Final Post-Joie

Like I too am concerned with what constitutes a horror game. My focus has been only on how interact a games has to be for the person to actually experience any kind of fear. Does the player actually have to be involved in the action or can just watching the action elicit the same kind of fear? While I know some people in have discussed movie watching and game playing I always thought the point of game playing was that the player is not passively watching, but actively engaging. Thus, I want to focus on the idea that there are to types of game play that I have encountered in the horror genre that both want the player to feel fear and be immersed into a setting of fear.

In games such as Fatal Frame there is definately a call to action. If you do not actively pressing buttons then you will die. Thus, the game brings in two elements that they want you to fear: the first being the death of the character and the second are the ghost that you confront in the game play. I have always been interested in the impact on the dying character on the player. Could the creators as a primacy source of fear? Well why not. There was one instance when I was playing a game in a group setting where the group I was playing could not find a way to confront a specific danger. The death was instantaneous and the danger that we were no fronted was a ghost that we had already seen before, either way it became known as the “death room”. We had died more than once, but each time we were presented with the idea of death everyone would get anxious and frightened? What is it about the connection that we have to the character and playing the game that causes people to so connected to the character that they don’t want to die?

The next kind of game play I have experienced was while playing The Path. In this game you are asked to stop any controller movement in order to move on with the game. So where is the fear? In this case the player is not involved in the action like Fatal Fame. The game wants you to be a spectator, but why? My thought is that there is something different about the type of fear the maker wants you to get involved in. in this game there is a message to get across and perhaps if the player is not watching and paying attention then you lose parts of the message. I just wonder what the difference is from a game with a narrative scene? Why not let the player be involved in the action and break up what every going on by adding a small descriptive scene. What is the significance to fear? My thought is that we are dealing with a different type of fear from the gory one of before. I have hinted on this in a previous post, but I think that this kind of fear is deeply embedded in the in our sub conscious. The notion that there are other types of fear is what makes these two games so distinct.

While it may not be a very innovative thought I feel that the horror genre has extended up on what most cinematic horror has to offer. The spectator aspect of The Path and the in action provoking aspect of games like Fatal Frame of Dead Space gives this genre more of a compelling intrigue. It makes a sort of statement that there is more than one way to be afraid. An while games like The Path may seem more cinematic, it offer one thing that movies can not. As the player you gave to actively walk the path. You have to make the choice. This is the same with all game playing. There are choices that have to be made and the world is not just something that happens, rather it is something to be engaged in. Only the player can make that choice.