Fuzztrek

If the game draws the player in deeper to a game it will be more exciting/fun. Heres the question to ask yourself, how do you draw the player into your game? make it like real life/somthing they can relate to. Fear is a part of life, so is happyness, sadness and many other emotions. I dont think iv ever played a game that didnt try to encorperate some type of fear in some places, wether you like it or not it is a necessity. When you are making a game you try to make it intense, exciting, thrilling. Try to get this through your head, it is not trying to focus on the most negitive aspect of life it is just trying to focus on a aspect of life that without, there is absolutely no balance. In fact this thread has nothing to do with killing or death or anything like that, just intenseifying the gameplay by making it so you get really into the experience. And its not really the socalled "negitive aspect of life" that its all focused on, its making it feel like your in danger, feel like you have to do somthing.

Think about this. If the game diablo didnt try as hard as it can to make it seem dark and scary, like what if it was all happy go lucky and your job was to walk through the caves of happyness with the elves and enchanted faeries then go kill the evil boss diablo. Through the entire game you would be thinking "what am i fighting for" and "has this diablo fella really done anything wrong, this place is so happy and joyfull so thers really nuthing to fix. But it isnt happy, its dark, gloomy and scary so you know thers stuff to do and that you have to do it. And its scary, which draws you into the game and makes you excited, intesnse gaming experiense. You know if you turned off the sound to the game its 1/2 of how fun it is because you loose 1/2 the thrill of being scared, then say you change the graphics around so that there more happy. Then the game has a fear factor of 0 and it is no longer fun, just boring. It is focusing on getting rid of the horror and death, its not focusng on horror and death. Say you were playing quake, what if you new nobody would atack you, it would be boring because there would be no fear left in the game. Fear makes things fun.

So Fuzztek, you seem to have all these big ideas about not having fear, how do you propose to make a game without fear, share your ideas? give us some more positive ways to make a game more intense?

Also, just because we are discussing infusing our games with fear, doesn''t mean it has to be with death and killing! Fear of many forms has some place in many games. In a good game of warcraft, if you spend a lot of the game building up your forces and discover that your opponent has more guys than you, you might be a little afraid of losing. Perhaps not real fear, but a definate form of fear is present.

I do think that fear is probably the easiest emotion to elicit in a player/viewer, because it''s such a basic simple emotion. Other emotions, such as love (trying to make a player truly LOVE a character? TOUGH), consideration, sadness (oh man, I''m so sad. I lost another life. Time to reload my game...), and happiness are all much more complicated emotions, and definately harder than fear to artificiate. It is relatively easy in a game, if you are wanting your players to feel a CONNECTION to the game, to accomplish that feat through fear. On the most basic level, all it takes is good timing, good sounds, and possibly good graphics (although this part isn''t required).

Think of Aliens VS predator. Based on one of the more exciting scary movies out their (Aliens), players would expect the game to be scary as well. And it is. As the marine, your rader beeps faster and higher pitched the closer the aliens are to you. Even when the lights are turned ON (which isn''t always the case) you generally know the alien is close to you BEFORE you see it. This is definately a major element of fear that is fairly important, yet hard to get right. The player needs to know before something happens, in order to build up anticipation for that thing. But they shouldn''t know something so far in advance that they are completely prepared. Going back to AvP, the first time I ran into a facehugger, I thought it was just a dorky little alien (no worries, its smaller than me). Sure, the sound of it was kind of creepy, but it will be a piece of cake. Then it jumped at me, the screen went red, the sound of it sucking on my face filled my earphones, and I jumped out of my chair. The second time I tried that level, I was much more careful around those little guys, and knowing that one mistake would kill me made dealing with them so much more exciting, and more fun.

So anticipation is important, if you want to go for cheap thrills sound is very important, and good graphics that fit your game''s modd can go a long way. Going back to the town with the werewolves that don''t interact with the other people, I could see this working if it''s executed right. There can''t be too much music, music (even atmospheric music) can kind of destroy the mood. In this situation, I think the best way to do it would be to have maybe quiet footsteps of the people, and not many other sounds. But when you first hear the monster, it''s footsteps should be louder than the other sounds. Then when you see it, and it sees you, its roar breaks your speakers Getting the mood right would be challenging though, but it would definately work better in an environment where the player doesn''t have much they can use to fight against the monsters (i.e. NO bfg 9000).

I think fear is best used as a way to add some "reality" to an already existing game, having more of an emotional reaction in the player than your typical dime a dozen game. I don''t really like the idea of games that are designed from the ground up as a "scary" game, such as the Thing, because then you might forget gameplay by focusing too much on controlling fear.

I played diablo, and I did not find it scary, I found it disturbing.

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What does that have to do with anything, this isnt a thread to debate wether diablo was scary or not. This is a thread to think of ways to make the gameplay of games scary, and i guess your thoughts are that diablo hadent done that well? Then how about contributing for a change by thinking of some ways they could have made diablo scarier instead of bitching about how fear is usless in games, which it is not. If you want to have games with no fear or intensity in them then go start a topic on alternitives to fear and how to use them or somthing like that. So instead of sitting hear whining about how you didnt like the way diablo was, either help or go away. Its up to u which one you do.

Right... wow... Amazing how immature people can be. Fascinating really. I come here with a different opinion, and everyone shoots it down for no reason. Instead of actually contemplate the thread topic, everyone tries to change my opinion. Odd. But eh. What are you gonna do?

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Hint: Look at the thread title.
Hint: You are off track.

Hint: Make a new thread about you not liking Fear. It could make a good discussion and you won''t have to ruin this one! Yay, Win-Win.

quote: Original post by Fuzztrek
What I do not get is this fixation with death, killing and horror. It makes absolutly no sense what so ever to me. Why would someone want to focus on one of the most negative aspects of life? for entertainment?! Obviously no one is concerned with our society and the way it is headed. Nah.. I'm not here to preach to everyone about how much violence there is today.. or how games cause people to kill. I don't think that. However, you have to admit that there is something wrong witht he fact that at age 18, the average person has seen 16 000 murders, on tv, in movies, in the media.

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you seem to be trying to change our opinion. Interesting.

And saying fear is not a good thing for games is in my opinion utterly stupid. I have not played one game, on snes and above, that has not tried to use the aspect of fear in some way. The point is fear is a nececity, it doesnt have to be about dead people and murderers. It can just be a change in the pace of music. They did this in the older mario games, they got your heart pumping be speeding up the music, and making the fear of running out of time more intense. So was this inapropriate to do, i think not. And im perfectly fine with the fact that your argueing somthing, i argue more than anyone i know. But there comes a point were you have to say "yeah i guess your right" but some are to stuborn to do that. In fact the whole thing might be that you misunderstand what this topic is all about, and it isnt murder and death. And you could just say "oh sorry i misunderstood the topic" but maybe your too stuborn to even do that. But im pretty sure you lost this arguement.

And your saying things like how as soon as someone comes in with a different opinion comes in we shoot them down and arnt willing to discuss it. Well what do you think we have been dong this whole time, debating weather we shood want fear in our games. What do you want us to do, as soon as somone comes in with a different opinion just agree because its different. NO, we either agree or dissagree with it and we disagree and we have stated it and now your mad at us for dissagreeing. What the hell is that, can you not stand to be wrong. We have the right to state our opinion and we did. And you have the right to state yours, which you did. What you must come to realize is that we are not just shooting down your opinions because they were different, we debated them. You must realize that this whole thing is a debate, and right now we are debating. WE have a reason to shoot you down, because we think your wrong, and we have the right to state that. So what do you want me to do, next time a oppinion that i dissagree with is stated i shood just agree with it? well im sorry but somtimes your wrong. It happens, deal with it.

EDIT: Oh and you shood argue your point with facts, not with little remarks about how imature it is to dissagree. And um i thought you were supposed to argue your oppinion is a debate? well, i guess not, or they might get mad at u for trying to change their oppinion, and we dont want thst to happen. Right?

[edited by - MTT on October 22, 2002 1:45:58 AM]

woah, calm down, MTT.

to be fair, fuzz got a little shouted down but that''s because he didn''t make a full argument and got seen as making less than relevant comments.

if we''re going to debate we''re going to have to not bitch and squabble over trivial indignities.

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

Yes.. well I have supported my arguments with facts, but you do not accept them. So I can''t really argue at all.. And if your going to say taht about me, I can say the exact same thing back at you. You cannot support your opinions with facts. You say that fear is a necessity, but you do not say why. I seriously do not think fear is something that is needed in all games. Conflict, perhaps. Some opposition. But not fear. I guess it all boils down to relativity. All of a sudden you say that fear can be anything, from running out of time to a change in music. then really, anything is fear. It''s just a smaller or bigger amount of fear on the giant scale of fear. So then, it is really irrelevent for you to even be arguing against my opinion. But of course you can''t agree with me now

All I would like to know, is why is fear so important? Why not any other emotion? You seem to think that fear is the "ultimate" emotion. Whenever I say, "why not any other emotion" you think that I mean happy emotions.. laughing emotions. What about anticipation? What about grief? I mean, there are so many other emotions out there.. I don''t know why anyone would want to limit themselves to one of them. So, why fear? So far I havn''t gotten a very good answer. So far I''ve only gotten "because" answers.

I mean.. most GOOD games encorporate many emotions. Sure, they encorporate fear. But they also encorporate other ''dark'' emotions, and many ''happy'' emotions aswell.

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I think we already discussed this Fuzztrek, and this seems to keep going in circles. We already AGREED that fear isn''t the ULTIMATE emotion. We AGREED that there are many other emotions which could be used, perhaps to greater emotional involvement. Is this thread ABOUT those other emotions? NO. Please, start another thread called, "Lets not focus on fear. What other emotions are good in games?" before this thread totally dies (I''m afraid it already has). By the way Fuzztrek, if you go all the way to the FIRST post (a long way back, its true) the FIRST thing beantas says is: "The ''how'' question." NOT The "Why" question. You are the one asking "why" fear when the point of this thread is to discuss how not why. Ask "why" somewhere else, it could provide good discussion, but its diluting this one.




That example of mario''s music is a good example. Time limits are a good way to create fear, and using music dynamically is a good way to depict that time limit. Dynamic music can go a long way in other settings as well. For example, whenever you see an enemy in Gothic, the music really picks up. That game in particular (even with its easy use of frequent saves) does fear well, making you afraid of the animals and monsters even in broad daylight. No dark, barely lit corridors here; most of it is all outside. But hearing the screecher scream at you as it charges leaves an impression. It also makes the world seem that much more alive. There''s this one reverberating call from that games soundtrack that I still remember that was pretty creepy.

What about if some of your control gets taken away? They don''t deal with this much in games, because when you take control away from the player it tends to just frustrate them. But for instance, in Chrono Trigger, it was pretty scary when one of your characters couldn''t attack, or got confused and started attacking other characters. Youd see the stars around their head and your like, "Oh NO, he just leveled up too..." What about a game where something makes you go blind, or it''s so dark you cant see anything, so you have to rely on the crisp stereo sound to navigate? Probably best if not used for too long though.

I remember one part in Serious Sam (pretty much everything in that game stolen from doom though) where you go in this one place and it gets really dark, then the fog comes down. But that game had so many enemies that it didn''t take long before you realize that EVERY item would spawn enemies, enemies were behind EVERY door, and there aren''t ANY safe rooms; and once you figured this out it stopped being scary.

Oh, I think the scariest moment in a video game ever was when I first played out of this world, and the monster at the begining jumped down in front of me. I was pretty young, and the music was turned up pretty loud, and making your way through all those stupid works really sets you up. You finally make it to a screen with nothing on it, run for the other side, and BOOM! He jumps down, and the camera goes to that view making him full size on the screen, I jumped so high! More of surprise than fear, but that was a pretty good game One of the earliest games with extensive cinema sequences I think.