I’ve been itching to write a few more articles for the site, in the vein of the feature on character design that I posted a few months back. Like the previous article, I’d like to focus on one aspect of horror games and sort of write a stream-of-consciousness about how they help induce fear in the player. I could write about level design, or maybe weapon design, or I could go off on some (possibly boring) analysis of control systems in horror games, or I could expound on the history of the genre. But maybe there’s a better topic out there.
What do you guys think? Give me a topic and I’ll think real hard about it for a while and then write something up!
Sure 🙂 Here’s a thought- Western horror is
driven by the fear of death, plagues and
ghastly injuries caused wars of the last century. Is Japanese and Asian horror fueled
by anything different or is it the same?
That’s a pretty good topic. I’d like to compare and contrast horror from the East and the West.
You could do an editorial on game mechanics too.
When you think about the item box is darn
strange. The differing save systems etc.
As spooky as Silent Hill is, the strangest
thing may be the benches and tables that grow
boxes of 9mm shells 😉
My dissertation talks about Japanese body horror due to the effects of the Atom bomb. But also how survival horror titles are commonly set in post-industrial or failed capitalist towns, due to a post war fear of economic depression caused by the Americans, hence the settings of Silent Hill and Resident Evil. But that’s just me showing off to my tutors…but feel free to write about it, since I’d love to know what other people think!