Author Topic: Scariness in videogames  (Read 38 times)

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Offline Spiney

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Scariness in videogames
« on: May 31, 2012, 05:15:16 PM »
I'm slightly bored so I'm making this thread...
I was wondering what makes people consider a video game scary.
The problem is, I'm never frightened when playing games.
When I was 10 I used to play a lot of scary games and watch scary movies,
or what I considered scary back then -- Duke3D, Quake, X-Files, Alien and all that nonsense.
I used to be scared all the time as a kid, nowadays I usually play 'scary' games late at night alone in my dark room, it doesn't bother me one bit.
I guess I've just became desensitized to it.

When my brother plays Doom3 or stuff like Amnesia he's freaking out all of the time.
But Doom 3 is just crawling through claustrophobic corridors with little room to maneuver and pitch black shadows everywhere.
It usually annoys me more than it scares me. And when it scares me it's kind of that 'oh shit didn't expect that to happen' flash that just lasts half a second.
To me it's more of the atmosphere, the uncanniness of it that makes something 'scary' I guess.
Stalker has great atmosphere in that department, the npc's have their robot like routines yet appear very human.
The entire day cycle is just a replay of the previous, creating some kind of groundhog-day like surrealism to the environment.
There are no women, the entire world feels like some rusted industrial leftover.
On route to the brain scorcher in Shadows of Chernobyl the terrain has an ambient brightness, but the sky is a pitch black stormy sky.
I tought that was very effective because you instantly notice 'something is off here', but you can't put your finger on it right away.
You open your PDA and see the contact list with reputation list of different named soldiers that all look exactly the same, reputation: very bad.

It's not that it's scary, it's just... uncanny. Kind of like Lovecraft's cosmic horror I guess.
I find that much more engaging then something like Amnesia that's simply forces it's supposed scaryness on you.
The deep breathing, slow movement, the camera that starts to wobble. All fine and well, but I don't feel scared; my game character feels scared.
This pussy should just grab a blunt object and hit that damn zombie in the face. Why am I suddenly moving so slow? Is this supposed to be having fun? It's just annoying to me. Oh a key... a door, more turtle speed and heavy breathing! Brilliant! -_-'

I'dd rather have a giant map to explore with no living soul in it, kind of like Metroid.
Just the map creating the atmosphere of total desolation, and the suspense of impending doom without it actually ever getting to you.
There was this film I was a bunch of years ago. I forgot the title, but it was brilliant.
Not a single man got killed, it was a story about a PI, scariest film I ever watched, there is the sense of threat, but all it does is build up the suspense.
Beginning to end, relentlessly. But nothing ever happens, and it ends in a never ending frenzy of paranoia.
It's the not knowing what comes next, the expecting to
end up in some hellish situation, without it ever happening.

So I guess I just want to ask what you guys think makes a game scary, or at least suspenseful. Maybe some useful discussion comes out of this.

Offline gb_remake

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Re: Scariness in videogames
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2012, 08:20:15 PM »
The Stalker scare is more of an oppressive feeling that slowly creeps in. You don't really notice it until you suddenly hear a Snork growl or the bloodsucker sound. The ambient noise in the Stalker games is very effective at creating this initially hard to notice creepy feeling. Like something is incredibly wrong, but you can't put your finger on it. Lighting and inherently creepy environments (not to mention the creepy story) also do their thing. And the monster idle sounds. I've encountered a Burer who imitated a crying baby while he was invisible to deceive the player. That is creepy stuff.

Stalker also has monsters that are pretty scary by default - controllers, bloodsuckers, poltergeists, burers. These are scary because they take control away from the player - controllers do the view zoom thing, poltergeists do telekinesis which the player cannot counter, you can only run for cover. Bloodsuckers have invisibility and in the later games can attack you from behind, immobilize you and suck your brains out while your controls are taken away. You literally have to watch your back because they will try and circle around you. Burers can use telekinesis/psi attack to make you drop your weapon. All of these are traditionally considered "bad ideas", and players of classic FPS will whine about the game taking their control away. It works pretty well, though, because it makes you want to avoid it if at all possible. Consequently, you hide, you turn around periodically to watch your back, You're never quite safe because this stuff *could* happen.

The telekinesis is scary purely because it is extremely dangerous - it can outright kill you and you can't do much except hide, flee, or stand absolutely still and hope they go away (like a rabbit in the headlights, literally). It makes the player feel insignificant, which is why it's scary (some would say annoying). It's an ability that in other games, the player has (HL2, Bioshock). Here they give it to the monsters, which absolutely turns the table. Same for invisibility - it's like giving a ring of shadows to the monsters, not the player.

In Quake, the monsters had the chainsaws, not you. The exact opposite of Doom. Giving a chainsaw to the player evens the odds and removes the creepiness, actually.

The dogs that can summon illusions of themselves are also scary - which one is the real dog? You don't know where the enemy actually is. Very stressful situation. They can just keep summoning, and you might waste your ammo on the illusions as well. This just creates stress.

Lots of monsters in Stalker can circle strafe the player very effectively. Again this creates stress - it is part of the entire oppressive feeling. You try to line up a shot on one of them, while two others are moving in to chew on you.You feel helpless, you feel outgunned, the enemy is inhuman and relentless, you have no time to aim properly, there is a lot of pressure, you spam the medkit button like crazy, and finally you want to flee.

Stalker combines the creepy oppressive mood, the jump scares, and the truly dangerous enemies & the player's physical loss of control and consequently the wish to avoid that. In Doom 3, nothing is really dangerous. As a rule, the player outguns the monsters, like in Hollywood movies, despite all the screaming. The player has the BFG, the player has the Soul Cube, the player is a gun toting Texan. Not so in Stalker. Stalker establishes a continual, real threat, and it is not American heroism, it is the all-too-real Soviet aftermath where most NPCs are aimless and powerless and have to live off scraps and dream of the Wish-Granter.

Doom 3 and Quake 4 are like someone saying "boo!" only to add "I'm here, just shoot me. I only take 1 shot to the head." And the monsters will just stand there for way too long before actually attacking, to make sure you can get a headshot in. It's like they are only kidding. Stalker is like someone really means it, no jokes and no excuses and they DO want to kill you and they're not waiting for you to headshot them. "I'm biting your head off while you are helpless. Yeah, it's unfair. You shouldn't have come here." And you fear that situation all the time because it really might happen sooner than you think. It's sublime, but it's there.

As for having this stuff in RMQ, it depends what kind of game you want to make. If you want a recreational arcadey shooter, then just give them something to shoot, and give them rocket launchers. It's simple and fun. If you want creepiness and a general feel of insecurity, then be unfair, have monsters go invisible, attack from behind without warning, have monsters strafe instead of waiting to be shot, put stress on the player, add in radioactivity / nagging ambience sounds / sepia screen tints and give the player but a rusty pistol.  ;)
Deyr fé,: deyja fręndur,: deyr sjįlfur iš sama. Eg veit einn: aš aldrei deyr: dómur um daušan hvern.

Offline ijed

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Re: Scariness in videogames
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2012, 10:44:42 PM »
I think the key here isn't scariness - that's just a part of the whole thing, which I'd call immersion.

All good games try to deliver a message to the player, and if the game is more immersive then whatever its trying to portray gets a better delivery.

Whilst Quake might seem cartoony it's only because we've been playing it for so long.  When it came out it definitely caught and held my attention, much more than the brash Doom styling.

Many modern games waste money on technology rather than design, which is why we see things like Doom3 which in my opinion is a keystone of the worst level design ever.

But looks very pretty.  Maybe not fair to pick on id, but they're an obvious example because of Quake.  The opposite end of the spectrum would be half-life 2.  Graphics not so great when it came out, but an excellent design in both game and levels.

The funny thing for me, working in the games industry, is that the reviewers seemed to prefer Doom3 to HL2, but the user reviews correctly stated that HL2 shit all over Doom3.  At least that was my impression at the time.  Lots of hollow hype.

I haven't played Stalker, but can easily equate some of the 'unfair' abilities you describe to one of our dimensional shamblers teleporting behind you with a chain lightning attack :)

Amnesia was scary for me, until I realised every time a monster appeared I'd just head to the nearest corner, then stand up and walk around (maybe get a glass of water or something) whilst the monster got bored and wandered off.  The player can always find a way to devalue a shallow mechanic.  Was a shame, since the game had great immersion.

My most memorable part of it was three lines of text.  It was obviously a tiny thing that the LD included at the last minute and had no sound resources or time to develop into something bigger, but it sticks in my mind.  It went something like this: 

A puzzle section has the player fill a large cistern with water, requiring three switches to be flipped for it to fill.  They can't see what's inside it.

Interacting with  the cistern displayed a message, a different one depending on how many buttons had been pressed:

1 Button: There is a strange noise echoing up out of the cistern
2 Buttons: The noise is louder
3 Buttons: The crying has stopped

The player wasn't required to read these messages, or even go near the cistern.  But it showed a true passion for the game they were making, which definitely came out in its immersion.

Good mechanics + good immersion = great game.  Scariness, creepiness, claustrophobia for me are all sub-sets of immersion, emotions that a good level designer is going to wring from their audience. 
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Offline gb_remake

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Re: Scariness in videogames
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2012, 11:03:59 PM »
Yeah, it's more about creating a dense atmosphere and have everything fit the type of experience you want to create.

You can build a fun fair that's not scary at all, but you can make it scary in a variety of ways by changing little things to make it seem slightly off, or slightly wrong. You might remove all the visitors - ghost towns are pretty creepy.

Obvious ways to make things seem off is when something can walk on walls, defy gravity, or when the light changes to an unnatural hue etc. Remember the drawers opening by themselves in The Sixth Sense?

Sounds help. Stalker's soundtrack is somewhat similar to Quake's, but more noisy than musical. Just ambient, metallic soundscapes. Weather also helps - the wind rustling in trees etc.

TBH I play Stalker a lot more than Quake, I just think it's superior in every aspect. You can still shoot the place up, there are still rocket launchers, there is some horde combat, but there is so much more for you to explore. Ironically the basic story is still the same - humans fuck up, monsters invade. But there's more than meets the eye, and you get to see it.

It is also easier to relate to something remotely realistic (I mean guns, buildings, textures, nature) than to something that is just total fantasy. It is fun to have your gun jam in the midst of a heated battle because it adds another factor that you need to deal with. But this, again, is the difference between being a rocket jumping superhero who never needs to reload or being part of the world. The world is not always in your favour. It might be unforgiving.

Randomisation is a step in the right direction. If you play Quake 100 times, you know exactly where everything is and it has no scare factor at all because you will reliably get the jump on the monsters. They are just little piles of HP waiting to be gunned down, not dangerous at all. Randomizing this and making monsters truly dangerous goes a long way. This is why I am in favour of RMQ ogres doing more damage, RMQ scrags being able to blink, and RMQ vores being more lethal. The next step is to modify their actual behaviour to make them more surprising and unpredictable (blinking scrags is a simple example). I was amazed that strafing grunts generated such heated debate... tbh I'd make them circle strafe and hide behind geometry if it was up to me. This is also why I want them to switch to the axe dynamically. I find stupid, one dimensional monsters more aggravating than ones that try to get in my back using invisibility.

Having parts of your game with no monsters or very little monsters also allows the ambience to seep in more than usual.
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Offline ijed

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Re: Scariness in videogames
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2012, 09:36:04 AM »
I remember one of the base levels in OUM being empty for the first half, then filling up with hordes.  That was very nicely done.
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