What Really Makes Games Scary?

Horror is a flagship genre of entertainment in modern society, and has been for many decades. As technology has marched forward, horror novels opened the door for the incredibly popular and successful horror movie genre, which has in turn influenced the development of horror themed digital games, which are equally popular. That games can be scary is undeniable; some of the most popular game franchises in the world are horror themed; the Resident Evil and Silent Hill genres even spawned successful movies based on the games (a relative rarity in a world where games tend to based on films, not the other way around.) The real question is, why do digital horror games have such an effect on us? After playing a number of games and finding some of them scary and some of them bland, I have come to the conclusion that there are three major factors which raise our fear level: the realism of the game’s mise-en-scene, the personal connection between gamer and character, and the environment in which the game is being played.

The graphics of a digital game are always important to the overall experience, but this importance is magnified within the horror genre. I recently replayed Silent Hill 2, a game released for the Playstation 2 in 2001 by Konami. When I first played the game in middle school, I was quite scared by the creepy fog and abandoned buildings, the terrifying monsters which jumped out from around corners, and the impressive amounts of detailed gore. Upon replaying the game, however, I found that I was no longer particularly frightened by the game despite the persistence of all these scary elements (and, in addition, a rather impressive and scary plot.) The monsters now seemed outdated and blocky, and the scenery seemed bland and pixilated. In contrast, F.E.A.R., a horror game developed by Vivendi Universal for the Playstation 3, was still able to inspire some fright in me because of its impressive, state of the art graphics and sound. This is illustrative of a major point about horror games: the player needs to be scared by what they see, and if what they see isn’t realistic it won’t be particularly scary. When Silent Hill 2 was brand new, the graphics were just about as realistic as players had ever seen in a video game. Now that they are outdated, the game has lost a significant amount of its ability to inspire fear. Similarly, in 10 years we will probably look back at F.E.A.R. and wonder how we were ever unnerved by the graphics of this age. What we see on the screen is a major factor in establishing fear in the player.

The personal connection between the player and the protagonist is another crucial factor in creating fear within a horror game. In a horror film, the viewer can identify with the main characters, and this is a significant factor in generating terror; in an effective horror movie we don’t want the main characters that we have come to know and love to suffer a grisly fate. This effect is magnified in digital games because the player doesn’t just identify with the protagonist, but instead actually controls their actions. In F.E.A.R., which has a first person view, this is even more significant. The player doesn’t see an actor being chased by monsters, the player feels that he himself is at risk. In a good game, this can help establish fear significantly.

A final factor in how a digital game can establish fear is the environment in which the game itself is played. There is a palpable difference between playing a horror game in a bright room in the middle of the day with a group of friends and playing it alone in the dark in the middle of the night. This is a product of what kind of environments we associate with horror in our own minds; just as the mise-en-scene within a game affects how afraid we become while playing it, the setting in which we actually play the game has an effect. In all of my time playing horror games this term, the only time that I felt the lingering effects of fear was after playing Resident Evil 5 by myself in the dark with loud surround sound magnifying the game’s attempts to scare me. The game succeeded.

At the end of the day, all of the elements which make digital horror games scary are also elements which make a good horror movie scary. This underscores the similarity between the film and digital game genres; I believe that one would find a strong similarity between the aspects that make an action movie and an action game effective as well. Digital games may be relatively new media, but the same tricks of the trade which apply to older forms of media hold true in this new digital realm.