Can A Horror Game Remain Scary?

[Moonface]

Halloween is tomorrow, and I've been thinking about horror games a lot lately because of it. One thing that came to mind in particular is whether or not a horror game can remain scary, or if they're all destined to have the horror element wear off on the player eventually (excluding cases where the player has a genuine phobia of something presented in the game). So what do you think?

For me, I'm not entirely sure but I know there are horror games that have yet to stop being scary for me. Phasmophobia is one such game, where I'm fine in multiplayer with it but the second I try single player I can't stomach it.
However, there was a time I found Dead Space so scary I couldn't play it for ages and now I don't get affected by that game at all, and Alien: Isolation was scary to me just watching it so I never wanted to play it, but the last time I watched someone playing it they were getting killed by the Alien so much due to ridiculous spawning that I actually stopped being scared and actually found myself feeling the same level of boredom (that's the wrong word....it's the word where you just stop caring because it keeps happening over and over again) as the streamer was with it. No idea if I'd find the game scary again though if I tried playing it myself.

[Dragon Lord]

I think it just depends on the person, honestly. Some people will become desensitized (the word you were looking for) to the horror, while other people will always be scared by it. Using your example of Phas, I've seen streamers who have played the game for 1,000+ hours who are still scared shitless by the game, and others who are completely immune to whatever the game throws at them.

I don't think there's any case where a horror game will lose all of it's scariness to every single person out there. There will always be someone afraid of it no matter how many times they play it.

[Moonface]

I think it just depends on the person, honestly. Some people will become desensitized (the word you were looking for) to the horror, while other people will always be scared by it. Using your example of Phas, I've seen streamers who have played the game for 1,000+ hours who are still scared shitless by the game, and others who are completely immune to whatever the game throws at them.

I don't think there's any case where a horror game will lose all of it's scariness to every single person out there. There will always be someone afraid of it no matter how many times they play it.

To build off of your point about different Phas players being on total opposite ends of the scared spectrum even after playing 1000+ of hours, I just finished watching this video while eating lunch that makes a lot of good points about how a game can sustain its horror:



To summarize the points they make throughout the video up into an easier to digest bite, a horror game is likely to work at its best when the player is unable to have a definitive answer to what they are encountering. For Amnesia, although you can see the enemy you have to run, and you have to usually run into areas you have not yet explored, so you don't know what you're potentially running into. You also don't know if you're still being chased, but stopping to turn and look puts you at risk of the enemy still being there and looking at it will drain your sanity. You'll hide in a closet in a way similar to Phas; you get in, close the door, and can not peek to see if the monster is still outside because if it is it will know you're there and kill you. All you have to rely on is sound, but unlike Phas where it's usually clear when a hunt is over, in Amnesia you don't know if an enemy has actually left and despawned or if it simply walked out of your hearing range and is going to be outside the room you're in when you leave. You don't get to know when the current event is over until you get out and look for yourself, so there's no tell of when to relax and leave the closet from the game, unlike Phas where you usually know it's good to leave. However, Phas solves this by making hunts completely random so you can leave a hiding spot only to have another hunt happen when you're not near it, and depending on the map you won't know where the ghost is to know what direction to go and if you do know, you can't reach a hiding spot and so have to hope wherever you are will suffice. Killing in either game is also really rare, so you don't die so much that you become agitated and view the enemy as an annoyance rather than a threat.

It's probably what lets older games like Silent Hill hold up well because of the fog thing they did that was also done due to the limits of the hardware of the time. The models are also not really detailed, so you can't just see something and immediately know what it is but have to question it. So I guess whether a game can stay scary is probably down to a lot of keeping the player in the dark about things. Once you know things like the back of your hand or things become predictable it loses a lot of the edge. It's one thing I wish Dead Space had resolved with enemy spawns, because after a short time it gets very obvious an enemy will jump out of the vent and on a replay enemies always show up in the same places; I would love for those games to have adopted a randomizer system where enemy spawns are always different and rooms that had a big fight the first time have nothing on another time, or less, so you never know if you're done.

[Maniakkid25]

I think this question, like a lot of questions, has only one good answer, and it's basically the one DL gave: It depends. But more than just player experience, it depends on player KNOWLEDGE, as well.

As an example, I once posted about a quirk of Amnesia: the Dark Descent that, if you know about it, will absolutely ruin how the game instills its atmosphere. I will refrain from explaining that quirk here, but it legitimately changes how you approach the game if you have knowledge of the information I allude to. Sure, if you know all the jump scares, you can eventually maybe stop being frightened by them, but when you know how a system BEHAVES, then suddenly a new style of play emerges: manipulation. If you KNOW that committing to a certain action will get a specific result, you can use this to your advantage. If you know that enemies can't aim up, then getting on a high point to attack with impunity will benefit you.

This can immediately and permanently suck out all the horror of a game, depending on how accessible that action is. For example, the flamethrower in Alien: Isolation (from what I understand; never played it) will get the Xenomorph to back off, but it's in limited supply and must be used sparingly, keeping that overall tension up because of a potential lack of accessibility. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 4 original had the Invisibile Novistador section in the sewers, and will ALWAYS spawn the enemies in specified and telegraphed locations, and they won't aggro if you aren't in specific positions. If you know these spawn points, the section is suddenly a breeze with basically no scary moments (outside of the creepy bug people being creepy bug people).

Knowledge is one of the most powerful forces against horror. Ultimately, a lot of horror stems from the fear of not knowing. So, if you want to experience a horror game with it's intended atmosphere, the best way you can run it is to run it completely blind. Unless you're me, and you are a little bitch who can't handle most horror games, and get scared by something as simple as a goddamn War Wasp in Metroid Prime! If you are like me, there are still plenty of scares to be had without having to be in the dark, but, to my mind, the worst thing you can do is go into a game KNOWING how it works, and I can list a personal example: Dead Space.

Dead Space was a game that I knew the hype of, and I knew the pre-release stuff. More importantly, I knew from the pre-release material that the Necromorphs have a weakness: cutting off the limbs. Walking into the game knowing this meant that, while yes, there were tense moments or otherwise distressing moments, the atmosphere never entered my brain because I knew how to make sure the Necromorphs stayed dead. If I had the chance, I wish I could play that game completely blind, and see how well I would do without that information, because something tells me the basic enemies would have a lot more weight if I didn't know what I did.

[Moonface]

As an example, I once posted about a quirk of Amnesia: the Dark Descent that, if you know about it, will absolutely ruin how the game instills its atmosphere. I will refrain from explaining that quirk here, but it legitimately changes how you approach the game if you have knowledge of the information I allude to. Sure, if you know all the jump scares, you can eventually maybe stop being frightened by them, but when you know how a system BEHAVES, then suddenly a new style of play emerges: manipulation. If you KNOW that committing to a certain action will get a specific result, you can use this to your advantage. If you know that enemies can't aim up, then getting on a high point to attack with impunity will benefit you.

Is the video I posted incorrect about how Hard difficulty will result in actually dying from lack of sanity? I know that anything below that means what you wrote here applies, but I don't see how those rules would affect Hard difficulty if you're not actually safe to abuse the system.

For example, the flamethrower in Alien: Isolation (from what I understand; never played it) will get the Xenomorph to back off, but it's in limited supply and must be used sparingly, keeping that overall tension up because of a potential lack of accessibility. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 4 original had the Invisibile Novistador section in the sewers, and will ALWAYS spawn the enemies in specified and telegraphed locations, and they won't aggro if you aren't in specific positions. If you know these spawn points, the section is suddenly a breeze with basically no scary moments (outside of the creepy bug people being creepy bug people).

I haven't played A:I either but I have watched multiple playthroughs to explain the flamethrower. That weapon, like any other item in the game that can be used against the Xenomorph (such as the noise maker to lure it somewhere), will begin to become less effective the more you use it. The Xenomorph will start to require you to use more fuel to scare it away instead of a short burst sufficing, and that can escalate to it actually charging at you and knocking you down instead of running away should the fastest route out of the map is through you. That charge removes a lot of health and it may even cause a death animation if it happens at low health but I'm not certain. For the noise makers, eventually the Xeno gets wise to them and will initially spend less time distracted by it, and that escalates to it just no longer giving a shit about it if you go overboard with using them.

For RE4, the first time I encountered the Invisible Novistador's that section scared the heck out of me, but it falls away once I knew the way to see them while they're invisible and it's gone entirely when you also know the spawn points. I think knowing the spawn points of any enemy in a game is something that really removes any tension they may initially cause and A:I is one of the only games I know of that doesn't do set spawns for the Xeno, instead having it just be a constant presence that can turn up anywhere, anytime. Nothing will be worse than coming face to face with it in a vent you climbed in that it was chilling out in because it opted to stop walking around the area of the map it was in and use a vent to take a shortcut to another place.

If you are like me, there are still plenty of scares to be had without having to be in the dark, but, to my mind, the worst thing you can do is go into a game KNOWING how it works, and I can list a personal example: Dead Space.

Dead Space was a game that I knew the hype of, and I knew the pre-release stuff. More importantly, I knew from the pre-release material that the Necromorphs have a weakness: cutting off the limbs. Walking into the game knowing this meant that, while yes, there were tense moments or otherwise distressing moments, the atmosphere never entered my brain because I knew how to make sure the Necromorphs stayed dead. If I had the chance, I wish I could play that game completely blind, and see how well I would do without that information, because something tells me the basic enemies would have a lot more weight if I didn't know what I did.

Yeah, I wrote about my gripe with Dead Space in my previous post with how knowing the spawns really takes away a lot of the tension. Limb cutting was another great way of creating tension even when you do know that's the trick (and the game tells you as soon as you get the Plasma Cutter to do that) because you can't just shoot wherever at enemies like you can in pretty much any other game. Once you get good at doing it though, it too stops being a tension maker.

[Maniakkid25]

As an example, I once posted about a quirk of Amnesia: the Dark Descent that, if you know about it, will absolutely ruin how the game instills its atmosphere. I will refrain from explaining that quirk here, but it legitimately changes how you approach the game if you have knowledge of the information I allude to. Sure, if you know all the jump scares, you can eventually maybe stop being frightened by them, but when you know how a system BEHAVES, then suddenly a new style of play emerges: manipulation. If you KNOW that committing to a certain action will get a specific result, you can use this to your advantage. If you know that enemies can't aim up, then getting on a high point to attack with impunity will benefit you.

Is the video I posted incorrect about how Hard difficulty will result in actually dying from lack of sanity? I know that anything below that means what you wrote here applies, but I don't see how those rules would affect Hard difficulty if you're not actually safe to abuse the system.

I doubt you are, but my point was that it has no in-game effect (though now that I consider it, I'm reasonably certain there is poor wording in that post). Being dead is more of a state than an in-game characteristic. After all, if you're dead, you can't really do anything else to influence the game. You know what, here's the video in-question, I'll let Thomas Grip explain it in his own words.