Crikey, that's a big title for this.

With that out of the way, I'd like to welcome y'all to my first proper writing thing (hopefully the precursor to me getting a Lovefilm sub, and reviewing the shit out of a new game every month... Hey, I gots to do something with that £9 a month I'm now not spending on WoW ). It's a little out of my comfort zone, as I'm not a massive fan of the genre, but there's always scope for me to scare the bejeezus out of myself for shits and giggles (Probably more of the shits than the giggles though).



Ok, as a medium, gaming had a pretty good line in the overarching Horror super-genre. We've seen the likes of Silent Hill, and Resident Evil come and scream BOO at the tops of their voices at us.
We've had System Shock come along and try to control our minds, and the likes of Fatal Frame come and seriously frighten the everloving piss out of yours truely.

But with all the joys of a good bowel-emptying game, we've also seen a marked decline in the amount of non-"Action Horror" games that have been released over time.

Why is this? The industry has some fantastic narrative skills in some of the finest big-budget studios worldwide, and yet, there's little to actually show for the genre itself.

Well, it's down to money, the target audience, the current climate of on-going hostility, and even the technology available to the studios themselves. And I'll tackle them in that order, I think.

Money
Games cost money. Like big pallet-loads of money. Horror games generally don't sell as well as action, RPGs, or even some Sim super-genre games. There's always some exceptions to the rules, but on the whole, horror games are some of the worst selling in the entire medium.

Target Audience
The target audience for horror games is ageing. Even following the trends of movies, it's clear that horror is on the way down. Younger people on average don't get as moist in the pants for a good fright than their older counterparts.

Ongoing Hostility
Games are still coming under attack from the "old media", even though the US are considering if games are an art form (if we lose, then games are rather fucked in the US, given that they'd no longer be constitutionally protected as free speech, by failing the Miller Test. Oh hai censorship and restrictions on a state-by-state level). If a game that shows violence in a medium form can provoke such a backlash, then imagine what a reaction Splatterhouse would receive if it were re-released today?

Technological Disadvantages
Yes, you read that right. Technological DISADVANTAGES.
As a platform for a horror game, the PS3 (as an example) is at a significant disadvantage to the PS1.
How is that? How has 12 years of development given this latest generation console a disadvantage in this genre?

It's because of this. A person will always be able to scare themselves better than someone else ever will be.
People have paranoia, they have fears, and they have imaginations. These as tools are far more significant for scaring the piss out of someone than having a gaggle of zombies thrust their arms through boarded up windows (although, when that happened in RE1, I may have squealed a bit...)
If you can play on those natural defence mechanisms, then you'll succeed more in scaring someone. And that's what horror is all about. Scaring the audience into a state of fervour, scaring them witless, but making them want to come back for more.

The current trend for games is to render everything. And I do mean everything. We now have the processing and graphical power to render the hair growing out of a pus-filed growth on the back of the main bad guy, so why not? Let's do it.

But in doing so, you then destroy the unknown part of the game. Horror is created by working that fear of the unknown, and by rendering down to that hair, you're showing the unknown, and removing a hell of a lot of the potential for fear from it.


So, while we've been getting more and more action, fighting, sports, RPG, and other games, horror has fallen by the wayside a little. Not because it's been shamelessly dumped like a dead kitchen appliance, but because technology, and the population as a whole has advanced beyond it.

Now, as I said before, I'm not a massive fan of horror as a super-genre in anything, but the death knell of one genre that triggers something so primitive could potentially rock the gaming world as a whole, the we all should be a little worried.

Hopefully, someone'll release something that'll revive horror as a key player in mainstream (ugh) games, but until then, I'll be sleeping with the lights on.




Also, does this still not only not weird people out, but intrigue them, or is it just me?

Play Penumbra or Amnesia on PC, that is what I call a survival horror, none of this hipster bull shit called Dead Space, they even have puzzles to actually stop the 12 year olds from playing.

I have written so much about this it isnt even funny. I am with you Nubnos.

I also hate co-op in horror games.