182 - Interactivity in Horror

[matt]

Sorry I missed Friday and Monday's update. Things were crazy with PAX.

The P.T. Demo has really been making waves in the press. Some people say it’s an amazing horror experience. That got me thinking about how important interactivity actually is to a horror game since there is very little you can control in the P.T. Demo. Listen to my thoughts on the role of interactivity in horror games!

UPDATE: with embedded video now. haha


Here are links to positive P.T. press:

• Polygon
• Eurogamer
• The Verge

[RightClickSaveAs]

You forgot to link to your own video, here it is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szeevCEsK10

I think I can safely speak for everyone in saying there's no need to apologize, I can't imagine how busy you were at PAX with the panels and everything!

I'm getting less and less interested in puzzles in any game I play as I get older. Interactivity in a more general sense I think is great though.

Do you think that the technology is good enough at this point to support really good emergent gameplay? Right now I'm with you on scripted being a better choice for horror games, because I've yet to see an emergent game that's been implemented really well. There are a lot of open world games coming out that promise that sort of thing, but it seems that once you start poking them too much, they fall apart. The Forest is an example, to be fair it's still in Early Access on Steam so some of this may be fixed, but it's supposed to be an open world survival game where you're under constant threat of attack, but if you watch videos of it there seem to be a lot of issues that kill the tension. One example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2p_fwvOKKA

[matt]

I think emergent gameplay is at odds with narrative driven gameplay. If you look at something like Telltale's games, they are basically choose your own adventure games with very little interactivity. However, I think they give you ENOUGH interactivity to make it feel like you aren't just watching a movie. (Jurassic Park the game was unfortunate because they didn't let you walk around, which I think is really important in a game)

Emergent games can be really great. Look at FTL, Spelunky, the Sims, Minecraft, etc. They have great gameplay, but the most interesting stories are the ones you tell your friends of that time you did something awesome. While there can be good emergent horror games, (I hear SCP: Containment Breach is cool, and I never really got into the Slenderman game, but it was pretty popular) I don't think the BEST horror games will ever be emergent because it's hard to program a system that understands tension. It's hard to have a computer come up with unique events.

That being said, I am biased because generally, I don't really care for emergent games. I haven't played FTL, Spelunky, Minecraft, or the Sims despite being great games just because they aren't my thing.

I think emergent games will become more common because creating a few systems that are interesting, putting it up on Steam early access, and start getting money coming in is an appealing business model for developers. If people aren't interested in your early access title, you can half ass it, and call it version 1.0 (although it might alienate your customers). If they are, then you can ramp up the team and build something awesome.

That wouldn't work for the type of games I want to make, so I'll probably stick to kickstarter and games that are designed by hand.

[ranger_lennier]

I'm not too surprised that many people could be scared by a game based on atmosphere alone. After all, horror movies can be scary, and they're not at all interactive. And with voice acting, motion capture, and near photo-realistic graphics, there's not a lot from movies that modern AAA games can't replicate. Then they can add interactivity on top of that, even if it's mainly just moving the character and looking around.

I don't know about games with different art styles. Has anyone been really scared by an animated movie or show? I tried looking up lists on-line and mostly found stuff like A Nightmare Before Christmas and The Black Cauldron. While I liked those movies, I certainly had no trouble sleeping after watching them. Attack On Titan is the best I've thought of so far, but I wouldn't categorize it as primarily horror.

There are plenty of scary books. Some people even say they're scarier because so much is left to your own imagination. I guess that's interaction of a very different sort.

[matt]

Well, I'd like to think Neverending Nightmares is scary, and we have a very different art style.

While interaction isn't necessary to create something scary, many would argue it's the reason games can be way scarier than movies. The question I have is how much interaction is the "scariest"? I don't think there is a good answer for that, but I think the P.T. Demo is an interesting data point.

[ranger_lennier]

I think Neverending Nightmares is scary to play, but I don't know that I'd have been scared just watching someone play it. I almost certainly wouldn't be now that I know what's going to happen. So it still could be that a more realistic style helps make games scary without needing much interactivity.

While I may not have found many great suggestions for scary animation on-line, I'm sure a lot of that is because, in the West, animation tends to be aimed at children. The more promising sounding suggestions, like Akira and Perfect Blue, are from Japan. I checked and they aren't on Netflix, but I'll try to watch those sometime.

[matt]

I'm not sure a game really needs to be scary for people watching. We designed the game to be experienced. However, I was really amazed by how many people at PAX just wanted to watch - and seemed to enjoy it. I guess there is some sort of communal horror aspect.

Both Akira and Perfect Blue are awesome. I wouldn't say either tries to be horror, but Akira certainly has some horrific things in it and Perfect Blue is an amazing psychological thriller. Neverending Nightmares was influenced by both!