quote: Original post by Vlion
Heres a thought.

Make a totally normal town, in daylight.

Now, set things up in that.

Which is scarier ?
The vampire coming at you in the night when you are all alone?
Or the vampire coming at you at 11:00 in the day in public- and you know that neither light nor having people around will deter him?

The expectation is that dark things live in darkness, yes ?

Now have the dark things happily walking around in daylight.

Now, take the townspeople and have them not care.
So you are going shopping in the middle of the day, and you watch the people on the sidewalk...and in the middle, a werewolf. Noone notices a thing out of the ordinary.
But he looks over into the store and sees you, and turns in...
and you know hes coming for you...in broad daylight.

~V''lion

People tend to succumb to peer pressure. So isn''t there a risk the player just ignores the creatures like everyone else?

Unless, of course, the other characters don''t just ''don''t notice anything out of the ordinary,'' instead they ''don''t notice *anything at all*.'' That could be quite scary - almost as if the monsters trying to kill you were figments of your own imagination.

You''d have to be clear about that, though, otherwise you risk people saying ''this game is crappy, the characters just don''t respond to all these creatures around the place.'' Breaks the immersion.

Perhaps a schitzophrenic main character could be the answer? If you''ve seen A Beautiful Mind, you''ve seen how John Nash believed his hallucinations to be completely real; having the player discover that the monsters are only hallucinations would be quite a twist, but what would be scary would be, having discovered they''re only hallucinations, *they can still kill you.*

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

"why fear?"

¬_¬

why not?

"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD

Because gamers are jaded. It''s refreshing to see someone really emotionally affected by a game, and fear is one of the ways to do it.

case study: warcraft.

When I play warcraft, fear does not occure to me. Instead i feel excitment, anticipation, and love for the game. It is an experience. It is an emotional experience. I cry when I play the campaign.. (no, not only because i had been waiting for it for about 3 years) and I feel invigorated when I listen to the soundtrack. I think that by limiting yourself to fear, you are limiting yourself to insecure beings who watch horror flicks.

Not to mention psycological problems caused by games intended to scare the viewer. Now, I agree that this is a valid emotion and yes, it is ONE way to access the user. But there are many more ways, and most other ways are much more successful and much more positive.

There is also a way to do fear without having it extremely serious. This way is most effective, and people are much more responsive to it. For instance, if in your game you include humorous elements, alongside fear, it softens the blow and makes the game more enjoyable. I doubt this will go over well but it''s only to be expected.

¬_¬

People like being scared. Horror movies now a days are doing a horrrrrrible job of that.. so a huge market for it is opening up in the video game industry. Making a game that scares the begeezis out of someone will sell

"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD

quote: Original post by Fuzztrek
case study: warcraft.

When I play warcraft, fear does not occure to me. Instead i feel excitment, anticipation, and love for the game. It is an experience. It is an emotional experience. I cry when I play the campaign.. (no, not only because i had been waiting for it for about 3 years) and I feel invigorated when I listen to the soundtrack. I think that by limiting yourself to fear, you are limiting yourself to insecure beings who watch horror flicks.

Not to mention psycological problems caused by games intended to scare the viewer. Now, I agree that this is a valid emotion and yes, it is ONE way to access the user. But there are many more ways, and most other ways are much more successful and much more positive.

There is also a way to do fear without having it extremely serious. This way is most effective, and people are much more responsive to it. For instance, if in your game you include humorous elements, alongside fear, it softens the blow and makes the game more enjoyable. I doubt this will go over well but it''s only to be expected.

¬_¬

So is a love story game what you want?

Excitement, anticipation, love for a game. These all sound like very broad emotions that could all come from fear.

This topic is like a brainstorming session for how you can make fear work well in games. Of course fear can not be the only emotion but it can certainly add to a game, there might be a happy ending that makes you smile, a sad ending that makes you cry. Fear is just one way to get the player more into the game and gives you a rush of excitement. It makes your hart pound. Fear is great, you might not like it but its cuz your a wuss. If you dont think fear is a good idea, make a topic about how to make gamers cry, or smile or whatever you want to see in games.

quote: Original post by Fuzztrek
case study: warcraft.

When I play warcraft, fear does not occure to me. Instead i feel excitment, anticipation, and love for the game. It is an experience. It is an emotional experience. I cry when I play the campaign.. (no, not only because i had been waiting for it for about 3 years) and I feel invigorated when I listen to the soundtrack. I think that by limiting yourself to fear, you are limiting yourself to insecure beings who watch horror flicks.

Do you qualify as one of those elusive members of the ''mass market'' that games are trying oh-so-hard to break into? I''d guess not - very few developers aren''t hard-core gamers. So I''d guess that while the ''gamers'' of society may be moved to love a game, I''d expect that very few people in the ''mass market'' would. And that''s the market you want to break into, if you want to make money.
And do you really, truly believe that only insecure people watch horror flicks? That''s pretty... dumb, if you ask me. Just look at the box office takings for something like The Blair Witch Project... if horror games really are only picked up by insecure horror-flick watchers, then I don''t think that''s limiting the audience to a point where you need to be worried.

quote:
Not to mention psycological problems caused by games intended to scare the viewer. Now, I agree that this is a valid emotion and yes, it is ONE way to access the user. But there are many more ways, and most other ways are much more successful and much more positive.

True. But how many people would choose Rescue the Fluffy Bunnies over Doom III?

quote: There is also a way to do fear without having it extremely serious. This way is most effective, and people are much more responsive to it. For instance, if in your game you include humorous elements, alongside fear, it softens the blow and makes the game more enjoyable. I doubt this will go over well but it''s only to be expected.

Many ''horror flicks'' do fall flat on their faces because they take themselves too seriously, you''re right. That''s why Scary Movie did fairly well. But trying to go half-and-half just doesn''t really work.. the humor diffuses the fear, but the fear diffuses the humor, leaving you with a player who''s not excited.

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

the "vampires in daylight" and "hallucinations that can kill you" posts are provocative, usualy the most terrifying experiences are when what you depend upon (like vampires being limited to dark) are the emotional crutch which gets plucked from under you.

if what you expect to be able to do is now inapplicable, you have to change your whole approach the whole situation. how you kill a vampire is a pretty fundamental thing to get right when you're being hunted by vampires.

i think by constantly requiring the player be dynamic and responsive, fear will come much easily as being inactive is very dangerous. whatever you do, don't give the player time to relax.

the borg are good examples: you are safe until you act against them, and when you do it's all or nothing, no room for error and only one chance before you're on the run. if i was making a game about the borg, after a few levels i'd change the rules: eg some borg stop ambling about and run quickly after you. instead of running away you now would have to hide. not only do you get the thrill of the chase but what you knew tactically has been thrown out of joint.

the rules have to be carefully designed so it is possible for the player to not be overwhelmed by the erratic changes in gameplay, but with a suitable sense of irony allow the player to, by experience, preempt the rules and so can eventually overcome the physical embodiment fear, which is thematically mature.

the logical complement to this is red herrings, make the player paranoid about what they might have to do in the future, just for chrissakes let it make sense and have no logical flaws from any angle, then no one will complain the gameplay is daft.

********


A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It's Worth by Fighting Back

[edited by - walkingcarcass on October 17, 2002 8:24:40 AM]

quote: the logical complement to this is red herrings, make the player paranoid about what they might have to do in the future, just for chrissakes let it make sense and have no logical flaws from any angle, then no one will complain the gameplay is daft.

Not daft, no. But this is difficult to implement properly. Example: "The Thing". Great idea for a game, with an unfortunatly flawed execution...

quote: usualy the most terrifying experiences are when what you depend upon... are the emotional crutch which gets plucked from under you.

Variations of this have been tried in games already, with varied degrees of success. Remember the weapons failure in System Shock 2? A great proposal on paper, and bloody terrifying when it happens at the right time... but it was also so frustrating that Looking Glass had to release an optional patch which removed the feature. It still has the potential to be a great asset to a game, but like so many things with the genre, you have to be very careful how you implement it.

quote: Many ''horror flicks'' do fall flat on their faces because they take themselves too seriously, you''re right. That''s why Scary Movie did fairly well. But trying to go half-and-half just doesn''t really work.. the humor diffuses the fear, but the fear diffuses the humor, leaving you with a player who''s not excited.

And then you have Resident Evil...

If at first you don''t succeed, call it version 1.0

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