Group Therapy- Joie

This is going to be the most informal of all. Sorry about that. I had a group experience about a month ago that I thought was one of the best experience playing a game that I have ever had. The game is called Fatal Frame and though there is not gore in the game. The premise is that you are a girl with your twin sister and you get lost in the woods and find this famously abandoned and deserted town. There are small pieces of narrative that are worked into the game play though flashbacks, journal entries and these creepy little stones that you can collect and put into some sort of radio that talks to you. Okay, I enjoyed the game and I felt t was very well put together, but as far as fear I am more distracted by things that are a lot more gorey.

The first time I got to play this game was in a group setting and the game became really intense everyone in the game was becoming so completely absorbed that we were all feel the same kid of fear. It seems like the only way we could experience this level of fear. So I wonder could it be possible that the only reason we reached this level of game play was that we were all together? Could it be possible that playing a game and interacting with other people males the game more intense? It seems that the answer to this question is yes. More than one person admitted that they could not play the game alone because of the fear and they felt that having other people to blanket their experience made playing the game safer for them.

There was certain amount of enhanced feeling that came with playing together. Everything that we felt we seemed to feel together. I feel that as time went on we were all experience almost the same game play. There is obviously a difference between the people that were playing and those spectating, but either way being in that setting defiantly enhanced both the horror experience. I felt the best part of the experience was actually the end when we all became afraid of dying. Everyone was animated and yelling. It was like we were all felling the same sort of anxiety over the experience and not one person in the room was left out of this sort of group trance. Had that happened I’m sure it would not have been as intense. We were feeding off of the thoughts and emotions of each other to intensify the gaming experience.