quote: Original post by hobo-jo
Another cool trick is the camera movement/position. Again back to the Alone in the Dark, there was this bit where you are walking along a path in front of a spooky mansion, and suddenly the view changed to behind one of the windows at the top of the house, as if you were watching yourself from inside the house or as if "something" else was watching you from inside the house.

That camera angle trick was great. I still remember it from the game.

Increasing fear through gameplay? That''s a toughie. Let me break out my big psychoanalytical guns.

A situation where one has the power to combat one''s foes is less frightening than where one does not, even if the foes are formidable. A soldier in the field feels fear of death at the hands of the enemy, but this fear is lessened by the knowledge that he is armed and can use his own strength to fight this fate. A soldier in a transport, even a fairly well-armed and armored one, feels great apprehension when the transport comes under fire because he knows he can do nothing to prevent his death. Conclusion: helplessness is a fear factor.

Human beings also feel fear when they see people in a similar situation to them suffer. It''s the reaction terrorists go for when they attack civilians - the intent is to shatter the target population''s sense of security. The effect is far increased if the target has been shown to be sympathetic or confident, and especially if its own invincibility has been played up. A soldier becomes very frightened if a tank on his side is destroyed. Conclusion: ally death is a fear factor.

Some people will say that graphic violence is frightening. I don''t agree. While graphic violence can induce a strong visceral effect, it''s only for a second or so unless the violence is real... and you''re not going to that extreme are you? Human beings fear situations or creatures whose capacities are undefined, because since we do not know the capacities of these things we imagine them to be terrible and great. If you give the player the barest hints of his opponent''s capabilities, he can reconstruct a far more gruesome scenario than you could ever imagine yourself. A lot can be done with sound and occluded vision. A few brief flashes of motion through the cracks in a fence, some meaty thumps, the *pop* of a spine separating, a slowly growing circle of red... the player is NOT going to want to find out what makes that kind of noise.

Now it''s perfectly fine to have the player''s character inflict the most horrendous violence on his foes in plain sight. It''ll make it all the scarier when the foes, inevitably, unbelievably, rise again... or a hundred more take their place. It''s especially effective if the player finally, after being pursued by an implacable foe, manages to find a situation where he has the upper hand. He mercilessly strikes down his foe, hacks the body to pieces, and then, utterly spent, turns away from his foe''s corpse... only to come face to face with twenty more. So he whips around to run past his dead foe... and comes face to face with the risen enemy, looking all the more horrific for his brutal treatment. Oh, crap.

Hope I''ve given you some creepy ideas. And remember, when in doubt... evil pod people. The paranoia will go through the roof.

Nobody has mentioned AI. I think battling against a computer AI that is extremmelly intelligent would be scary. Imagine coming up in a FPS against a boss character where you know only a sequence of events will kill it, (ie, turn on the four gas valves, then find shelter and get out the flame thrower etc...) but just as you try the AI counters\blocks you from doing this in some ingenious way. Im not just talking about it killing you straight off but seriously limiting your options.

Also have team AI against you in a corridored environment, where understandably the guards know the area like the back of their hands and work up unique ways of catching you.

I have seen alot of games do things similar to this but im not talking just about scripted events but truely intelligent agents working against you.

I realise the current development of AI might not be able to implement things like this yet but maybe some day...

Also off the top of my head, things which impose a time limit on the gamer often lead to frantic behaviour which might be classed as scary depending on your viewpoint

Darren

Well first of all i have played a few of those adventure horror games and none have been scary. They might get a few jumps out of me near the beggining, but then it just gets boring and repetitive. I did like diablo 1 though and did find it scary, and the music was awesome (especialy in town) it really set the gloomy deathlike mood even before your in the dungeons.

A couple of things you can do to make gameplay scarier.

Make the player run. Give them a boss that is a lot stronger then they expected it to be so they have to run for their lives. Or maybe they can just kill you in one hit, but you can kill them too. This would make it so you would have to run but try and hit it also. It would take a lot of hits to kill it but it could kill you in one or two. This would make it more exciting then the regular boss hits you, you hit boss typed battle were your definately going to succeed but you''ll be hurt a bit in the process.

Surprise the player. Maybe somthing like ther is a room, you know thats where the boss is and you know once you open it there is going to be a evil thing trying to kill you. So you work up enough courage to open the door and BAM thers nobody in there except a bunch of peoples heads on sticks (yes the room that is in my mind is the butcher''s from diablo 1) Now your thinking where is the boss. So your continuing on your way slowly and cautiosly knowing that the boss is somewhere around. Then once youve allmost forgot about him. WAPOW he comes out from behind the corner weilding his huge bloody cleaver and the fight is on.

Make things darker. I dont just mean light although it is part of it. Make it you dont see everything or have a very good idea about whats coming next. Once you know that thers going to be a zombie around the next corner and once you know you can kill it it eliminates the fear of moving on so the player feels secure and in control.I like the idea of it all being dark except where your flashlight is and things scrambeling away once ther in the light, that makes it so the player doesnt really know anything about the creatures, except that their there. Once the player starts to know what to expect, it doesnt scare him/her. Leave some things to the imagination.

Dont make all of the enemys weaker than you. Maybe have some apects of hiding. Like your in a hallway full of guards that are patrolling the area and you have to sneak around boxes and stuff like that. Or your coming up to a room and then you here people talking and footsteps coming towards the door. Then you have to franticly run and try to hide from the coming people. If your succesfull theyle walk by and you will hear what their saying, it would be important. Or they might see you then kill you. Or you might be a little to noisy and then theyl go "what was that" and theyle look around a bit and if your in a place they look theyle kill you. Or if your lucky they wont find you and youl be free to go.

the two best understood ways of instilling fear in a player are through a sudden "holy shi*" moment like hearing those screeching slugh things in half-life. the other is playing to our survival instincts. the aliens versus predator games do this well. they put you in a dark (which humans are instinctivly scared of) where anything can hide, and doing everything to make you paranoid and think "i could be dead any minute now" such as broken pipes setting off your motion detectors.

i expect it''s virtually impossible to make players fear the gameplay so they think "i''d better not screw THIS up" becuase you can always try again. penalties for restarting only frustrate players when badly implemented.

funnily ehough, the story is usually not scary at all. even in books, films and tv (exept in a few rare examples such as Se7en) they only scare you through primal fears and making you jump. in the film Signs (some may find the next bit a spoiler, but not a big one), mel gibson goes into that cupboard where the tv is to see what is on. at that moment i had the same thought i''m sure the writers did: what is the WORST thing you could see? burning ruins? alien leaders? no, the test signal. this was a wonderful obvious-with-hindsight element: whatever has been going on was so terrible the world''s communications had stopped altogether. i cant imagine something id be more afraid of seeing. like many other tricks, it works by making us afraid of what we don''t know.

i don''t think there''s much more that can be done in the fear field in any medium, people have been writing scary stories for centuries and we''ve pretty much exhausted our ideas. the problem is there''s always a disconnection between the scary place and reality, the only way to "properly" do scary games is to maximise immersion, this means riviting story, addictive gameplay and intense game events. then you can throw your scary stuff around and then it will seem much more real, giving us a more real reason to be afraid.

a freind of mine had an idea: in a scary part of the game, play a loud sound out of the speakers in the region 25kHz-30kHz. the player won''t hear it but if they have a dog it may start barking or howling. only trouble it it temporarily seperates the player from the game, but it could freak people out (i would) and get them playing with a little more apprehension.

********


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I''m not sure if it''s even possible. I am sure that it pretty heavily depends on your definition of gameplay.

Aside from gameplay, I''d say that two types of fear can be created - ''instantaneous'' fear and ''thematic'' fear. Instantaneous fear is the kind of fear created when something jumps out at your from the darkness, and so on; it''s more about making the player jump. However, ''thematic'' fear - really making the player scared - is a lot harder to do. It has to be built up slowly, over a period of time... but, of course, it''s screwed when players stop save and quit. When they come back, they''ve fallen out of the atmosphere. Thematic fear, I feel, would be very difficult to achieve using gameplay - which is essential the ''rules'' of the game. How many people get scared by rules?

The other thing I will say is that one of the things which scares me most is loneliness. Playing Riven, in a building all on my own, with all the lights off and headphones on, with no people in-game and out; and then stopping, going outside, and walking around for another 10 minutes before seeing any other sign of life; that was scary.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

People are posting some good stuff

I have to disagree about rules not being scary. I think rules are essentially what should create the deepest kind of fear. In real life, rules ARE what create many of our fears. We are scared of bees because we know of the rule that they can sting and cause pain. We are scared of heights because we know that if we fall, we can die. We are scared of blood because it tends to mean that something has been injured, and that means we could get injured ourselves.

It''s similar in games. We are scared of Resident Evil zombies because we know they can hurt us. Games allow all sorts of creative rules to be created. So the point of this discussion is, what kinds of rules can we create (as opposed to atmosphere) to deepen fear in games?

My "FLashlight" game:

Players are trapped in a very dark haunted house (this contributes to the atmoshpere).

Players are armed only with a flashlight with gameplay revolveing around shineing it at the right objects...very simple so far....it''s basicly a ''survival/horror'' adventure game...only the player doesn''t have any weapons.

Players can encounter three basic types of characters:
1) "NPCs"...basicly other people trapped in the house.
2) "Light Sensitive" (LS) ghosts...these exist in darkness, but light scares them off
3) "Light Attracted" (LA) ghosts...not always ghosts...but these are beings who take on a physical form when light touches them.

In addition some of these various ghosts and such are attracted/repealed by the players movement...

For example...one of the "LA" beings is a huge deadly demon...in the darkness it cannot hurt the player (only when light strikes it, can it dish out some damage...and no, it cannot be hurt in darkness)...in the dark, players will be able to "hear" it moveing around as it make heavy breathing noises, and it''s numerious claws make scrapeing noises against walls and floors...it is also attracted to movement (and it is faster then the player)...a typical scenario may involve the player entering a dark room, with the flashlight they may see something across the room like a table with a phone on it...as they run to the phone, they may suddenly hear the demon rushing up behind them...wise players will slow to a walk, and turn off the flashlight...the demon then slowly circles around the player (letting out a scream every so often in frustration as "it lost it''s pray")...eventualy the demon will wonder off...but while it circles around, players must listen for other demons/ghosts that are "LS" (able to attack in the dark) and are attracted to non-movement...then of course there is the danger that a NPC will come into the room (with a flashlight, or other light source) while the demon circles the player...or that there is a window in this room and random lightning strikes outside, allowing the demon to strike the player.

some "ghosts" will also be helpfull...indeed inorder to "beat" the game players will have to learn how to spot such ghosts from mostly audio clues...

How does this sound?

I imagine if done right it could be VERY intense!...imagine that scenario above with the demon circleing around you...the screen is pitch black...but you can hear it walk around you in surround sound...you are listening closely, waiting for the sound clues that it has wondered off into another room...but to your shock you realise that something else is also approching you in the dark...and whatever it is sounds big and very meen! is it "LS" or "LA"? if you move will it follow? is the demon far enough away for you to turn the flashlight on? It sounds like it is right on top of you now!....in a panic you take a step back...and suddenly it gets very quiet...you can hear your own heart beating...just what was that thing?...and more importantly, where did it go? or is it still there, right in front of you?...you wait a second or two in the dark...just to be certain...still quiet...you fumble for the flashlight switch, and carefully aim it strait down at the floor...just in case...with a click the flashlight comes on...you wait another second to see if anything stirs...nothing...apparently, by stepping back you scared it off....you causiosly aim the flashlight for the phone sitting on the table (with your thumb on the Flashlight on/off switch)...the phone is still there...you shine the light to the right...nothing unusual...you shine it to the left...nothing there either...just what was that thing?...


Obviously there would be lots of oppurtunity for "scripted scares" and such...but hopefully the above gives you an idea of how scarry and intense such a game could be.

thoughts?

wow. I really like the flashlight game idea.
I just fear that it would tend to confuse the player rather than scare them. Which is the problem with the idea of scaring them by "breaking the rules". If the player is told what is going on it would help that, but it would probably change the experience a lot, too.