I love horror games. I don’t play them often (although I’m currently playing through the Silent Hill 2 remake and loving it), but I find them much more satisfying than watching a scary movie. I don’t have to participate in a horror movie if things get too intense: I can close my eyes, turn away, or even leave the room, and the movie will continue without me.
But in a horror game, my character is frozen until I take action. When my character is looking down a near-pitch black hallway in an abandoned hospital, and I just know that some monster will jump out at me when I walk to the end of it, I don’t want to move. It’s too scary. But I know I have to in order to progress the game. And when that monster does jump out from behind a door and begins to charge at me, there is no set outcome, I have to make split-second decisions under stress and take action. For me, this sense of control makes horror games so much scarier, and more compelling, compared to the “fixed” medium of film.
Principle 6.7: “All Games Require Interaction and Active Participation” and Principle 6.8: “All Games are Played in Hyper-1st Person” are the reason I play games: for their interactivity. When a character in a horror movie decides to hide in the basement, that might seem like a ridiculous decision that you wouldn’t have made if you were in that position. And that’s what games allow for, they “cede control to the player and create a sense of embodiment.”
When I play a horror game, it tends to start out like this: I approach each scenario cautiously, walking slowly and checking every corner. But after a while, having run into no enemies, I become complacent and start sprinting around, running right into an ambush. In a panic, I frantically shoot, missing some shots and even taking some damage. I’m now low on bullets, low on health, and the stakes have just been raised. There was a tangible effect on my progression due to my recklessness as it made my path forward more difficult and more stressful.
I can’t get upset at the poor decision-making of the main character because it was my poor decisions that got me here. Principle 6.7 continues that “the experience at some level must unfold in cooperation with how the player plays the game,” which makes this experience much more personalized to my approach. And since the “game world does not proceed in a meaningful way with [me],” this embodiment is what makes games so enthralling.