Videogames Make Better Horror Than Movies?

Wired author Clive Thompson has up an article stating that, with today's jaded audiences, videogames are more effective horror-conveyances than movies. Thompson argues that the removal of the fourth wall, placing the player directly into the story, overcomes the obstacles movie-makers face when telling a scary story. "I'll start down a corridor, hear something freaky up ahead, then freeze in panic. Maybe if I stay quiet the monster will go away? S^!t, maybe it's already headed this way, and I should move! But if I move the monster will hear me ... so maybe I should stay quiet ... gaaaaah! Games already seem like dream states. You're wandering around a strange new world, where you simultaneously are and aren't yourself. This is already an inherently uncanny experience. That's why a well-made horror game feels so claustrophobically like being locked inside a really bad -- by which I mean a really good -- nightmare." Do you agree? Is your favorite scary tale a movie ... or a game? (Silent Hill, I'm looking at you.)

Re:Absolutely.

[rhartness]

I know this may be modded as redundant, but after reading the title of the article I immediately wanted to respond with the exact same comment. Resident Evil set the standard for the horror gaming industry and I doubt we would even have this discussion if the game was never even made.

Alien Doom Total Conversion

[SkunkPussy]

I heard good things about Alien Doom so when I finally downloaded it I turned off the lights to get the most from the experience.

For the first 20 minutes or so you are creeping through corridors, always wondering what might appear around the next corner. Nothing much actually happens except that the corridors gradually become more and more covered in alien slime. You go through several levels without actually seeing any enemies, even though you know you must be getting closer to their lair.

All of a sudden an alien jumps at you out of nowhere.

I have never before and never since been more scared by a computer game.

Doom 3 anyone?

[TheJerg]

I used to be scared by movies as a kid... not by what I was seeing on the screen but just of the thought of all of these terrifying monsters coming after me in real life... When I grew up that stopped working on me. On the other hand when I started playing Doom 3 I could only play for short burts at a time because the sense of terror was so tangible. I've played a few other games like F.E.A.R. that can induce that effect as well but no movie recently has caused me to sit and remind myself "It's only a movie. It isn't real." In a game like Doom 3 you don't have time to tell yourself that when a Pinkie wants to eat you and you only have pistol ammo left and it causes for some tense moments.

Yes

[Alex777]

The interactivity of a game makes for a scarier and more intense experience than any film can provide, now that graphics are becoming more and more realistic. In a game, the player feels like he's actually a part of the story, rather than merely a spectator.

Re:Absolutely.

[fugu]

To paraphrase Hitchcock, surprise is when you walk by a window and a zombie jumps through. Suspense is when you know there are zombies lurking, you walk past window after window, but nothing happens

I disagree.

[MaWeiTao]

Why exactly would a game be inherently better than a movie for the horror genre? Hell, a novel could be just as effective as either one of those mediums.

It comes down to good writing. The reason most horror movies aren't particularly effective is because the writing is such garbage. If these writes were to produce scripts for games those games would be equally ineffective at being scary.

If anything, I'd argue that it's easier to make a good horror movie than it is to produce a scary game. It's very easy to manage pacing in a movie. The entire thing is nicely packaged and the director has complete control over the movie. With a game, in addition to the underlying plot a creator has to be concerned with how the gamer interacts with the game. How to convey the proper atmosphere and provide appropriate challenges without making the game tedious.

Ultimately, this is the problem I've found with nearly all horror games, including the Resident Evil series. The game hits a point where they're wandering back and forth trying to find something, or are given these odd tasks for the sake of providing some level of gameplay ultimately reminding me that I'm just playing a game. With a movie or a novel, I know it's fake, but I don't have to worry about some gameplay mechanic disrupting the experience and thus it's easier for me to become engrossed in the story.

Silent hill

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Silent hill sums it up perfectly, the movie wasn't too far removed from the games, but the movie isn't scary compared to the games and it's for 1 simple reason. Movies will continue no matter what, you can walk away and shrug and they will still play. Where as in a game you take control and must continue the fear to continue the plot.

Silent Hill games make you feel like at any moment you could be jumped by some insanely powerful monster and then it toys with you with the radio, a little noise here, a little growl there, is it just random noise or is a complete freak out monster about to maim you? who knows? These things get to us, we have no idea -how- to rationally deal with these things because they are beyond all logic, movies we can go "CGI" "Make up" "hero must survive" and then we play silent hill and suddenly it's "oh fuck, what the hell is going on?"

One thing I would note is the cultural differences, Japanese horror tends to work on tension and supernatural things. Ghosts, bumps in the night, general feeling of unease. Where as Western horror tends to be more gore and shock, the gore and shock has long ago lost it's shock value to us adults, where as the feeling of tension is very hard to break no matter what.

Compare Resident evil (Western horror style) with Silent Hill (Japanese horror style) and you'll see one is scary for a while, where as the other continues to be scary even if you're in a safe room with nothing creepy ever.

And just because it needs mentioning. The mannequin beheading event in Silent hill 3 is the scariest moment I've ever had in a game, just insanely creepy even though it presented no danger to me, it felt like I HAD to leave that room or something would behead me next.

Movies rule

[Charlie Kane]

I'd have to vote for the moment when the green alien dude (whom you've mistaken for a fellow astronaut in need of rescue from a forbidding otherworldly fractal-scape) pops up in front of your damn windshield and starts banging his way into your spaceship in Rescue on Fractalus, one of the first games ever to come out of Lucasarts. I used to play that on an Atari 800XT and it used to scare the hell out of me.

But there's a difference between that (relatively) easy videogame shock and the sense of deep disquiet that a really good horror movie can instill in you. It's true that the average scary game may make you jump more often than the average scary movie -- which rarely seems interested in the kind of classic horror-movie atmospherics that inform current game design -- but that's because the average scary movie really, really sucks. They're targeted at an audience of high-schoolers and/or gorehounds. Rob Zombie's movies may be *meaner* than anything this side of Manhunt, but they're certainly not scarier.

But the best scary movies are about something bigger than jolts. It may be hard, after several decades' fetishization of H.R. Giger's designs for the original Alien, to understand just how deeply creepy those insectoid, vaguely sexual, shapes up on screen were. It's easy to forget, watching the original Halloween at home on a letterboxed Anchor Bay DVD, what that movie looked and felt like, back in the day, when it was playing up on the big Panavision-sized screen in the kind of cavernous movie house that doesn't exist anymore.

There are some contemporary examples as well. Before their visual tropes became the stuff of cliché, Japanese horror movies like Ringu and Kairo brought the scary pretty effectively. 28 Weeks Later spun anxiety about avian flu and the Iraq war into a haunting zombie yarn about the dissolution of the family unit and wartime theatrics. The Descent had some real white-knuckle moments involving strangely deformed creatures in the near-total darkness. I love Bioshock and the immersive experience it provides in all its Dolby Digital 5.1 glory but the seams show -- the lines of dialogue spoken by the splicers are repeated too often, the gamepad mechanics are a little too abstract, the high-polygon creatures and texture-mapped environments just a little too uncanny-valley. Shocks-per-minute rate aside, the movies provide by far the more enveloping -- and aesthetically compelling -- psychological experience.

Re:Thief 3.

[nomadic]

While it didn't have the whole game, there's a level in it - The Cradle - that's absolutely, completely spooky. Running around a burned-out building that used to be both an insane asylum AND an orphanage...

The Cradle level makes every other "scary" game I've played look like a walk through a daisy-filled park at noon.

Re:Doom 3 anyone?

[Wordsmith]

"They took my baby!" Heebie-jeebie hoo-ha scared all night.

And the first appearance of the Pinky? "Wow, huh. That looks tough. HOLYCRAPITSCOMINGHOLYCRAPITSCOMING!"

Re:Absolutely.

[Proud like a god]

Polygons? What about the 2d Doom enemies? Pitch black sections except for flickering lights, with Pinky snarls coming from them...

My vote goes to....

[UncleTogie]

one little section in Max Payne... That dreamish sequence where he walks into the dark on that vine-ish looking tightrope... Mayhaps it's jus' 'cause I'm a parent, but hearing that dead baby cry and call out while surrounded by darkness gave my goosebumps goosebumps.

Yes

[Quiet_Desperation]

Best horror "movie" out right now is Bioshock. :)

I think there's three reasons:

1. A game is more immersive.
2. The game probably gets a lot more thought put into it than a horror movie.
3. The horror movie genre has become the "virtual snuff film" genre and caters to sick fucks.

Mod me flame bait for #3 if you must, but I completely stand by it.

They're releasing a "Art Of Bioshock" book. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an "Art Of Hostel" or "Art Of Saw" book.

Weak horror films...games filling the void

[Avatar8]

*** warning - a few horror film spoilers here if you haven't seen them. ***

I really enjoy horror films. It's a shame there are so few good ones. Blood and gore aren't scary, they're just gross. Pulling your audience in, making them believe one thing and then jerking the carpet out from under them leaves a much deeper impact. The gaming industry is learning this.

I thoroughly enjoyed "Saw" for it's suspense. It wasn't really a gory film at all despite what the author of TFA says. I'd wager only a few gallons of fake blood were used in both Saw movies. "Saw II" and the pit of needles... that freaked me out enough that I was squirming in the theater seat and turning my head away from the screen. We each have our own deepest fears. "Dusk til Dawn" had blood by the 55 gallon drum, but it wasn't scary at all. "Hostel," rated as the scariest movie of 2006, was pathetically tame and generally stupid. (Push the eye back in, idiot, don't snip it off.) The wife discovering her husband had killed in "What Lies Beneath" or the little boy's reaction of "You weren't supposed to help her," in "The Ring" were classic, gut-wrenching twists.

I played the BioShock demo. Once I got past the immature gore, it did develop into a layered, creepy environment with a fairly original story. I didn't like it well enough to buy it, but with the lack of quality horror films, I may start turning to horror games more often. I just hope they aren't all FPS since that's my least favorite genre.

Any wagers on a Cthulu MMO?