Irrational Behavior Episode 5 Discussion

Talk about Irrational Behavior Episode 5 here!

Part 1: What Are We Afraid Of
Part 2: Why Fear is Fun
Part 3: The Art of Fear
Part 4: The Feel of Fear
Part 5: The Sound of Fear

I think there is a fine line at some point. Some developers don't know when to stop. I'm really into horror films and games, but as there are films like À l'intérieur (look it up and weep) that go beyond thrilling and into the realm of the truly disturbing and primordially painful, there are games like Project Zero that will relentlessly pound your psyche with images, sounds, awkward controls and uncanny valley until you literally can't stand transposing your mindstate into that context anymore.

I think "otherness" is a fundamental human fear. The sense of not belonging, which is why, for instance, deep water scares the bejebus out of me. Put me on a rickety old russian propeller plane any day, but a ferry ride by night will drive me crazy. The Silent Hunter series are fun to play and sort of creepy in their own right, but the moment i go night-diving in that game i can not go to external camera and go under the surface. The black deeps and particulate make that place seem like the most hostile place to be on the planet and i don't even want to PLAY that i'm there.

Bioshock is okay like that; I'm already on the ocean floor, there are no "deep ones". At that point the ocean is just beautiful and alien. But that black deep.. Oh hell.

"Not belonging" goes from the fear of being picked on at a new school to having a weird tumor on your leg. "Wrongness". Weakening the player is one way to induce this, but similarly poor game design may help the same way. There are certainly technically poorly made games out there that feel scarier to play simply because by playing them you are out of your element; They are not letting you be your best and fastest and most agile, so you are struggling with a handicap under unfavorable circumstances.

One of my favorite horror games is probably The Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, and i think that's mostly because it regularly puts you up in situations where you have no hope other than to run. The podcast talks about players having to almost "project" fear onto the protagonist, but DCotE did that for you. When you look down and your vision blurs with vertigo, and you can feel your heartrate through the controller rumble, and your broken leg crunches under your weight with each step, that's a BIG help in inducing fear. When you're going through this all the while some howling unstoppable tentacled terror is rampaging after you, and no gun can help you.

Why more games don't mess with the camera and perspective in tune with the intended emotional response is beyond me.

Very insightful stuff; as a critical component to my master's thesis, I'm working to link the construct of the fourth wall to what I call performance-based games, defined as single-player, first- or third-person shooters and action-adventures (Bioshock is one of these). I'm hoping to prove that by using this construct as a lens through which design decisions are made, immersed mental states may be encouraged or preserved (as long as the fourth wall isn't broken). A tough topic, and a lot of "what if's," but this most recent podcast certainly helps me out. Will be using it as a quoted reference!

I'll admit, I scare easily. However, it's not the initial type of fear, it's the paranoia after the scare that always gets me. The human mind really is the scariest thing and the best tool for a developer. Bioshock always frightened me to no ends when the lights would just snap off. Sometimes I would just stop and look around the room with weapon ready until the lights turned back on! Then if something did jump out at me I'd let out a scream.
Now, as I said, I scare easily, but I understand the trickiness to getting players more involved in the game. I really get into a game when I play it but not everyone does and they're more aware that it's "just a game, I'm safe." But I suppose that's where the rest of the developement team comes in. Visual isn't everything and those stings in the music or the creeping sounds or footsteps or voices are what really put it over the top.
It's also nice to hear that I'm not the only one still terrified of things like the dark and spiders/bugs. (laughs)

I have a weird relationship with scary things. In real life, nothing really scares me. Spiders, bugs, snakes, the dark, whatever. Well, stuff I've experienced anyway. I'm sure walking down into the basement of some psycho killer is probably scary.

While watching movies though, I am a total pansy. I don't like the gore-fest horror movies like Saw or Hostel. Anything with torture really. If a director even attempts to make something scary, it's amplified on me. Ghosts/psychic things and the supernatural are the worst though, like The Ring or The Exorcist. I can't even watch the calm parts of the movie - the fear that knowing what's coming is too much.

But scary video games I can't get enough of. Again, ghosts and the supernatural get me scared the most, but anything will do: zombies, monsters, aliens, whatever. But I tend to break the scary games into two categories, monster-closet games and terrifying games. The monster-closet games, like Doom3, Dead Space, and Condemned are scary because the scare factor is constantly around you, and you never know when its going to pop out and try to kill you. But in most if not all of these games, you are armed, however poorly, and can defend yourself. The scariest game I've ever played the first time through was Dead Space. And in the beginning, you have just the bolt cutter and pretty limited ammo, so conservation of supplies and precise aiming were what kept you alive. But as you played, you get bigger, better guns and ammo was more plentiful (once you realize you only get ammo for guns you have, so if you never buy guns, you have plenty of ammo for that one gun). Once you're well armed and equipped, the game loses it's edge somewhat. It's still scary because stuff jumps out at you, but once you figure out the routine to killing the necromorphs, its pretty easy. Don't get me wrong, I still love Dead Space, and the game is still awesome, but it's not as scary as it was.

The other type of game is the terrifying game. And these are games like the non-actiony parts of F.E.A.R., Penumbra, Silent Hill and other Japanese psychological horror. In these games, the player is not an action hero Schwarzenegger and defending oneself is a challenge. I bring up F.E.A.R. because though you are some form of superman with slo-mo mode and all that, no matter how many bullets you spray, you can't kill the little girl. And she terrorizes you through the whole level, indirectly most of the time. In Silent Hill, you dont have an arsenal at your disposal and even if you did, it might not work on half the bad guys you face. In Penumbra, you have to hide from most baddies, and if you attempt combat, the controls are clunky enough that you'll probably just die.

A lot of people talk about Bioshock as a scary game, so I give it its own category. I personally didnt think the game was terrifying, or even monster-closet scary. But I did love BioShock, and I like it because it's atmosphere is AMAZING. It's amazing because it is unsettling.The critters you kill weren't really disfigured or mutated enough to scare me, and you usually had enough warning they were coming to avoid the shock-scare. But their actions you could see them do before attacking them was eerie. People singing crazily to themselves, having nonsense conversations to others, coddling a dead baby (or empty stroller, I can't remember which). And the audio tapes you collect on the way fill in the holes as you go along, revealing a madman-world. Like the surgical doctor you find in the first game - so convincingly insane is was unsettling.

But going back to monster-closet action game vs terrifying psychological game, the distinction between the two is important. Monster-closet games lose their edge as you become more and more capable to defending yourself (aka killing everything that moves) and can better control your environment, while the psychological games are scary all the way through, because you can never defend yourself or have any sliver of environmental control. Which is also why I think movies are so scary to me - I have no control over what happens, I have to experience the tension for whatever (usually stupid) thing the character decides to do.

Another point, equally as important but I'll just tag it on at the end, is how much you know about whatever it is that is scaring you. I recently studied the art style of Dead Space in attempt to mimic their style on a creature I designed from scratch, and the more I learned through concept art books about the necromorphs and the way they look and act, suddenly game itself isn't scary anymore. "Oh, here's the standard necromorph." BLAM!! "It's dead. Oh there's one of the fat ones, I'd better burn him so he doesn't get me with his little crawly guys." FFWOOOSH! "They're all dead. But if you play a game like the beginning of BioShock, and you have no idea why everyone is gone, and the only ones left or deranged, murderous psychos, it's really unnerving.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. But yeah. I love scary games. I whimper like a little girl when playing them, but I jump on every new one that comes out and root through bargain bins for old gems.

Ben Day

Great podcast! I really enjoyed what Weaver had to say in terms of there being, with movies specifically, a kind of empathetic concern. The viewer will make a direct connection with a visible protagonist to the point of mimicking reactions. It brings to mind the kind of reactions people have to other people being legitimately and seriously injured.

Think of a bystander watching someone else getting hit by a car or falling down some stairs. The other person will have the accident and the bystander will typically recoil defensively and yelp. Pretty comparable effect, there.

The best way I've seen all of that folded in with real time gameplay (as in, away from the help of cutscenes) is very plainly with active and consistent voice acting in-game. A quick example that comes to mind is a game like Uncharted 2.

You'll be shooting and running along and dodging obstacles; all the while, Drake is reacting in a very realistic manner to close calls, ironic misfortune, etc. You make a connection there that is just entirely invaluable when it comes to a game's resonating quality.

Also, really quick and generally on the idea of horror in video games: I've always admired a game's ability to defy its own nature as something you, the player, controls, for the purpose of wigging you out. I'd like to think that one of the ultimate and basic fears that people have is just an unpredictable lack of control - fear of being both out of your own element and also besieged by something whose element is the one that you feel foreign to (fear of shark attack, etc.), fear of small and quick things that you might not be able to get a grasp on (spiders, disease, cancer etc.), fear of massively unavoidable tragedy (atomic war, tidal waves, whatever).

The best horror games I've experienced have played on that dynamic of stripping away my control or, at the very least, giving me the very convincing impression that they have. Present a world, immerse the player to the point of caring, pare down facets of control and confidence. Terrifying!

Good stuff, great podcast, excellent brain food.

-Andrew Marathas

Who would think from such an obscure niche venue of people we'd get a podcast of such breadth, depth and down right intellectual goodness.
Thanks for producing it - I look forward to your new episodes.

Great podcast!