline. The whole slasher genre is now pretty much a funny game you play with friends taking bets on who gets knocked off and how. Even the Evil Dead films, were they really scary? But they were entertaining as
So it's twisting the definition a bit, but if we say something is horror if it has elements that are used in scary films and based around some weird monster, with a threat of death, then yeah I don't see why we have to pin it in one emotional box if it fits others. There's got to be something about it, it has to contain elements that we would have at one point considered scary, and to be honest there should at least be a jump scare or something, but nowadays a lot of the draw of horror is a kind of indulgent man-hunt thing and Dead Space has an opportunity to be in on that market
Yeah but it's aiming to scare everyone, or at least its target audience. No product can deliver to everyone. Jackass is labeled a comedy but I can't stand the franchise. It's still trying to make people laugh.BathorysGraveland said:
Maybe it's better to say that a person doesn't have to find something scary to agree that it's a horror. Rather than say it doesn't have to be scary to be a horror. like I don't find the Exorcist scary but I agree that it's a horror. It has the codes and conventions of a horror. Maybe I'm being pedantic with the OP's wording, though. Maybe that's what they meant in the first place.
I can think of more than a few pieces of "art" that I've come across over the years that were thought provoking, but the process wasn't anything approaching "pleasurable". Reading Nineteen Eight Four or watching films like A Clockwork Orange or Apocalypse Now for example. To a large extent the same goes for a game like Spec Ops: The Line. They all made me think, but I didn't enjoy either the art itself or the thought process.Milk said:
/derail, back on topic.
No, I think to be a horror game you need to at least make an attempt to be scary. To be a good horror game, you need to be successful in that attempt.
That's not to say a game that doesn't attempt to be scary can't be a good game - obviously that's not the case. That game just won't be a horror game. In the same way that a romantic comedy without any comedy would just be a drama film, or a death metal band with no distorted guitars or gutteral vocals would be some other kind of band.
I see. But where does this leave gore films? I consider gore undoubtedly horror, regardless of people naming it "torture porn" or whatever other childish term they wish to apply to it. Does anyone really consider gore scary?ninjaRiv said:
Of course but that's more "Shock Horror" than straight horror.BathorysGraveland said:
Although, I personally see most of it as "torture porn" mostly because they're trying to use cheap gore to scare the audience rather than relying on character development, lighting, sound, camera angles, plot, etc. Saw was a good movie, though. That one knew how to use gore. There's plenty of good gore movies that manage to be scary and disgusting.
Well for me, it's a very good feeling of true horror. The whole idea of being helpless to resist and at the mercy of someone who holds no notion of the concept (that being mercy). One of the worst ways to die, I'd imagine, is a slow, suffering. So for me, gore goes hand-in-hand with the atmosphere horror tries to provide. Unless of course of the effect are terrible, then it becomes unintentionally comedic.ninjaRiv said:
Does a horror work need to be scary? No. Do a good chunk of them fit that description? Yes.
If scary isn't the prerequisite, what is? I think it's that the work is, on some level, disturbing. Whether that aspect is playing to the primal evolutionary parts of our mind, like death and disfigurement, or whether it's something more abstract, like the idea of brainwashing, the thing which makes us consider something horror will be something which disturbs us, even if it doesn't actually scare us.
If scary isn't the prerequisite, what is? I think it's that the work is, on some level, disturbing. Whether that aspect is playing to the primal evolutionary parts of our mind, like death and disfigurement, or whether it's something more abstract, like the idea of brainwashing, the thing which makes us consider something horror will be something which disturbs us, even if it doesn't actually scare us.
Dead Space is a perfect example of a horror game that's not scary. I never got one real jump out of that game but it was still fun. However, if the only appeal to the game is horror (which isn't a bad thing, we actually need more of that) than it HAS to be scary, Dead Space was only good because it was trying to be scary and fun, but only succeeded in the latter.
While yes, it was marketed as a military game I don't think this takes away its place in the horror-game genre. It was marketed to be a military game to fool people into playing what was actually a horrifying experience.someonehairy-ish said:
Eh personally I put disturbing and harrowing under horrifying. I looked it up now just in case to see if I had been raised up to believe the wrong definition but apparently not. [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/horror?s=t]
If It's horror, then yes. That's the whole point. Dead Space is an action game though since it isn't scary. Calling it a horror game is like calling Star Wars a comedy because it has a few jokes.
I don't expect it to be scary: I just expect it to mess with my mind... scary is different to all people anyway. 
(I used to think Dungeon Keeper was scary)
For the same reason not all games have to be fun not all horror games have to be scary. They can also be gruesome or mind-blowing, or something else you can think of.
However.. most horror games SHOULD be scary, just not necessarily ALL of them.
(I used to think Dungeon Keeper was scary)For the same reason not all games have to be fun not all horror games have to be scary. They can also be gruesome or mind-blowing, or something else you can think of.
However.. most horror games SHOULD be scary, just not necessarily ALL of them.