2006 Was a Bad Year


Not good

At least for horror gamers, 2006 was pretty much the worst year in a decade. Excepting games with horror themes but no intent to scare (like Dead Rising), only two games classifiable as horror were released. One of them, Siren 2, was restricted to Europe and Japan. The other, Rule of Rose, got awful reviews.

Yes, the year of 2006 was a hard 12 months for us horror gamers. I mean, sure, 2001 was a pretty bad year. That year, the average score for horror games was below 65%. And 1997 wasn’t too hot either: games like

Nightmare Creatures and Enemy Zero were all that was available. But both 1997 and 2001 saw the release of five games, and while none of them were all that great, horror gamers at least had some selection to tide them over. In 2006, we got one game (or two, if you live in Europe), a catalog more paltry than any other year since 1994.

What have we done to deserve this? In 2005, 15 games were released with us horror gamers as the target audience. On top of that, some of those games really good (like Resident Evil 4). How can the well have dried up so fast?

The answer? “Next Gen.” Those two small words spelled doom not only for horror games, but for all kinds of niche genres. Developers were hunkered down with their new development kits, spending millions on the creation of new titles for the Xbox360, PS3, and Wii. It was time for them to spend more than they have ever spent before on development (as next gen development is much more costly than current gen), but also a time for developers to assume much more risk than usual. The launch of any new console, not to mention consoles retailing at exorbitant prices, can be hard for developers, as the installed base does not yet exist and


Relative sales of survival horror games (North America, all platforms)

profit projections are difficult.

Next gen complaints are frequent on this site, so I’ll spare you that particular rant. Suffice to say that in the grand scheme of things, horror games are small potatoes. With the exception of the Resident Evil series, most horror games don’t move enough units to really warrant interest from the publishers. I mean, compared to main stream blockbusters, Resident Evil 4 was a pretty successful game. But the sales of Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4 combined can’t match it. Games like the Fatal Frame series are way behind that. And Rule of Rose? It has sold so badly that it barely even shows up in my graph.

In the context of the video game market as a whole, survival horror is barely a blip on the radar. Horror games are released when niche genres can still do well. That is to say, they are an indicator that risk (and cost) is low. The absolute absence of horror games in 2006 indicates that they are just too risky for publishers to pursue at the moment, especially as the next generation consoles have yet to fall into an obvious ranking. That’s not to say that the genre is dead, just that it’s too small to rate with most publishers. When every release must be a mega-hit to make money, genres like this aren’t even worthy of consideration. But when the market sways back into balance (as it will when the next gen consoles begin to reach a larger and larger audience), we’ll see them return. And the big guns, the Capcoms and Konamis, sell well enough that they can assume the risk presented by next gen.

But we may have to wait a little while until the little guys, the games with new ideas and crazy new game mechanics, are able to return to the market place.

Siren 2 Impressions

I picked up Siren 2 on an excursion to Japan last month. I really should finish Ghost Hunter first (which is actually a much better game than I was expecting, though it’s not perfect), but got hooked on Siren 2 almost immediately and haven’t put it down yet.

If you followed my Siren odyssey, you might remember that my chief complaint with the game was that it really failed to communicate its crazy ideas to the player, which made the game far more difficult than it needed to be. Still, for those few players willing to endure the initially punishing experience, Siren really paid off.

For Siren 2, it’s clear that the developers have taken this sort of feedback to heart. They are trying really hard to fix their game without compromising the original aspects of its design. Each level now starts with a series of hints explaining the unique features of that level. The game also opens with a set of tutorial levels that are far more extensive than its predecessor. Further steps have been taken to keep the player from getting frustrated, including a new alarm system that warns you when enemies are close.

But all of these changes haven’t decreased the difficulty level significantly. The game is still tough and pretty unforgiving, and each level is still home to a lot of interesting design ideas. Fortunately, the difficulty comes from the game design rather a lack of information. The game is much better about guiding the player through each level, but it doesn’t let that interfere with its core challenge format. I think it’s another great example of challenging the player to perform a task rather than challenging them to decipher the correct task to perform.

I’ve not yet completed Siren 2, but so far I am really enjoying it. I’m also really enjoying Hotel Dusk and the new Phoenix Wright. Damn, the DS is the place for adventure games lately.

Creature Feature: Gashadokuro

Gashadokuro (pronounced “gah sha doh kuroh”) is a giant skeleton monster from Japan. They can reach huge sizes (up to about 90 feet tall), and are constructed out of the skeletons of people whom have died awful deaths in war or from starvation. The bones are collected into this giant creature by the dead’s feelings of anger at their own grisly demise (yet another application of onnen). The Gashadokuro wander at night, making a “gachi gachi” sound. If they come upon a living person they will attack, often biting victims heads off.

In one famous story, a man from Bingo (the old name for an area in east Hiroshima) was out in the fields one night when he heard a strange voice complaining about a pain it its eye. In the morning, the man located the weather-beaten skull of a Gashadokuro, and was able to appease it by removing the bamboo shoots that had grown up through its eye socket and leaving a bowl of dried boiled rice as an offering.

Tairyou Jigoku


I guess the standard issue school girl uniform doesn’t come with insecticide.

Thanks to Kotaku for pointing me to a preview of Tairyou Jigoku (lit. “The Overwhelming Hell”), a game apparently about making a school girl run away from giant insects. As you might have guessed, this title is by D3, publisher of ultra-budget titles like THE Zombie VS Ambulance.

Now, normally I would just sort of laugh and continue the daily trek I make through the underbelly of video game news sites, but this entry caught my eye. As you might have read, I started this site to learn about games that are designed to provoke an emotional response in the player. Though it may be trite, this title is clearly designed to make the player feel as uncomfortable as possible, and for that reason only it looks sort of interesting. At its best, it might succeed in making some skin crawl. At its worst, it may be that the bugs involved are simply another iteration of Generic Antagonist X (that certainly seemed to be the case with the somewhat similar Necro Nesia). I guess we’ll have to wait and see; D3 certainly does not have a reputation for making fun games.

Echo Night: Beyond


There’s something behind you and it doesn’t need air!

I’ve just posed a review of Echo Night: Beyond, a pretty great game about a haunted (and throughly deserted) lunar space station. I wasn’t expecting it to be all that great, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and competence with which the game was executed. I think it got a pretty bad rap from reviewers; there’s really nothing wrong with the title at all other than it’s rather old-school game mechanics. Not everything can be Resident Evil 4, people!

Anyway, I’m quite glad to have played Beyond. I was a bit worried that it would not make sense unless I played the earlier games in the series, but actually it seems to be completely independent of the earlier titles. Next I may try to tackle Rule of Rose again, or maybe I’ll play something a little older, like Deep Fear.

Creature Feature: Rokurokubi

Rokurokubi is another youkai from Japan. These creatures look and act like normal humans, but at night their necks elongate, freeing their heads to move around almost independently from their bodies. Most Rokurokubi are women, and they take pleasure in scaring regular humans. Rokurokubi are also apparently fond of licking the oil used to light indoor lanterns.

Some Rokurokubi actually prefer to live their lives pretending to be a human. Though they may appear to be completely normal people, every night they must combat the urge to stretch their neck out and go off scaring humans. Rokurokubi have been a staple of Japanese horror stories since the Edo period.

There is also another, more sinister form of Rokurokubi. This version drinks blood and lives only to prey on normal people. These monsters differ from their less-threatening counterparts in that their heads completely detach from their bodies and fly around disconnected at night. Instead of a long neck, the flying, disembodied head is the defining characteristic for this version. These Rokurokubi attempt to hide their bodies at night, and can be killed if their bodies are discovered while the heads are detached.

There is some discussion that the name Rokurokubi only applies to the long-necked trickster version of this creature. The latter monster, it has been suggested, is more correctly called Nukekubi. The confusion seems to date back to Lafcadio Hearn’s story Rokuro-Kubi, which describes the more malicious form. That said, the former long-necked form is by far the most common and well-known.

Creature Feature: Kuchisake Onna

Kuchisake Onna (lit. “slit-mouth woman”) is a monster from Japan. Her defining characteristic is her mouth, which extends from ear to ear in a horrible, permanent smile. As the story goes, a samurai mutilated his lover in a jealous rage in order to destroy her beauty. She became a vengeful spirit, and nowadays can sometimes be found wandering the streets wearing a surgical mask. Japanese people often wear such masks during the cold season to prevent others from catching their colds, so Kuchisake Onna does not particularly stand out in a crowd.

Should you meet Kuchisake Onna, she’ll likely ask you if you think that she is beautiful. Apart from her surgical mask, she does appear to be a very beautiful woman, and anyway, most people say “yes” automatically to be polite. However, upon receiving a positive response, Kuchisake Onna will tear her mask off and show you her awful mouth, slit on each side all the way up to her ears. She will then ask you again if you think she is beautiful. Those who answer “no” or try to run away will be chased down. Kuchisake Onna can apparently run 100 meters in 3 seconds (thats like 75 mph!), and she usually carries a knife or scythe. Men will be killed immediately, while women have their mouths cut, creating a new Kuchisake Onna. Depending on the version of the tale, the only way to escape is to tell the Kuchisake Onna that she is beautiful the second time, or to distract her with fruit or candy.

As with many Japanese horror tales, this one is recursive: women who are accosted by Kuchisake Onna can themselves become monsters if they answer her question incorrectly. Apparently there was a wave of Kuchisake Onna rumors in 1979 in Japan. More recently, 1994 film about Kuchisake Onna modernized the tale by making her disfiguration the result of a plastic surgery mishap. Another film of the same name is planned for release in 2007. There’s more to read about Kuchisake Onna at The Youkai Mura and Wikipedia. Update: Removed link to other film that was actually porn. Oops!

Rule of Rose Controversy

Rule of Rose is a game with some pretty disturbing scenes. Kotaku has a story about the game causing controversy in Europe. It looks like the debate stems from the game’s use of children as antagonists, as well as some misinformation about scenes depicted in the game (one news agency erroneously reported that the game rewards players for burying a girl alive).

Now, censorship in general bugs me. I can sort of understand how some information, especially information that pertains to national security, can’t be allowed to flow freely. I have a much harder time understanding censorship that is targeted at works deemed obscene or offensive, as those terms are neither objective nor universal. Censorship aimed to suppress work that a particular group finds morally offensive forces one viewpoint upon all consumers, removing choice. I think that you can take almost any work and find somebody somewhere who is offended by it, so such subjective classifications are not very useful when creating rules for an entire country.

For example, my wife and I once chanced upon an exhibit of Picasso’s sexually explicit paintings while visiting Montreal. Picasso is universally considered one of the great artists of the 20th century, yet this particular collection of his work was never shown in America because it was about sex. We thought the exhibit was wonderful, but due to objections of one group or another, Americans never even had the chance to see it in their own country. One particular group’s perspective removed the opportunity to even choose to view Picasso’s work.

But censorship regarding video games bugs me even more. What is it about games that causes them to attract the ire of would-be arbiters of morality? Films like Natural Born Killers and Saw came out in Italy (where a ban of Rule of Rose has been proposed), and are far more violent, disturbing, and mainstream than anything in this obscure Japanese horror title. What is it about video games that makes them a target for censorship when other media is not?

I think that there are several factors involved. First, many people who did not grow up playing video games often associate games with children, as children were the target market twenty years ago when the Nintendo Entertainment System was released. While this impression is understandable, it is also fallacious and easily dispensed with cursory research about the contemporary game market. The second issue that plays a role here is that the older generation did not grow up with video games in their household. As with comic books and rock and roll before it, games continue to suffer from a certain degree of foreignness to many adults over the age of 30. It seems that most detractors of games do not play games regularly themselves. That’s not to say that the opinion of non-gamers is invalid, just that such people cannot claim to have an informed opinion of the medium.

But what bothers me the most about this particular story is that those calling for a ban on Rule of Rose obviously haven’t played the game. There’s a burial scene in the first five minutes of game play, but it’s a non-interactive cutscene. The character being buried does not die, nor does the player win when this event occurs; it’s just a scene in the story. Since this event occurs early on in the game, even a few minutes of play would have dispelled any misunderstanding about how the game works. Clearly, the people arguing this particular point about Rule of Rose have not played at all.

And finally, any sort of controversy over Rule of Rose requires giving it a little more credit than it is worth. Though I haven’t finished it, I don’t think the game is all that great, and I am sure that had this particular debate not erupted, the game would have vanished quietly into obscurity.

Mechanical Narratives and Flawed Arguments

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 games) in terms of functional mechanics. Ludologists argue that video games are fun because they provide an interface for play within a fixed set of rules. A ludologist might argue that Mario can jump a certain height and break bricks because jumping and breaking bricks are fun actions to perform. Ludology seeks to describe the entertainment provided by video games in terms of the way the player interacts with the game.

In the opposite corner we have the Narratologists. This group believes that video games are most powerful as a story-telling medium, and feel that games provide entertainment because they allow the player to step directly into a fantastical role. Narratology considers games a framework for interactive stories, and in sharp contrast to the ludologists, feel that the method of interaction is secondary to the role provided by the game.

Both of these awkwardly-named groups despise each other with a passion, and each have written reams and reams of arguments defending their position. They seem to flaunt each other with “more academic than thou” arguments, and many of them seem convinced that all ‘good’ video games conform to their perspective. For all their research and analysis, it seems to me that these groups are very easily defined: ludologists like action games and platformers, while narratoligists prefer adventure games and RPGs. Of course, if they stated their position that way they wouldn’t sound so intelligent and academic, so I think they tend to stick to the silly names.

I think that the distinction between interface mechanics and story telling elements is false. I do not believe that these concepts are mutually exclusive, nor do I believe that all video games conform to one method over the other. I’ve come to this conclusion with the help of this Quest; horror games have been my escort out of the mire of confusion that both sides in this argument suffer from.

I think that where the ludologists and the narratologists go astray is in assuming that one method of game design is intrinsically superior to the other. I argue that plenty of games fall evenly in both categories: ICO, for example, is built upon mechanics that are extremely enjoyable and yet the title also manages to present one of the most powerful narratives in a game ever. Another example is the Shenmue series, especially the under-appreciated Shenmue 2. This game has a complex and well-written story that is central to the experience, but it also features a remarkably mature fighting system and more mini-games and reflex challenges than you can shake a stick at. I also assert that there are games that are neither mechanics- nor narrative-based: Electroplankton and Nintendogs are excellent examples.

Rather than divide all games into “mostly about mechanics” or “mostly about story”, I think it is better to define the primary form of challenge that games can provide. I’ve written before about cognitive challenges (“Type 1”) versus mechanical challenges (“Type 2”), and it has also occurred to me more recently that there are several other, less common forms of challenge used in video games (World of Warcraft, for example, features raw player endurance as a form of challenge, as progression seems to be primarily a function of the total amount of time a player spends online).

What I like about the challenge-based definition is that it’s easy to describe games as a mix of challenges. Resident Evil, for example, is an almost even mix of cognitive and mechanical challenges. Earlier adventure games, such as The Secret of Monkey Island are almost entirely cognitive, while action games like Resident Evil 4 are heavily based on mechanical challenges. Electroplankton provides almost no challenge at all, proving that challenge is not a pre-requisite for fun.

The other thing I like about categorizing games in terms of challenge format is that challenges have absolutely nothing to do with narrative. Whether the player is asked to make decisions about what to do next (cognitive) or challenged by actually doing the next thing (mechanical), I don’t see any reason that the narrative presented by the game must be affected. Silent Hill 2, for example, has a pretty even split between mechanical and cognitive challenges (both forms are pretty easy throughout the game), but the game also hosts a strong and interesting narrative.

The idea that the player only wants to mash buttons or only wants to read pages of dialog is fallacious and fairly naive. The idea that different players will enjoy different types of challenges, on the other hand, seems to me to be much more straight forward. I even think that different players will experience different forms of challenge when playing the same game!

I started this Quest to improve my understanding of game design by examining horror games specifically. I feel like this research is starting to really pay off, as some of the things I’ve learned from horror games are starting to make sense in completely different genres. I might be totally off-base here, but it certainly feels like this project is producing the results that I am looking for. As I have more thoughts about this subject I’ll post them, though I must warn you that in all likelihood I am completely wrong.