What makes a game scary?

[aurora_noir]

Startles are really boring..
They might make you jump, but lets say you saw the film at the cinema (or friend's house)..
What you want is something that continues to eat at you on the way home and when you try to sleep that night..
Not the quick slap of fright, but the slow injection of it will be more effective i believe. The what-if's..
Monsters can't deliver this unless they actually exist, or could possibly exist..
On the other hand, the apprehension of adiscovery i believe, especially if it involves a personal belief is also fear inducing.
For example, the slumber party game called 'Bloody Mary' (which has somewhat been adapted in the clive barker story - candyman).

Bloody mary is a game which girls often speak about where one of the group is dared into going into their bathroom alone with only a candle for light (at night), and speaking "bloody mary" 3 times with the effect of the bloody mary character appearing behind the person in the mirror and stealing their soul (or killing them depending on the variant).
There have actually been cases concerning this particular slumber party game where people have had to undergo psychiatric councelling because their friends trapped them in the bathroom until they completed the dare..

Being foreced to put oneself at risk of harm - kinda

[Gilbert]

Well, startles are best for immediate results butr they won't last wrong, sometimes movies/games can even be more scary for a prolonged time due to their contexts.

One thing about startles was that, I think they only work with sound, without good sound effect they can be just unscary craps, the dogs bursting out of windows scenes in the Bio Hazard games are good examples of startles (I think they're not that frequently used in the original AITD games).

P.S. I never played the original floppy/HDD EGA version of LOOM, I am quite curious to know whether the startling scene would still be as scary if the sound output was set to PC speaker.

[Yufster - At School]

Silent Hill! When you back back to that game (Especially one and two, not sure about the new one as I haven't played it) a lot of the scary factor was about the possibility of something being behind that door. What IF something is further on in that mist.

That's why the crackling radio was an excellent idea. Sometimes it would go off and you'd feel your heart start to beat harder in anticipation of whatever you were going to find around that next corner. And the radio cackling presented a lonely and eerie sound that reminded you how cut off from the world you were.

I always have this one nightmare (here is an insight into my soul) where I am the only person in the world, or where I'm in an alternate universe or SOMETHING, and I can't find anybody else, just empty cars and houses... and I want to know where everybody else is...

THAT kind of shit is scary. Not monsters leaping through windows.

[Creed Malay]

One of the staples in horror movies is the "enemy within" - it's not the hordes of zombies/werewolves/other beasties that is the most dangerous threat, it's the people you're holed up with - with the threat outside, and tensions running high, can you really trust the people you're taking refuge with? "Night of the Living Dead" is possibly the best example.
The third Melt and Drake game is a tribute to horror movie/games, and we tried to get as many of the classic "themes" in as we could.
http://ron.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=135
wish we'd done more with the tensions in the house, now, though...

Davy

[evenwolf]

Gilbert.    Bio Hazard = Resident Evil

So to summarize this thread:

Fear can be:

Atmosphere-   Music &  images
Backstory-    Characters and events revealed (or not) to the player
Anticipation- Knowing there is something, but not what or when it will appear.
Startlement- Immediate release of built anticipation
Belief/Empathy- Connection between the player and the character

[Eggie]

I remember seeing a short clip on the original 'Ring' on Channel four during halloween.

One of the random celebrities they'd got to contribute said somthing like "Now in a hollywood film they'd probably have had the girls hand burst through the TV set or somthing. But y'see in THIS film she just crawls out a doesn't stop"

I watched the clip and I thought 'THAT is genius!'

She didn't stop, the camera didn't cut away. That movie have so much talent put into it to be able create somthing that stays scary for so long.

They showed a hundred clips from various horror movies in that program. They were all taken out of context and so, wern't very scary.

EXCEPT that freaky TV girl. That was the only clip they showed that geniunely frightened me. Not frightended in an "Oh my god I will never, ever watch another video again!!" way. Just frightenend of the imagiary itself, on it's own. I wasn't even too clear on the plot.

So, if you can come up with somthing as spooky, disturbing and royally fucked-up as the freaky TV girl, I shall worship you and your game.

[Andail]

So, if you can come up with somthing as spooky, disturbing and royally fucked-up as the freaky TV girl, I shall worship you and your game.

For a moment I had a flashback to a flatmate of mine. She watched TV all the time, and fitted pretty well into that description.

[Gilbert]

Gilbert.    Bio Hazard = Resident Evil

Yes of course, BH is the original title for the non-western versions, nonetheless, they're shameless copycats of the original AITD games.

[Snake]

What always scares me is: What you can hear but can't see.
And of course atmospheric music (when needed) and dark scenery.

And don't forget that 28 Days Later, though an awesome fucking movie, was not the first to make dead people chase your ass. Don't forget about The Return of the Living Dead way back in '84. Not sure wether it was the first or not, but one of the first anyway.


--Snake

[remixor]

Can I just mention that when all is said and done, the scariest thing I've found in a game was a startle, and it was in Loom, when the shepherds come out of the trees at you.

You know, for some reason that gave me a start as well the first time.

[Peter Thomas]

28 days later was good because it provided some sense of reality (however far away and distant it might have seemed). I mean, it was about a REAL guy, with a real backstory (Even though they didn't show it. The most we know is he was in hospital). None of this aliens from another planet who mutated our nucleotides and screwed with our gene pool crap. The disease was 'real', and was released by 'real' causes.  And the rape scenes were fairly disturbing as well and I thought they were scary because I know there ARE people like that out there, and it struck a chord with me.

The other scary bit I found (which wasn't scary, but made me feel pity and fear at the same time for some reason) was when that infected drop of blood fell into the girl's father's eye. To know that he had to be killed was upsetting and disturbing for me.

But now I'm rambling...

I'm with Las (I think??) who said that fiction isn't scary. I didn't think RE was scary AT ALL, and not because I'm an invincable tough-arse. I just know that zombies won't be hiding in my wardrobe tonight, waiting to jump me, so there's nothing to make me THINK!!

If they can make a game with a REALISTIC plot that will actually get me to THINK about things, then I don't care what graphics are like. Hell, they can do Bugs-Bunny-esque art if they want. I just want mental stimulation

[Nacho]

I have to concur with Peter, as 28 days has been the film which has scared me most in many time. And there is a scene which spoils all the plot:

Spoiler

The taxi in the tunnel... and how the taxi crawls all that pile of broken cars... It´s so stupid, and impossible according to the most elemental laws of the motion...

[close]

Maybe it´s  because of the stupidity of the situation which totally spoiled that part.

But well... I totally agree with the "realism strikes fear" sentence. As I said, saving private Ryan scared me a lot...

*fixed your hide tags, farl

[Las Naranjas]

Well, I'm not saying Fiction isn't scary, just that it isn't scaring me for some reason. There's no reason why it shouldn't. Ficition can make me happy, it can make me angry, it can make me cry and be depressed. I immerse and suspened belief for all of them. Fear is something that hasn't been imparted since I was 12 though [that was about the two blokes in Return Of The Living Dead that they lock in the chapel. The ones that become zombies slowly and have full grasp of their mental faculties throughout. I can't get over how exquisitly that film is scripted]

[m0ds]

I scare easily. Silent Hill freaked me out. There's the being freaked out factor and the being scared (and jumping factor). I remember Quake used to freak me out. I don't like it when you can hear monsters but not see them, the same with that damn radio in Silent Hill.

I remember The Dig scared me, and was probably the only adventure game that ever did. There was this weird ghost spirit thingie near the start on the planet. I remember I had the sound turned up quite loud so I could hear the ambient music and then all of a sudden there was this screech. Loud, abrupt noises make me jump outta my pants. Even the weird spirit at the end of FoA startled me.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not someone who enjoys being scared. Not that I'm that much of a wimp but I'd rather be laughing and stuff :p I don't jump easily in films (altho, I do jump sometimes!) and I don't like being scared when watching a film. It's not a particularly nice feeling of being scared so I don't know why I want to pay £6 for it.

Things like theme park rides are a different type of scary because they're a "thrill" at the same time. People being stabbed on screen or in games isn't much of a thrill to me.

So I think games are scary when sounds are used appropriatley and abruptly. Atmosphere is also a deffinate but you can still add in jumps and scares in almost any fairly normal location. The mole guy in Sam & Max freaked me out simply because I thought about it when I was a kid and was on a fair ride, I remember not wanting to go round a corner in the ghost train and see the mole man. :p

I remember playing Tomb Raider for the first time and parts of that scared me. Well, I don't know if it was being scared or was just "fear". Random tigers and things kept me on the edge of my seat, but I don't think I was scared. Just ph33ring.

Written things don't scare me at all. I might find them gross or sickening but never scary. I've never been emersed in a book like it seems many other people are. Sadly I don't feel any emotions when I read a book. I need to see a film or a game if I want to be scared or shocked, etc.

28 Days Later didn't scare me, which is poo, because I wanted to be scared for that movie! It got me thinking, but then at the end of the day I realised it was just a movie and the plot was still fairly far-fetched. It was creepy, deffinatley.

The one movie that scares me right up to this day is Carpenters' "The Thing", simply because it's so fucked up. They don't make movies today like they did back then. Music adds to how scary a film is, deffinatley, and also a game. Pleurghburg is a great example, the music kept the mood brilliantly.

Anyway, must sleep!

[Domino]

I forgot to mention a movie called The Fog, which i first saw when i was a kid. That movie really frightened me, and when i think about it now i get that same feeling.

The one part i vaguely remember is when the fog was rolling up to the shore, and this old lady who was the babysitter (if i remember correctly) wandered outside, only never to be seen again. That was scarey.

Maybe games with alot of fog are truly scary. I think thats one reason why games that include heavy, dense fog are too me, frightening. Fog hides the unknown, and who knows what creatures lurk in the fog.

Does anybody here remember that movie. Didn't the creatures in the fog have glowing red eyes or something? I can vaugly recall.

In my opinion, heavy doses of fog, and the uncertainty that comes with it, is what makes games and movies extremely frightful and scary.

BG

[Migs]

I'd have to say Poltergeist, in it's masterfulness, is one of the scariest movie series ever made.  Regardless of the fact that the special effects were magnificent for its time, it truly instills a sense of chronic fear in you for the duration of each movie.  THAT'S what makes a movie scary...not just if there's a few parts where you jump (and possibly scream) during the movie, but if just watching it makes you feel sick to your stomach, because the overall theme is so frightening.

[TheYak]

And that demonstrates another point.  Not everybody is scared by the same things.  I didn't find any of the poltergeist movies frightening in the least.  I think the most fear I experienced from a movie was probably in Alien & Aliens.  I haven't thought the Halloween series was frightening with one exception.  In h20, when he's lowering himself from a beam by one arm, and doing so silently and slowly, for some reason that's creepy as hell.  

I had a friend who swore that People Under the Stairs was the scariest movie around.  I watched it and found that hard to believe.  The special effects, acting and plotline made it seem like it was meant to be a comedy.  I've experienced more sheer terror than that while watching some of Trap's animutations.

[Nine Toes]

I kinda agree with Yufster's idea.  Being all alone is a pretty scary thing... until you get used to it though...

I thought the movie the Sixth Sense was pretty scary too.  But the reason why I bring that movie up, is because of the ending.  Irony can be a pretty scary thing too, if used correctly.

Signs kinda scared me too... so I guess you could take examples from any M. Night Shyamalan movie if you wanted to get ideas for "scary".

Unbreakable kind of let me down... don't get me wrong... it was a good movie, in my opinion, but coming from the director of the Sixth Sense, I was hoping for another good suspense movie.

I'm kind curious as to what he's up to now, if he's going to make another movie or not...

[Miez]

I remember playing Tomb Raider for the first time and parts of that scared me. Well, I don't know if it was being scared or was just "fear". Random tigers and things kept me on the edge of my seat, but I don't think I was scared. Just ph33ring.

Ah yes - forgot that one. I was watching a friend of mine play Tombraider (1) and when he entered that lost valley, heard the thundering footsteps (making the whole screen shake) and then saw that gargantuan t-rex I almost pissed myself. Them's some scary polygons.

[Meowster]

Oh wait, I just thought of the perfect word to sum up what scares me most in games.

Anticipation.

That's one scary word huh? But think about it. Think, of a dark corridor with a turn at the end. You have a dim light. You're dreading the corner, because you can't see what is around it. You hear a vague dragging sound beyond that corner. You don't want to go forward because you're going to have to look around that corner, but you don't want to go back because you're afraid of turning around.

Now imagine that fear of anticipation for the entire length of a game. It's like a scream in the back of your head, or a string that gets tauter and tauter. And then, when something finally does jump out at you, or when you do meet a disturbing scene, it's that much worse, because you're already freaked out and being irrational.

I think that to get the best of fear in games, you have to play off human natural instinct. We're much like birds in that we close our eyes and hope our enemy won't see us. As kids, we hide under blankets because we're safe under there. As adults we still retain much of this childishness. We're afraid of turning around if there is something behind us because if we don't see it, maybe it's not there.

Anticipation!!!

Also, music can have a deep psychological effect. I mean, I remember this one part of The 7th Guest, where this ambient music was playing, and you were looking at this painting. And all of a sudden you'd feel like the painting was moving, and then you'd look closer and you'd get a shock because you'd realize the painting WAS moving. It was an old mother in bed with a white sheet, and a child leaning at her side, and the child would begin to stab the mother, again and again and again until all this blood was pouring down the sheets. And all to this ambient tune. It confuses the player and sends chills down their spine. Imagine nursery rhymes being played alongside gruesome murders, or disorientating sounds being played in rooms. There was one room in Resident Evil that was just an average room, but when you went in there these drums started doing a panic beat as though something was chasing you. My heart nearly leapt out of my chest, and then I felt really dumb because it was just an empty room.

If I remember correctly, just after you'd realized you'd been tricked, you walked back outside and something leapt at you in a corridor that had previously been 'safe'.  This kind of thing confuses that player and confusion heightens the terror.