During this month's annual Steam super sale, I, letting my curiosity get the best of me, purchased "Five Nights at Freddy's." I first tried to play it at night, thinking that that would make the experience better, but I panicked and quit after the first level. The next day, I realized that the game creates so much anxiety for me that I can't even play it during the day with my TV on and my dog sitting comfortably at my side.
Long story short, it would be interesting to explore anxiety-inducing video games (particularly those of the survival horror genre) and why/how they are enjoyable to play. I can't even begin to imagine how some people play "Outlast" wearing noise-cancelling headphones with all of the lights out in the middle of the night. What makes these games enjoyable? Is the anxiety that they create a fun sensation for some? Maybe they're not enjoyable at all, but there's something else to them that keeps people playing.
It honestly depends on the person. That's why romantic comedies and horrors can both exist; some people like one or the other, some both. Some embrace the adrenaline and the fear and others hate it. Neither are wrong, and neither are right. It's simply based in preference and how a person is wired. – G Anderson Lake10 years ago
Absolutely! I would just love to know what the appeal is for those who do enjoy playing them. What makes the game worth playing? Is there some kind of science behind why this anxiety is enjoyable for some? – Nicole Williams10 years ago
I haven't played this game but I think it could probably contribute to the anxiety inducing games you've listed, it's called "Depression Quest." It probably isn't scary but it is literally about living with depression and managing your anxieties? – Slaidey9 years ago
I think it’s the adrenaline rush. For games with pop-ups, your senses are heightened because you don’t know what’s going to come out. Also, the player is in control of their actions, which makes it even more nerve wracking (but fun for some people!) I feel like the experience is different when played with friends, so maybe there can be a small section in the article explaining the difference between solo and multiplayer. (Ex: Don’t starve is a multiplayer horror game.) – YsabelGo9 years ago
Ysabel summed it up quite nicely. The adrenaline rush is certainly a big reason. There's also a feeling of triumph when you progress through a spooky area of a game. Playing survival horror type games like Outlast, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc, there can be a sensation of victory and relief when you finally conquered and/or escaped a difficult and frightening enemy. Those moments of relief when you finally feel safe can be priceless to a player's overall enjoyment of the game. To put it quite literally, you feel like you have "survived" the horror you experienced, and it's quite a rewarding sentiment. – BradShankar9 years ago
It is a recurring argument that video game cheapens the death of characters due to its replayable nature. I remember watching the Youtube video of the cutscene of the major supporting character's death from GTA4, and read the comment which jokingly said that the main character should have taken the bullet because he would have revived at the hospital. Death in video games are often avoidable, or a penalty. In many cases, dead characters can be revived with a special mean.
But there are games that make deaths significant through several means. The most recurring example would be the story branch, where a character's death decides the story route the gamer can take. A death of a character will consolidate the plot into certain route, so the gamer will have to be wary of the consequences.
There are other games with different approach to make deaths meaningful.
For example, the death in XCOM means that your effort and investment on a soldier have been wasted, and this becomes financial and strategic setback. The elite soldier takes series of combat experiences and upgrades, and they cannot be mass produced. In addition to this, there is no way to revive the soldier so the gamer have to be extremely careful with the characters.
In Fire Emblem, each character is given unique personality and look, plus unique stats. Similar to XCOM, the death of a character is a strategic trouble, but Fire Emblem goes one step further by creating emotional attachment. The characters become friends with each other, and in some games get married. They may have a child, who fight along with them in the battle. In this case, the death of a character is more than a casualty – it's a tragedy. Your one mistake can cause the death of someone's friend/lover/parent. After you get to know each character, their death feels heavier.
I am wondering if there are other cases of significant deaths in games. Are the deaths considered mere penalty, or emotional experience? I think this could be a good study of human psychology regarding how we treat deaths
One should also include the reasoning behind chaperoning death. Games have always been a safe place to explore everyday problems, teaching strategy and giving people experience outside of tall world consequences and life and death situations. This is a good thing but so is making death mean something when games start having so many extra lives to no consequences, death actually has become a game mechanic more than the definitive punishment of starting the game over that it used to.
– fchery10 years ago
In Heavy Rain you play as 4 different characters, who are all capable of dying and staying dead. It is possible to complete the game with not a single character alive, which was just refreshing if nothing else and it does give the characters greater significance to the story. There is game mode introduced in the Arkham games (I can't remember if it was City or Origins) which can be unlocked where you can play through the storyline with only one life. This is such a challenge and I'm sure other games have similar features, too.
I really like how Shadow of Mordor dealt with character deaths and how it integrates the many deaths the player will inevitably have into the gameplay. The Nemesis system means that certain orc captains will remember you after they've killed you and they will gain in power when they do. It's a really clever system that will definitely be implemented in future games. – Jamie10 years ago
An excellent example would also be Mass Effect. At one point in the first game, you have to decide which of your team mates has to die and the decision means consequences, some unforeseen. What makes this a good example is because Mass Effect is a series that is based entirely off your own choices. – SpectreWriter10 years ago
It might be good to consider how some games attempt to weave in player deaths with the storyline, such as Bioshock: Infinite. In Infinite when you die there is no breaking of the third wall; you don't go to a different screen, but rather a different part of the game that effectively sends you back in time to a certain point (which actually makes sense with the plot later on). While it's really just the same as reloading from a save point, I appreciated that they made an attempt to explain how you can die and yet just keep coming back. – OddballGentleman9 years ago
To this day people feel heartbroken over the death of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII and are still trying to find a way to bring her back to life. It would be very interesting to see more games like this where major characters purposefully die and cannot be brought back by expected means like a phoenix down. Besides these one can also look at permadeath in Diablo 3 where dying not only makes lose all progress but you lose possibly weeks to months of effort to level your character. It would be good to look at these two sides of permadeath games and see why they are implemented story and gameplay wise. – tylerjt9 years ago
The new game Until Dawn would be a brilliant example of exploring the consequences of permanent character death. There are plenty of chances to kill off characters that have significant impacts on the rest of the game. It really puts pressure on your actions, and forces you to think far more carefully before you make each decision. It shows the full repercussions of character deaths, not only on the story, but on the characters as well - you can compare and contrast what happens depending on who dies and who lives. It creates a far more real experience that, I believe. – averywilliams9 years ago
Also, State of Decay possess an interesting option when it comes to the death of their characters. As you can continually change what character you are playing as at anytime, when who you are dies they stay dead and you continue on as a different character. But the character that died, might have had a certain skill or trait that was helpful to the group's survival and might change the way you play your game. – BlueJayy9 years ago
E3 is underway, and I'm seeing the same thing. Open world games! This isn't a bad thing of course. Every game's sequel is getting turned into a massive sandbox, and the bigger the better. Games include Zelda, Batman, Lego and more. But can an open world game be TOO big?
I've been a game design teacher for the last 6 years and agree with this thesis. What made mass effect work so well was the illusion of a sandbox environment even though it wad a straight forward sorry with side quests. – fchery10 years ago
Once upon a time, the music in video games was an after-thought — small, repetitive loops of tinny electronic sounds was the norm. With some games being built to hold up to literally hundreds of hours of game play, the music scores have gotten considerably more impressive. A friend of mine was recently surprised to realize the cool song playing on her Pandora "movie sound track" list was actually from TES5: Skyrim.
I would love to see an in-depth article about working in the video game industry as a musician. Are musicians permanently on staff, or are they contract-hire? Are most scores now done with orchestras, or does electronic production still rule? To what extent do video game musicians need to learn to code? How hard is it to break in? Do the musicians also create sound-effect loops, or is that a different specialty? Are there awards for video game music? Is there cross-over between video game musicians and those who regularly work in television or movies?
I think this article could also lend itself to the performance of video game music by orchestras in "real" concert venues. I know that there are a few CDs and performances that have been released/occurred that brings video game music not just to gamers, but to the public as a whole – DClarke9 years ago
You could go into how video game music has become more "mainstream." What I mean by that is more and more there is a crossover between composers in both film/television and video games. Many film composers have done work for notable video games, such as:
-Hans Zimmer (Inception, The Dark Knight) has contributed to Crysis 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
-Harry Gregson-Williams (Shrek, The Town) to the Metal Gear series,
-Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream) to Mass Effect 3
-Henry Jackman (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain Phillips) is working on the score for next year's Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Also, in a historical achievement, Austin Wintory garnered a Grammy nomination in 2013 for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for his work on Journey. This kind of mainstream award recognition was previously unheard of for a video game soundtrack. – BradShankar9 years ago
Nintendo has made great games out of the same half-dozen intellectual properties for more than twenty years. Every Call of Duty game is relatively similar, but the same can be said for most of the Legend of Zelda games. The argument over which game series is better is futile, discuss how the approach, and the respective developers' desired end result is different.
Also look at how each series innovates in their own unique way to meet their consumer's expectations. For example, Zelda is an RPG, so even taking that same game and changing the storyline might be acceptable to appeal to its audience's expectations. On the other hand, Call of Duty is a first person shooter, so people are playing it for the gameplay rather than the storyline, meaning that a new CoD must make marked improvements in gameplay in order to differentiate itself. – OddballGentleman9 years ago
Analyze and discuss why Sonic the hedgehog gets a lot of ire on the internet despite his status as a video game icon. The Blue Blur became a phenomenon in the 90's but then struggled during the dawn of 3D gaming. Despite having some successful 3D games with praise from critics and fans, a mass others still cry out that all 3D Sonic games are garbage and inferior to Sonic's 2D games despite there existing good 3D Sonic games. Is the massive disappointment of the modern Sonic justified or are people putting down Sonic as a popular fad to hate something for no explained reason.
One of the reasons that the Sonic franchise has received a lot of backlash is how the character is the embodiment of Sega's downfall. Think about it, Nintendo and Sega were constantly butting heads in the 90's, but now-a-days, we see a lot of Sega games on Nintendo devices. Now that we know that Sega lost the battle with Nintendo, Sonic as a character will always be carrying the stench of failure. – Aaron Hatch9 years ago
I think it's really interesting how Sonic has been incorporated into the Nintendo world with Smash Bros. It shows that Nintendo is so far ahead of Sega now and that they are so confident of their own products that they are willing to put a competitors character in their own game. – Jamie White9 years ago
A big part of this, I think, is Sega failing to understand the market and what their fans want. Objectively, on paper, the idea of a Sonic game NOT being about speed and fast traversal sounds counter-intuitive for the series, as was the case with Sonic Boom. They have tried to focus on mobile games, but their profits continue to dwindle. Sega cited the global economy as reason for their financial loss, rather than accepting ownership over the quality (or perceived lack thereof) of their games. They seem to lose sight over what people want from the Sonic series. – BradShankar9 years ago
All gamers know what a walkthrough is and many use one from time to time. Whether you're stuck in a dungeon and can't find your way out or you don't know where to find the last item you need to finish an quest/achievement, they can be extremely helpful. But where do we draw the line? People make walkthroughs on youtube for commentary and entertainment and that's great and all, but gaming companies also publish full books hundreds of pages long with every detail of the game laid out. When do walkthroughs stop being a tool to help and start being a force which dominates your gaming experience? Are you a real gamer if you use these walkthrough guides or are you a poser just trying to get to the end so you can brag about it?
I personally don't have a problem with walkthroughs for video games most of the time. When you watch a walkthrough that shows how to beat a tough boss, you still have to do that. For example if you watch a walkthrough on how to defeat Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls, it will show you some helpful things on how to fight them, but you still have to do it yourself, which is never easy. I also am ok with it in story based games. Some people really only want to play a game for its narrative, and the gameplay itself acts as a blocker for them. I can't tell you how many obscure Point and Click games I've looked up the answers to particular puzzles on because I didn't care about how the puzzle was constructed, I just wanted to see the story.
The only time that I think walkthroughs are not good is when the game is specifically about the Puzzles. If the main focus of the game is puzzles and you look up the answers then it robs you of the satisfaction of solving the puzzle, ruining the game for you. If you just watched someone play Portal 1 and saw where they shot portals to get through the puzzle, its not really an accomplishment to do that yourself, and you get no satisfaction out of it. – Cojo10 years ago
I would never get through Witcher 3 without a walkthrough, this may well warrant losing my "real gamer" status. – Jeff10 years ago
You should probably focus on the subculture of walkthrough uploaders. They dominate the industry and fandom. – Joseph Manduke IV10 years ago
Interesting topic! I think you left out another utility of video game walkthroughs. Some people, myself included, watch video game walkthroughs of games they can't or will not play. Since there are so many consoles, so many games, and so little time, you might not be able to play every game you'd like to. But by watching a walkthrough you can still experience the game. – Cagney10 years ago
The article would need to pat down exactly what it's referring to in terms of walkthroughs. When I hear that, I think online guides on IGN and other sites alongside the giant printed books. If that's the case, then a lot can be said as to giving the player the power to create their own in-game experience. Where the developer wanted the player to be confused and stuck (or just under-prepared), the guide allows the player to swiftly move through the narrative at their own leisure. Of course a bunch can be debated for either case. But it might be interesting to see where Let's Plays fall into this category also. A side issue could also be printed guides. Although that might just flood the topic with the physical vs. digital debate. – Travis Cohen9 years ago
I don't think it really matters what medium walkthroughs are available in (print, video, etc.) because what matters is that they are there for anyone who needs them. Gamers shouldn't judge other gamers for using them if they are genuinely in need of help on a particularly difficult boss fight or if they want to find a rare item. I guess it all depends on what kind of experience you want, is what I'm trying to say. – Tanner Ollo9 years ago
Maybe take a look at the history of Final Fantasy and how it has evolved over the years. From the years of crystals and evil warlocks (or warlords), to the current fiasco with lightning, and more importantly the new one on the horizon. There has got to be someone out there who knows a good deal about this series, and it is amazing that is has been around for so long. Although, it may make more sense to wait until Final Fantasy 15 comes out to do this article. Figured I would throw the idea out there for any other fans
I would say the games have gotten better. One could trace the story development of how each game creates a more complex plot and more artistic creation than the last game. – Starvix Draxon9 years ago
