Video games can't do horror.

[shrekfan246]

Games like Dark Souls, I play when I want a challenge. When I want to really focus and bust my way through something difficult so I can feel good about overcoming it, there's really nothing better.

And games like Dead Space are perfect for when I want tension. Because sometimes I want to build up a feeling of unease that crescendos to a cathartic release. Dark Souls can double in this section as well.

Isn't that wholly on the skill of the player, though? Dark Souls, for instance. I found Dark Souls to be extremely easy...but that's because I'm good at parry/countering from Devil May Cry 3/4 and playing Fiona in Vindictus. A lot of the difficulty goes out the window when you deal massive (often fatal) damage whenever an enemy has the audacity to attack you.

Same with Dead Space. I started Dead Space 3 on Impossible difficulty and breezed through it without using the microtransactions or getting low on resources. (Chaingun + Force Gun is super broken apparently).

I'm not sure if Dark Souls counts as action-horror, though.

That's why I used all of those pronouns... because Dark Souls provides me with a greater, more "fair" challenge than most other modern games that I've played. I didn't say I thought it was a hard game, I said it's a game I play when I want to focus. Comparatively speaking when held up against games like Darksiders II or Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Dark Souls is a relatively difficult game for me. And I believe it can fit into the "gives me tension" category because when I get into it, I'm proceeding slowly and carefully, ensuring I know everything about my surroundings at any given time so I'm adequately prepared to stave off any ambushes that might happen.

I can't believe I'm going to state this, but different people play games differently. Generally speaking, when I'm playing a game I picture myself in the position of the player character, and begin to treat the game as I would if I were actually the person I'm controlling.

 

[Snownine]

A scary game is one that would make you want to put the control down and not come back.

Okay.

But that's not what the point of a video game is.

...Which is why I said I don't believe a video game can adequately capture real horror.

But then I have to ask, what is a video game to you? Or at least, the point of one. To provide entertainment? To provide a soapbox? To provide stress relief?

There are degrees of horror just like in anything else, it is not all or nothing. You can be scared and unsettled by a game, movie, or book but not want to completely stop experiencing it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

If your definition of horror is "to fail permanetly" then no, no game will ever be scary.

If however your definition of horror is the reveal of the unsightly and the dark corners of the mind, then there are were plenty games that achieved that.

But honestly, do unbeatable enemies genuinely terrify you, is in rock you to your core? Or do they simply make you worry that you can't finish the game? Because the latter is not what horror is about.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I understand you don't get scared by games but that doesn't mean others don't.
And the definition of "unbeatable = horror" would just make all shit arcade games the top of horror genre, but those weren't scary just frustrating to the point you never wanted to play again.

A horror game comes from the setting, you put the player in a scary place and have them press on through even more horrors in an attempt to save themselves, obviously if the player doesn't want to be scared all this will be lost on them.

 

[solemnwar]

A scary game is one that would make you want to put the control down and not come back.

Okay.

But that's not what the point of a video game is.

...Which is why I said I don't believe a video game can adequately capture real horror.

But then I have to ask, what is a video game to you? Or at least, the point of one. To provide entertainment? To provide a soapbox? To provide stress relief?

By that logic, horror novels should make you want to put down the book and not come back.
BUT THAT WOULD BE DEFEATING THE PURPOSE OF A BOOK.
Therefore, books cannot adaquetly capture "real" horror.
Or any medium.

So basically the only way to capture "real" horror... is real life. Uh. Hmm.
No.

The point of any media is to "entertain" or "intrigue" or in some way keep a reader interested. If someone does not want to deal with the work any longer, then it has failed (not overall, just for that person).

Although I find it amusing how the concepts of "horror" have changed over the years. I've taken university classes in Gothic Literature and Restoration/18th Century Literature (which contains Gothic Literature), and in that sense "horror" and "terror" have quite different meanings.
Terror: anticipation of some vague, uncertain, dreaded occurence, frequently also characterised by amazement and awe.
Horror: physical realisation of a dreaded terror.

So basically terror is "oh jesus fuck what was that noise oh god please don't be a mosnter" whereas horror is: "OOGAH BOOGAH" "AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH"
So I think what most people want in their vidjeo games is terror. Not horror. Although nowadays I suppose the terms are pretty synonymous.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Games can do horror. Horror isn't about not being able to fail, its more a fear of failure. Actually its more a fear of the unknown and potential harm but we'll qualify that as failure for this. You can be scared of something you know can't happen. Fear isn't rational and you're not thinking logically when it happens so you can make people afraid of anything, even something as stupid and irrational as the boggy-man. People are afraid of irrational stuff all the time. When you do it right it doesn't matter whether or not its possible, you still fear it. Even as such, not being able to permanently dies doesn't make games less scary. Anyone who just beat a difficult section of a game and can't save for some period of time and suddenly fears every single low level mook knows that. You can make plenty of horror by just the fear of making player lose progress. Oddly, Dead Space realize that with its hard mode which was horror though the idea of losing progress. You didn't care if you could play the game an infinite number of times and would eventually win, you feared having to start over.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

OP: you completely misunderstand the concept of "horror." Horror is not death, it is not monsters, and it is certainly no the mere threat of permanent death. In novels, cinema, and games, there is no real death, that is what makes them entertainment as opposed to a crime in progress.

Horror always looks inwards to its characters, and is not about the fear of death, but about the sorrow and misery of living. In this, it encourages its audience to look inwards to themselves, and confront their own sins and sorrows as well. This is what made Silent Hill 2 so spectacular: it executed this nearly flawlessly.

The idea of horror as a "monster" or "monstrous death" is nothing new, but that does not make it any less wrong. Poe understood this all too well. And while Lovecraft misunderstood Poe horribly, Charles Beaudelaire thankfully carried on Poe's work as his true successor, examining the horrific and capricious nature of the human condition, rather than inventing monsters to represent these things.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I disagree entirely. Video games are the only medium that does horror well because you are personally involved. Your life (virtual of course) is at stake. I absolutely hate horror movies because they always fail to get me involved. I don't give a crap about the plot, I don't give a crap about the characters. And these modern horror movies are idiotic. They are all about blood and gore. Pathetic.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

There are two rules that video games commonly follow: They have to be challenging and they have to be winnable. I know these aren't apliccable to everygame but its what I've been taught. That means the game your looking for is impossible since a game that kills you forever is unfair, not challenging and if there is no chance of winning then it can't be won.

Horror is best replicated within in video games because its that more personal. The Necromorphs are chasing you and you aren't reading about the tension happening to someone else you're experiencing it just as you experience the triumph and relief of dismembering the last limb.

Video games also have years of expectations and cliches we expect to see in horror games ad this leaves ample room to subvert expectations. Shame we don't see as many games breaking the formula to scare us.

 

[Altorin]

horror is rarely done well in games, but that doesn't mean that it CAN'T be done well.

Silent Hill before the downfall did alright, same with resident evil - sure, if you knew exactly where to go and knew the tricks to conserve ammo, they're easy, but that's in retrospect, when you first were learning to play them as a kid you didn't do those things and they were terrifying because every zombie could mean you're death. Eternal Darkness did an interesting take on horror when it started making the players question whether or not they themselves were going nuts.

there's been a resurgence in proper horror as of late, with games like Amnesia and Slender, both of which feature completely powerless protagonists against horrors that will destroy you almost immediately and which are not intended to be killed but carefully avoided. You could argue that Slender is a bit shallow, but it certainly has atmosphere and if you're the sort that screams at "scary stuff" it'll make you scream, as the many hilarious let's plays of both of those games will attest.

Even in non-horror games, there are sometimes obstacles meant to be avoided, and if the atmosphere is done right, these things can be terrifying. I remember the SA-X enemy in Metroid Fusion being particularly pants shitting when I was younger.

It all really depends on the atmosphere, but if you're the sort of person that honestly doesn't think there is the capability for horror in games (as opposed to... movies? Books?) then there's really nothing I could possibly say to convince you, because that statement is just so provably false that you're either trolling or.. blind.

 

[prophecy2514]

Your opinion of what constitutes horror is far too niche. Horror is a very broad thing, one which any storytelling medium, be it a book, movie, a video game etc can capture as long as the feeling of fearfulness can be conveyed.

 

[DoPo]

A scary game is one that would make you want to put the control down and not come back.

Okay.

But that's not what the point of a video game is.

...Which is why I said I don't believe a video game can adequately capture real horror.

Let me turn the tables on you - what captures real horror? Movies? Because I can easily dismiss them the same way you dismissed games - why should I fear what's happening on the screen? It's pre-set - I can't alter it, it's not applied to me even. It's just fictional characters getting fictionally scared. Or maybe books have real horror? But no, that has the same problems as movies. With the added complexion that we are just repeatedly told "it's scary!" in different ways. Why should I feel horrified by a vivid description of something inhuman or whatever? "And then, he got, like, STABBED and there was BLOOD and he was in PAIN. But he was STABBED AGAIN. And the STABBING CONTINUED!" - scared yet?

So what is that real horror that is not present in games? I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere else. Is it perhaps that what YOU think horror is or it is not, is entirely subjective? Or it could be I'm objectively wrong.

EDIT: In fact, I'd go ahead and extend this question to every possible emotion - how can you feel happy or sad or whatever else by entirely fictional set of events? It shouldn't be possible - they aren't real, everybody knows they aren't real, so why is it that some claim X made them smile or anything else? Doesn't seem possible if we apply the same logic as before. You won the game? Well, it's supposed to be won - why cheer here? You failed? Well, it's supposed to be won - you'll get there eventually. And so on and so forth.

Answer me this so we may actually get to a proper discussion.

 

[dontlooknow]

That's an interesting point, and I've wondered about the 'hero fatigue' (yeah, I just made that up) in video games before. The Elder Scrolls series seems to suffer quite badly from it - the ever-ridiculed narrative, that "you and only you are able to save the world" diminishes the effect of a threat to the player, and highlights the player's position in an otherwise fictional world. Essentially, what is happening here is that the narrative and the mechanics appear to conflict - one is saying "watch out for these dangerous things," which the other is saying "you are empowered, you can take on anything." But in this game, what could have been an immersion-breaking conflict is assuaged by other aspects of the game, like visual and audio aesthetics, good writing, detailed lore, and solid character development. These focus the player, on the world they inhabit, and instead of saying "I am fighting this beast because the game says so," the player says "I am fighting this beast because it is threatening this village."

Another example that is closer to yours is SpecOps: The Line, in which the horror doesn't come from a threat to the hero's safety, but to their status as a narrative hero, to the character's mental health, and to the player's participatory position.

So yeah, it's true that knowing that you can't die plays a part, the best horror comes from either a threat that is unknown, or a threat posed to something other than physical safety, an I'd say that games are the best medium to do so.

 

[Lord Kloo]

Games should got he way of the 'horror of the unknown'

FEAR games are scary because you don't know what Alma will do or what she even is

Thief: Deadly Shadows' 'Cradle' missions were hellishly scary because for the first half, despite their being no enemies, its super scary with the atmosphere and what that knocking noise behind the door could be... and the malicious cradle itself

Sometimes games are just scary because you don't want to continue and the fact you have to is scary enough, Amnesia got this right by constantly forcing you on and not allowing you to just sit in the dark and hide

If I were making a horror game id used the fear of the unknown to scare the player

 

[maninahat]

[Horror] simply doesn't translate to video games. You can't accurately capture what makes Xenomorphs scary if the protagonist cannot fail.

Pure horror just isn't something that video games do well, because the aforementioned fact that you absolutely cannot fail. For example, Dead Space 2. They put a lot of effort into trying to make you feel unsafe in the vents...but the vents were where I felt safest, specifically because you were completely defenseless inside of them. If a Necromorph were to legitimately attack you there, then you would have no chance to stave off your death. A video game can't allow that, and so vents = safe.

I could even use Amnesia as an example. Amnesia wasn't scary because you were never backed into a corner. There was always a way to proceed, you just needed to find it. No matter how powerful the monsters were or how weak you are, as long as success is inevitable, it's not horror. There's just nothing to fear.

The same can be said for movies too. Going into a horror movie, you generally expect the protagonist to survive to the end. Their friends may die, but as long as the protagonist is a protagonist, and has the accompanying set of generic characteristics (brown hair, virginal, marginally more empathetic) they will get through okay, regardless of how hopeless or vulnerable the story makes them. Some movies deliberately subvert that by killing off the protagonist in the end, but that doesn't change the fact that throughout the whole movie, you were assuming they would be okay, no matter what hit them on their journey.

Certainty is the single greatest enemy of horror, and it can easily spoil a game or film when the protagonist is clearly no longer at stake. There are ways around this though. Clever horror games can exploit the things you have taken for granted. The Walking Dead does a masterful job of catching you off guard, because when you're focused on an interactive conversation or puzzle, you assume nothing can happen.

Another trick the game employs is that, expecting the player to assume they'll get through to the end, it puts at stake, the lives of relatable characters. In hindsight, you can see the rail-roading that ensures things happen in a certain way, but experiencing it for the first time, you have no idea what will happen to these guys, and you are made to feel totally responsible for their survival. Similarly, in Minecraft, horror exists because the game doesn't care if you permanently lose all the valuable stuff in your inventory. Once those stakes are established, you feel way more scared when negotiating long drops or lava flows.

So in summary, there are still ways to create uncertainty (and horror) within a narrative, even with a fixed protagonist and a genre savvy audience. The problem is that a lot of games and films fail to try, and the only things they put at risk are hateful characters, an immortal protagonist, and a child you know will never come to harm.

 

[Strazdas]

Videogames can do horror. Problem is, horror is personal. And as such, you would have to tailor the game specifically for every person out there. SUre there are some categories that you can group people in, but the more you categorize the more likely you will fail at scaring the group. this is why such titles like Dead Space that try to go after everyone end up going after noone (i found deadspace mediocre game, but that could be party due to me completely hating this whole UI on a player isntead of the correct places setup). Same goes for movies, you will find movies that scare you the most be small niche movies.

You can die in games. it is gameover for you then. also mroe and more games now employ more than one main cahracter, in which case you can die, and continue the game as another character, and thus have penalties for the first one dieing, theres a lot to expand there.

 

[Kirke]

I watched Alien not long ago, and it scared the crap out of me. I knew full well that Ripley survived, but it was still scary as shit. Another example is the first mission of AvP 2010. I was on full terror mode at the end, running through some damp sewers. Then a frigging Alien grabs you and pulls you down, ending the mission? Yeah, that's scary. So no, I do not agree that games cannot do horror.

 

[GameChanger]

Minecraft and Dark Souls make me afraid of taking on difficult situations because I can lose everything if I fuck things up. Minecraft is especially well in doing this. I am always on edge when underground, and the latest snapshot makes skeletons a nightmare.

Dead Space in a lesser sense is able to run chills down my back when listening to audio logs and things of the sort. It's the kind of "what happened here"-creepy.

Amnesia is balls-to-the-wall scary because it makes your heart pump. You can only hide. You can only run, there is NOTHING that can safe you. The music, the sounds, the design, it all works together. It's an experience hard to describe, and even harder to replicate.

Games and Movies are a different medium, don't compare Aliens to Amnesia. They're different in every way, and they still work.

 

[Blackdoom]

I would say video games are probably the best medium for Horror it is just unfortunate that nobody really does it that well because they do not implement things properly.

As they player you are directly in control of the experience in a movie or a book you are just witnessing it and watching happen which to me reduces the level of threat where as a video game could definitely pull of a true sense of horror.

The issue becomes however most horror games instead focus on the player fighting whatever the threat is. This takes away from the impact of it because if you can easily kill it then it isn't really a threat.

It is just unfortunate that most horror games now days are just shooters with scary looking enemies instead of aliens or people of a different ethnicity.

I have been discussing an idea for a horror game with my friend with most of the ideas being about fucking with the player. There would be no real plot instead it would be focused on surviving by avoiding creatures or running and hiding at even the slightest hint that there is something there.

 

[Nazulu]

To me this is utter bullshit. There have only been a few movies that I actually found scary in my life, while there are way more games that have scared the crap out of me. Hell! Some bosses I can't actually face again because of how intimidating they are.

I'm not sure if it's because I get easily immersed or what ever, but when you're in control and you have absolutely no idea whats going on around you, or you're so close to death it becomes intense, or you can worry about a NPC friend that could die, etc. It works! And I can't see why no one could make a game where you can't stop something terrible or die and succeed. Would that bother any one here?