Fraidy Cat Gamer

Allen Cook, over at Gamers With Jobs, talks about the problems of being a 'fraidy cat gamer'. Horror games are awesome, no doubt about it, but it's really hard to actually play through one if your fear takes hold of you. From the article: "I can watch most horror movies without any problem. The trick has nothing to do with my horror movie constitution but simply knowing the formula. At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead. Probably at the hands of some supernatural force, a mask-wearing psychopath or some otherworldly parasitic infestation. It's a given part of the formula that most of these characters will die. When it happens, I may be surprised by how they die, but it doesn't emotionally scar me. With horror games though, there's no switch I can pull to stop caring about my character. That's me in there in the inexplicably short mini skirt and tall boots, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. Why the hell did I wear that anyway? Is that standard issue zombie hunting gear where I'm from? It doesn't matter, a zombie just tore a chunk out of my skull."

Following one's own advice

At the beginning of any horror movie, I subconsciously pick out which characters are going to die. It's like a stupidity test. You watch the characters being introduced and whenever a character passes below a certain stupidity threshold you know they will end up dead.

Simple solution:

Realize from the outset that you suck at this game and you're going to die.

Dissassociation

I find that breaking the connection from Player to Character helps.
If the character in the game is wearing a short skirt and tall boots, I wear a tutu and clown shoes.

Also, the lines at the arcade seem to be quite short in this attire.

I don't know.

The fact you can load/reset/restart, and get a second ending or a win makes even horror games tame. Don't know which game he's refering too, but a lot of the horror games we have now are like that jerk who jumps out and shouts boo, they'll scare you only if you don't know what to expect.

Personally I don't have many games that really terrify me, maybe I just am not playing the right games, but even back in the day, the resident evils just were annoyingly hard, not exactly "scary".

F.E.A.R. is a misnomer

By all means go ahead and play F.E.A.R. then. It's absolutely formulaic.

What's the loud noise?!?! Oh, it's just a rat.

What's that scary shadow?!?! Oh, it's just a coat rack.

Who's that scary girl?!?!? Oh, it's just the girl from The Ring.

Powerup on my left? Scary noise to the right.

As simplistic as the gameplay is, don't play Doom 3! The spooky elements of the level and sound design really get under your skin!

Re:F.E.A.R. is a misnomer

Doom 3 stopped being scary as soon as I learned to walk into rooms backwards.

Made ya flinch!

I've never been too terrified to play a game...Aliens vs. Predator 2 had some nice surprise moments that made me jump in my seat..but that's about it. Besides, any horror video game or movie can be ruined/de-scarified by simply turning the lights on and having some background noise, like a TV or screaming children neighbors, etc.

Take it in small doses!

I have the same problem, and my solution is to play frightening games in small doses. 10-15 minutes here and there, and eventually I make my way through it. It took me almost a week to get through Ravenholm the first time, just because I needed to take so many breaks and go play Civ.

As an alternate solution, I will just blast through such a scene quickly, letting whatever baddies reveal their locations, then I go back to my save point and do it again with full knowledge of just what nastiness is going to jump out at me and when.

I feel the same kind of intensity from other emotions in games, not only fear. It's just much easier to deal with the other emotions, as they don't come with a built-in fight-or-flight response the way anxiety and fear do.

Aliens Vs. Predator II

The Marine campaign tended to be quite scary- especially if you played in the harder modes. Nothing like limited saving and inifinitly spawning enemies to heighten the suspense (and make your death much more painful). Eventually I had to give up and beat the Marine campaign in an easier mode- I just couldn't beat one level in hard difficulty, much less hardcore mode.

The only game..

The only video game that truly good and frightened me was the original Silent Hill. That game was freaky not because of *insert random horror* jumping out at you from the darkness. Silent Hill was scary because it had an amazinly well done soundtrack. If i played that game for more than an hour in the dark, i had trouble sleeping. The sequals haven't done it justice and are turning into blatant gore/scare fests. The first Silent Hill wasn't so simple.

If you think that's scary...

...just imagine if this happened to you. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-768895638 9104405762 [google.com] I don't know whether to be envious of this guy or not.

Fear? What fear?

Sure, there's dozens of zombies trying to eat me but guess what's between me and the zombies? A game can't be scary if I'm the guy holding the big ass cannons. Oooh, an imp tried to jump me, how cute. Here, have some hot plasma death! What's there to be afraid of if you've got the Big Fucking Gun?

doom 3

from the first time that you look in a mirror and see a zombie behind you, i knew doom 3 was a bad choice to play at night. I've got nothing better to do tonight, maybe I'll start Sweet Home.

Wow...freaky coincidence...

I was playing Half Life 2 earlier today, and there is a section where you travel under a bridge and do stuff. Well, I'm incredibly afraid of heights and nearly tossed my lunch. I ended up having my friend do that section for me, not because I suck (well, I do, but that section isn't hard at all) but because I couldn't watch the screen.

Damned irrationality

How can you be afraid of a moment in a videogame? My solution to such a problem would be weed, you'll be mellow and comfy, not afraid at all. Although you may spill som snacks on your keyboard...

It's not the horror games that are scary

I love the survival horror genre, as well as the horror themed action genre. Most of the games aren't really anything like what I would call scary though. The first two Resident Evils made me jump every so often- but they never really terrified me. Interestingly enough, I found Resident Evil 4 to be one of the most terrifying games, even though it was certainly more action focused - mostly because the enemies are smarter and vastly more numerous.
I would say that really, although I love the horror games for their atmosphere, a lot of the most tense and creepy games I have played haven't been horror games at all. Metal Gear Solid always creeped me out, simply because the tension would really build up- especially playing it on the hardest difficulty setting.
I think that games can really be a better platform for horror than movies, since movies are fundamentally a passive experience, whereas games are imersive.

Reminds off my first time..

This brings back memories of my first night playing Doom at a friends house. I'd never played an id game before. The first time those demons/imps popped up I nearlly fell out of the chair. I think that my friends offered for me to play the most just to laugh at me that night. ;) After a few nights, you get used to it. Of course what really helped was just turning off the sound. That helped a lot for me.

Its all in the hardware

Seriously, think about it. When Resident Evil 1 for the PS1 came out, one of the biggest reasons why people found the game difficult/frustrating was the horrible controls.

Fast forward to today and only recently are we seeing better controls for survival horror games. The camera no longer screws people over. You can actually SEE the monsters, not a unclear blob of brown and red pixels against a brown and red background. Level designs are no longer tight hallways that make it impossible to run past enemies if they come at you in numbers larger than 1.

Obviously hardware can only do so much (I think we hit the critical point with Resident Evil 4), but in retrospect, games like Resident Evil 1 and Silent Hill 1 were scary because controls blew. Modern camera angles make it a joke to aim, especially if you've played FPSes in the past. Even with a bad TV you can still see the monsters limping towards you. Running away is so commonplace that many survival horror games now include scenarios where the player is REQUIRED to fight.

Not the type of "fraidy cat gamer I was expecting.

I was expecting this to be more of an article about people who were afraid to play games the way they were intended. (intention in the eye of the beholder)

I have several friends who play StarCraft completely defensively. On team games a couple of us will completely destroy the enemy while these RTS campers build base defenses the entire time. Highly frustrating.

Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?

I also play Travian, a stupid web based RTS, and people constantly bitch and moan about being attacked. Hello! It's a war game.

As far as the subject, I don't really understand horror in any medium. But why seek out the best horror game and then try to find ways to get through it? You're just watering it down! Take it like a man, you pussies! (:

Re:Not the type of "fraidy cat gamer I was expecti

"Speaking of campers, what's with people who hide under the stairs in FPS and wait for someone to walk around the corner? Are you afraid of real combat?"

That IS real combat. It's sneaky, it's underhanded, and you never, ever, give your opponent an even break. Unless you think of combat being the way the British fought the revolutionaries, or how the Civil war was fought where people just stand out in the open blatantly shooting each other.

If you can't handle real (simulated) combat then take you noob ass to another game... I suggest something involving Barbie dolls.

Rescue on Fractalus!

Playing this game, a simple search and rescue game, was the first game that scared the crap out of me. And this was on my Atari 800XL.

Spoilers ROT13ed [rot13.com] below:

Va gur tnzr, lbh ner gb ynaq lbhe fuvc ol gur qbjarq cvybgf. Bapr lbh unir ynaqrq, lbh'yy urne gur cvybgf jnyx hc gb lbhe fuvc. Lbh jrer gbyq gb jnvg hagvy gur cvybgf xabpx ba gur fvqr bs gur fuvc orsber lbh bcra gur qbbe naq yrg gurz va. Fb nsgre gur cvybgf jnyx hc, lbh ner yvfgravat vagragyl... Naq gura, CBJ! Na nyvra gung unq nyernq qvfcbfrq bs gur cvybg whzcf va sebag bs lbhe jvaqbj! Vs lbh qba'g ghea ba gur fuvryqf gb qvfcrafr jvgu uvz, ur pbzrf guebhtu gur jvaqbj gb qvfcrafr jvgu lbh.

anger

When I start to feel my palms sweat and especially after I have tried a rough part and died I get angry and yell at my character to fight harder. Also my anger gets more focused at the enemy and I start trash talking them. My attitude in extremely difficult situations is "If I'm going to die I'm taking as many of you with me as I can."

On reflection it seems strange to admit how completely some of these scenarioes get under my skin. I have never been in a fight for my life, or even a really bad fight but I guess that something along these lines would occur. To survive anger must trump fright.

When all else fails blame game mechanics. Damn camera angle.

Your Scared !?!

You are a highly trained marine with enough firepower to outfit an entire platoon and a nervous twitch in your trigger finger stalking around the map. My gods man if your scared the zombie must be s@#%ing themselves! They got nothing but a speach impedamentand and a lack of muscel control.

Knights Of The Old Republic

I don't typically play survival horror, but one I did get creeped out by KOTOR. In the Sith Academy, there is a constant background noise of people whispering. This didn't bother me. However, there is a part where everyone in the Academy attacks you, and you kill them. But the whispering is still there. So you're walking down empty corridors, and the whispering is still going on, and that unnerved me.