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- Mar 4, 2015
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Half a year ago I wrote my bachelor thesis on the topic of scaring people and recently i decided to translate it into English. After some back and forth I decided to upload it to various websites so it might get useful for other people. I could probably attempt to publish it properly, but that would likely be not worth the effort. Considering that a lot of people are using the Rpg Maker for creating horror games, some might find it useful.
I attempted to create building blocks for designing horror experiences by looking at typical elements used in horror media and at the psychological mechanisms that make them scary. Additionally I also searched for various ways of staging situations to increase their scariness.
Staging horror scenarios
I found 4 mechanisms to increase anxiety:
Fear Conditioning; Making the player associate a specific harmless thing with a genuine threat by making them appear at the same time, for example motor sound + chainsaw man = player associates motor sound with getting attacked by a chainsaw and feels anxious whenever hearing that sound.
Model Learning; showing a sympathetic character be visibly afraid to make the player copy those character's emotions (similar to how people get infected by fear during a panic).
Sensitization; repeatedly confronting the player with hints that a threat is near without making the threat appear to make the player anxious and stressed, this makes reactions to any following jump scare much more intense.
Losing Control; Taking away control from the player in a dangerous situation by restricting or disabling game mechanics, for example by making a flashlight run out of energy or get broken, or making an enemy appear that cannot be fought by using the methods that worked on the enemies before (or one that reacts/acts differently).
Then there is also Habituation, the player becoming less afraid when getting used to a scary situation - this has to be avoided by using scary things sparingly and changing things from time to time.
Nonlinear music; Using that typical horror music that feels uncomfortable
Designing landscapes for maximizing anxiety; the ideal example would be the other world from Silent Hill - the more inhospitable a landscape looks, the more it makes the player feel uneasy (bad visibility, lack of healthy animals and plants that can be eaten, lack of drinkable water, etc.)
Designing monsters; the most important thing here is to make them look as dangerous as possible, either by looking dangerous (by being big, appearing in large numbers, possessing deadly abilities, etc.), behaving dangerously (for example serial killers) or living surrounded by things that imply danger (a nice appearing creature, but surrounded by corpses)
Building Blocks
During my search for elements that can be used to construct scary situations, I found:
the classical jump scares (often overused, but effective as it is hard not to react to them), pointed shapes (monsters with sharp teeth, sharp knifes as weapons of killers, plants with big thorns), heights, darkness (we aren't nocturnal animals), being locked-in, deep water, impurity (infested looking monsters and landscapes), unrecognizable faces, separation (losing friendly characters or getting expelled from a group), strangers (humans that seem hostile and have incompatible customs and mores, like the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the villagers in Resident Evil 4) predators (tigers, wolves, dogs, etc.), snakes and insects/spiders.
There are probably more, but those are elements that I found often in movies or games and where I also found scientific explanations why they are either universally or at least very often feared.
There's also a concept for a short stereotypical horror game that uses most of those elements in my paper as some sort of example of how to use those things.
I attempted to create building blocks for designing horror experiences by looking at typical elements used in horror media and at the psychological mechanisms that make them scary. Additionally I also searched for various ways of staging situations to increase their scariness.
Staging horror scenarios
I found 4 mechanisms to increase anxiety:
Fear Conditioning; Making the player associate a specific harmless thing with a genuine threat by making them appear at the same time, for example motor sound + chainsaw man = player associates motor sound with getting attacked by a chainsaw and feels anxious whenever hearing that sound.
Model Learning; showing a sympathetic character be visibly afraid to make the player copy those character's emotions (similar to how people get infected by fear during a panic).
Sensitization; repeatedly confronting the player with hints that a threat is near without making the threat appear to make the player anxious and stressed, this makes reactions to any following jump scare much more intense.
Losing Control; Taking away control from the player in a dangerous situation by restricting or disabling game mechanics, for example by making a flashlight run out of energy or get broken, or making an enemy appear that cannot be fought by using the methods that worked on the enemies before (or one that reacts/acts differently).
Then there is also Habituation, the player becoming less afraid when getting used to a scary situation - this has to be avoided by using scary things sparingly and changing things from time to time.
Nonlinear music; Using that typical horror music that feels uncomfortable
Designing landscapes for maximizing anxiety; the ideal example would be the other world from Silent Hill - the more inhospitable a landscape looks, the more it makes the player feel uneasy (bad visibility, lack of healthy animals and plants that can be eaten, lack of drinkable water, etc.)
Designing monsters; the most important thing here is to make them look as dangerous as possible, either by looking dangerous (by being big, appearing in large numbers, possessing deadly abilities, etc.), behaving dangerously (for example serial killers) or living surrounded by things that imply danger (a nice appearing creature, but surrounded by corpses)
Building Blocks
During my search for elements that can be used to construct scary situations, I found:
the classical jump scares (often overused, but effective as it is hard not to react to them), pointed shapes (monsters with sharp teeth, sharp knifes as weapons of killers, plants with big thorns), heights, darkness (we aren't nocturnal animals), being locked-in, deep water, impurity (infested looking monsters and landscapes), unrecognizable faces, separation (losing friendly characters or getting expelled from a group), strangers (humans that seem hostile and have incompatible customs and mores, like the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the villagers in Resident Evil 4) predators (tigers, wolves, dogs, etc.), snakes and insects/spiders.
There are probably more, but those are elements that I found often in movies or games and where I also found scientific explanations why they are either universally or at least very often feared.
There's also a concept for a short stereotypical horror game that uses most of those elements in my paper as some sort of example of how to use those things.
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