It certainly doesn’t appear that the popularity of horror games will decline anytime soon.Switches default game mode to Adventure, Creative or Survival Resident Evil is one of the most commercially successful video game series of all time, having sold an estimated 66 million copies worldwide. “Maybe it’s also a way to remind yourself that your real life isn’t so bad!” Raising the stakes “And with horror experiences, they get a range of emotions most games don’t give them. If pain makes you feel alive, then horror is the closest thing without having to be in actual physical pain. “I think players want emotions,” he adds. If a game makes you believe in its universe, than the horror becomes concrete. “For me, the difference is that those mediums make you feel scared, while a game actually makes you scared. Thomas Grip on gaming’s horror revolution Outlast 2 interview: ‘The screams were really satisfying’ Philippe Morin, the co-creator of grisly insane asylum ordeal Outlast, believes horror games have an even more compelling allure than frightening films and literature. But these recent games are purer, making them better at the horror needs we humans seem to have.” Amnesia: The Dark Descent has proven an influential indie success “Previously, most gaming horror has been layered on top of another type of game (such as shooters). Instead the horror itself is what make the game engaging to play. “What makes this special is that…there is no standard gameplay that underlies the experience.
“The recent rise in popularity has come from a quite particular genre, one that I like to call the ‘horror simulator’,” he explains. But he also argues that game developers have become better at crafting raw fear experiences. He believes the deeply immersive qualities of horror games and their unusual emphasis on narrative prove fulfilling.
PEOPLE PLAY HORROR GAMES IN MINECRAFT PC
Thomas Grip is the creative director of Frictional Games, a studio famed for its terrifying, influential hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and last year’s existentially disturbing SOMA.Īmnesia: The Dark Descent, often credited with inspiring the recent boom in pure horror games, has sold more than 2 million copies on PC alone since its release in 2010.Ī PlayStation 4 collection has just been announced. The developers behind some of gaming’s most successful modern horror titles have their own theories. “This is especially true for young people who are just learning to master their emotional responses and social rules around looking tough or detached.” ‘If pain makes you feel alive, then horror is the closest thing’ “There’s some research to suggest that the appeal of horror is that it gives you a chance to show off,” Madigan notes. This may be driving the popularity of horror gaming even more in the age of YouTube where the ‘Let’s Play phenomenon’ has seen streaming of scary video games amass jaw-dropping numbers of uploads and views online.
“There’s the school of thought that we do scary stuff to look tough and cool to members of the opposite sex, and other peers.” His first Outlast gameplay video has more than 16 million views. YouTube personality PewDiePie surged to popularity largely as a result of his playthroughs of horror games.