Recently myself and a fellow class mate, Hollie Lowry, had a night of playing horror survival video games in order to figure out exactly why people get scared of playing video games.
Before we started we set up various cameras around the bedroom where the experiment would be taking place and made sure that there were no technical problems. Then it was onto the filming itself.
We began by playing Silent Hill: Homecoming, a game in which the main character must fight through a world riddled with hellbent creatures in order to try and find his lost younger brother. The game starts off in an abandoned hospital after the main character is supposedly injured in the war he was fighting in.
All the time we were playing this there was an overpowering sense of dread as we turned each corner, always expecting monsters to jump out on us. The who game is very dingy and dark, using extremely restricted vision, only allowing the character to use a flash light to make his way through the hospital.
The next game we played was F.E.A.R. 2. Although this game was arguably more 'brighter' than Silent Hill, it still featured very similar tactics to scare such as sudden noises, rapid changes in lighting and the creeping up of enemies on an unsuspecting player.
Even though the night of playing games was fun we also learned quite a lot about the reoccurring elements that build up a horror game and what exactly it is about these elements that we found to be scary. The commentary of the two of us playing the games explains why we found certain things scary and in what way these things could be changed for the better or worse.
I'll definitely be writing about this experience in the personal assessment side of my dissertation as the whole night proved to be extremely valuable to both me and Hollie.
The next thing that I have to do is have my own film night and report on the same similar elements used to induce a scare.
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