Today I attended a talk by Scott McCloud, author of the amazingly great Understanding Comics, a comic book about the mechanics of comic books as a medium. McCloud’s work has been inspirational for me (and many others) because he so effectively dissects a pulp medium (comic books) to show its core traits and characteristics. In […]
Let me take a moment to recommend this facinating article about symbolism in Silent Hill 2. The author picks apart the characters, the locations, and the plot of the story to show how we can interpret each as a manifestation of the protagonist’s particular psychological problems. Really well throught out and worth a read. In […]
Survival horror has its roots in the Adventure genre, and even today we can see versions most standard adventure game systems in modern survival horror games. But there is one mechanic–a staple of classic adventure games–that doesn’t seem to be used for horror games: dialog trees. If you’ve ever played any time of adventure game, […]
A couple of years ago I had a frightening experience. I was getting out of the shower one evening when from behind me I heard the sound of metal scraping against metal. The house was empty and I was standing there in the bathroom, naked and dripping wet, and in that instant I knew that […]
I have posted a new feature article: The Prehistory of Survival Horror. This article examines some early horror games and how they influenced the genre that we know and love today. Here’s an excerpt: Alone in the Dark in particular seems to be the direct parent of the Resident Evil game design: fixed cameras, static […]
Here’s a pretty interesting (if extremely academic) dissection of horror games from a psychoanalytic perspective. The authors tie Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 4 to a number of psychoanalytic theories with interesting results. It’s slightly pedantic (I’m not really one who can lay that criticism to anybody, I guess), but pretty interesting nonetheless.
There is a debate among game industry pundits about what games as a medium are about. If you roll with the groups that like to argue academics about video game design, you’ve probably heard of ludology. Ludology (from the Latin ludus, meaning “game”) is the study of video games (and other types, such as board […]
There’s a pretty good article over at Next-Gen.biz about the creation of fear through media like film and games. It’s all rather general and doesn’t really get into any specifics with regards to games or movies, but the author makes a lot of valid points. If you are interested in the mechanics of building tension, […]
I followed a link from Slashdot Games to this interesting post about the difference between horror games and horror movies over at the hilariously titled GamersWithJobs.com. The author admits to being absolutely terrified by horror games despite having no trouble with horror movies. The point he makes, which is a big part of the reason […]
Though I didn’t think it was a great film, one of the things I dug about Juon 2 was the way the director used lighting to suggest some sort of abstract malice. Unlike many traditional horror movies, Juon 2 doesn’t rely on pitch-black locales to build tension; instead, it suggests that the characters in the […]