When Will Games Disturb Us? 242
Game Girl Advance brings up the subject of emotion in games, again, by going to the dark places. Jane talks about movies that are just plain uncomfortable to watch (shades of Donnie Darko), and wonders why when games will have the same effect. From the article: "Yet you could argue that Manhunt used a cheap trick - it set up the situation in order to exploit it for someone's idea of 'fun.' You could say that the developers did not mean to convey any message beyond entertainment. City of God was entertaining, in the broadest sense of the word, but it was also a portrait of hopelessness and a cycle that trapped its inhabitants; it was also in some ways a social history of gang violence in the slums from the seventies to the eighties. Manhunt does not have enough external references to be about anything other than what it is."
Q: "When Will Games Disturb Us? " (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry doom 3 was creepy as hell (bad pun) when i frirst started.. then again i did start at night with the lights off and hifi audio going - the random people screeming through the walls really got me
Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd have to disagree with that. While I'd agree with you that Doom3/etc. had little "nightmare" factor and quickly became predictable, there is one game that kept me having flashbacks for some time. The game was called "The Suffering", by Surreal/Midway.
Quick plot line: You have just been sentenced to death row for killing your wife and daughter in a crime you can not remember. Your first night in prison, all hell breaks loose, leaving you to fend for yourself and find a way off the prison island... The most effective scare-tatic of the game is that it combined lots of "flash-backs" of the horrific murder you supposedly commited, at RANDOM times, over your field of view. Could be in a slow game point when you have already cleared a room, or in the middle of a battle. Overlayed with the typical dark hallways, ominous sounds, and various "bad things waiting" of a typical game, it convincingly created an environment where you quite literally don't know what might happen next...
Re:Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:2)
Mix up a few drinks (I recommend Crown & Coke for the youngin's, and a good single malt over ice for the mature audience) and get your blood alcohol content up around where it is no longer legal to drive. Turn out the lights in your game room, use headphones instead of speakers. Isolate yourself from reality (both physically and mentally) and let the alcohol help remove the suspension of disbelief - Doom III scared the shit out of me and I have b
Re:Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:2)
I always thought Donnie Darko was more very very sad than disturbing. And actually, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was pretty disturbing - not at all the gore-fest that most people think it is before seeing it.
As far as an example of a truly disturbing movie, just one word...
Eraserhead
Re:Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:2)
Re:Not disturbing, just scary. (Score:2)
i guess we know what NeMon'ess got out of it: nothing. one could assume s/he takes everything at face value.
Re:Q: "When Will Games Disturb Us? " (Score:3, Insightful)
RE: Fear (Score:2)
A game called "F.E.A.R." should have been scary the WHOLE way through.
Re:Q: "When Will Games Disturb Us? " (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Q: "When Will Games Disturb Us? " (Score:2, Interesting)
H.P. Lovecraft (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to understand the difference between elemental horror and the fun-house shocks of Doom there is no better place to begin than with H.P. Lovecraft: Tales [amazon.com], in The Library of America series.
Lovecraft's best effects are achieved through suggestion.
You never see anything clearly or fully but you are
Re:H.P. Lovecraft (Score:2, Funny)
Re:H.P. Lovecraft (Score:3, Insightful)
I recall one memorably scary map that starts off totally empty, and lets you explore the entire thing, poking and prodding equipment as you feel the urge... then when you've about decided everything is safe, or at least where some safe spots might be, bad things start happening. And it's set up so the monsters arrive randomly.
Games will disturb us when they cease to be games (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Less 'personal space.' Face it, every good gamer knows how to use every little bit of spa
Sorry, the Japanese got that beat by 12 years. (Score:2)
Actually, practically anything that the Japanese do that crosses sexual themes with games makes me want to put my head under a pillow and cry myself to sleep.
Also: Boong-Ga Boong-Ga. [wikipedia.org] Enjoy your new view of humanity.
F.E.A.R. (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't now? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a difference between Creepy and Disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, there's games out there with downright creepy premise, but they don't tackle such socially disturbing topics as movies because movies don't require that you project yourself as an active participant. The mental and emotional toll required to do that would, I think, force 99%+ of people to abandon such a game only a few minutes in.
Re:There's a difference between Creepy and Disturb (Score:2)
Re:There's a difference between Creepy and Disturb (Score:2)
Or Custer's Revenge. (Score:2)
Re:They don't now? (Score:2, Interesting)
AVP (Score:2)
Disturbing games (Score:5, Insightful)
The first game that disturbed me in a good way was the original Doom... even low res, those weird textures that seemed to be based on skinned flesh was just creepy.
The first game that disturbed me in a bad way was the first Duke Nukem, where if you shot the strippers, they turned into piles of money. That's just mysogonystic. Yes, in theory the strippers were taken over by aliens, but that's wasn't the primary reason strippers were shootable. Someone on the team just wanted to be able to shoot woman (and let's face it, if you listen to the guys at the top of 3D Realms, they strike me as men with serious psych issues with women).
Even games like GTA didn't give me a sick feeling like that did. The violence in GTA is in the context of the world. The Duke Nukem thing felt like it was someone's sick fantasy that they thought was funny.
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
That'd have been funny, you'd shoot a RPG round and the stripper would continue standing there, as if nothing happened.
If there's something that often has a really weird feeling in games, it's artificial obstacles. Invulnerable people, floor elevations even a 5 year old kid could climb but you can't, stuff that should be movable/breakable but resists nuclear explosions, etc.
I'm still waiting for a FPS where you can blow up a door if you have good enough weap
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
I'm not remotely mysogynistic but I played DN3D without even giving that a second thought. I suppose if you look for offensive things you'll find them eventually.
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
But shooting men is just fine and dandy, right?
LOL. Way to miss the point, Mr. AC. Exactly where did I say that shooting men was OK? If you had male strippers that were shot in the same way, I'd say the same thing. It's all about context and purpose. DN3D basically made shooting sexually exploited women a joke, for no other reason than it was someone's fantasy to do so.
Re:Disturbing games (Score:4, Funny)
So in other words, you did shoot the stripper.
Re:Disturbing games (Score:3, Funny)
You're right. People here know the difference between a game and reality. You were probably looking for the 'man hating dykes who think everything is misogynistic' room. Its down the hall to your right.
Re:Disturbing games (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right. People here know the difference between a game and reality. You were probably looking for the 'man hating dykes who think everything is misogynistic' room. Its down the hall to your right.
Slashdot really is endlessly entertaining when these subjects come up. First of all, I'm male. Second of all, the point isn't that it wasn't reality (hence the reason I tried it to see what actually happens), it's the fact that someone put it in the game and thought it was funny that was disturbing. It wa
Re:Disturbing games (Score:3, Funny)
Lead Designer: Okay, we've got the video porn booths in the game, and they're just looking great. Any other ideas?
Programmer #1: Um....strippers you can pay to dance?
Lead Designer: Yeah! Let's do that!
Programmer #2: But what happens if they get shot?
Lead
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
I agree with you for the most part, except the designers did a lot of the programming as well at that point in history. I imagined the scenerio more as:
Adolescent-mentality Designer (thinking): Man, that stripper is hot. You know what'd be funny, is if you shoot the stripper and she screams while money goes flying. Bwahaha!
He implements it, and the other adolescent-mentality designers think it's a laugh riot as well. I suppose the disturbing thing is more the dehumanized mentality of the money flying th
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
'and I shot a stripper in Vegas, just to watch the cash fly...'
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2, Insightful)
What if the next time you're in a firefight, innocent bystanders aren't fortunate enough to be from the planet Krypton?
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
Re:Disturbing games (Score:2)
I can only assume you meant the first episode of Duke Nukem 3D.
Yeah, I meant to type the first 3D Duke Nukem, but I forgot the 3D part. :) Of course, we haven't actually SEEN a true-3D Duke Nukem yet...
What is disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The mood of a game is a result of its story-telling. If the underlying story isn't disturbing, putting more special effects isn't going to change anything, either. But if we assume there are books that can be disturbing to read, then certainly any game has at least as much access to present information as well as a book, so of course they can be, too.
Xenosaga (Score:2)
Ah, I can answer this one. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ah, I can answer this one. (Score:2)
November 30, 1996 (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it was the soft string instruments in the background.
The intro movie was pretty good too.
Re:November 30, 1996 (Score:3, Informative)
now that video was more disturbing than all the others..
Re:November 30, 1996 (Score:2)
Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Storyline is what disturbs. Let's get back to telling real stories.
Such as Infocom's Trinity [csd.uwo.ca] (about time travel and nuclear war), and A Mind Forever Voyaging [csd.uwo.ca]: Starts off with the mildly disturbing premise of what it's like to be a "brain in a vat, experiencing a computer simulation". Continues with the extremely disturbing unfolding of what happens when (because reality's just a computer simulation), the simulation extrapolates social/political consequences of what happens when one plugs in a certain Senator's "plan" to save the economy... and what happens to the brain in the vat when it starts to learn things about the "plan" that the dear Senator might not like.
AMFV was probably the most disturbing interactive fiction title that Infocom ever released. (Because we're arguably still playing it - you and me reading this - today.)
Re:Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen to that. Most of the posts so far , and a couple of previous [slashdot.org] slashdot stories [slashdot.org] on this topic, seem to equate "disturbing" with "gore", and offer as examples of "disturbing" games stuff like Doom, Silent Hill, System Shock 2 etc. While these games are certainly on par with horror-genre type films (I loved System Shock 2, btw), they don't capture the same context of disturbing as the example of the game Manhunt in TFA (ie. having the gamer assume the dual roles of murderer and detective).
A friend and I were having this same conversation last night, about films. A lot of people consider the Saw franchise scary, but for me, one of the most disturbing and suspenseful cinematic scenes recently was the scene in 2005's Crash where the little girl runs out to her father and apparently gets shot. I haven't seen City of God or Hotel Rwanda, which are films cited in the TFA, for the very reason that I think they would not be enjoyable viewing experiences.
The main question posed in the TFA is: If a videogame is no longer fun, we tend to stop playing. How can you make a videogame not "fun" and still compel players to go on? The hurdle that the gaming industry needs to overcome is the profit motive; games that aren't fun to play are unlikely to be purchased. The film industry, on the other hand, has had decades of avant-garde and independent films to condition audiences for challenging fare.
The parent poster here cited text adventure games as examples of the truly disturbing and challenging, and I heartily agree with that. I played Photopia [wikipedia.org], and that game left me pondering.
Games will have caught up to films when the field will have its equivalents of film directors Peter Greenaway, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan. There is one guy in gaming, John Tynes [johntynes.com], who is close. A couple of his pen-and-paper RPGs are downright nightmarish: Puppetland, and especially Powerkill. The games used to be available on Tyne's website, but don't seem to be there anymore, so here is a review [rpg.net].
Re:Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:2)
Re:Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:2)
I think people should play this game today - it's astonishing just how prescient the game was with it's emphasis on notions like asymmetric warfare. And playing it 20 years later it acquires a new kind of self-referentiality that wasn't there when it was originally published.
As far as I know, there hasn't been another game anything like it. I wond
Re:Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:2)
An IF game based on John Hersey's Hiroshima would probably be mighty disturbing.
I'm not sure a graphical game would be up to it. The player would probably become inured to the visuals pretty quickly, assuming the visuals
didn't start out in uncanny valley and hokey hollow.
Re:Back to the Future: Interactive Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stories won't do it (Score:2)
I have personally found the opposite. I have read books that I have found just so fundamentally emotionally disturbing that I'll never read them again, and probably couldn't be convinced to for even a large wad of cash. Predominantly fiction, but some very well-written non-fiction and memoirs as well; things that have just totally shaken me for days or weeks afterwards.
The more or less anonym
Perhaps not disturb, but a real effect. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a player of EVE-ONLINE. It didn't take long for the PvP aspects to have real effect. (Consequently, they have much less effect now; perhaps an end all be all definition of pirate depending on why?) Early, my heart beat would raise, adrenaline rush and all of a sudden I would get a real feeling of fight or flight mentality whenever a 'flasher' would warp in. That "oh shit" feeling, that even if kept silent is obvious to any onlookers. The effect is so strong, from myriad accounts not just my own, that I have often pondered if CCP will eventually have some sort of medical warning to those with heart conditions while starting to play the game. Not only does the game genuinely enduce physical and emotional characteristics of imminent hostile danger, but if you get to see your opponent pop you get a genuine sense of gain or power, if you die, you have a genuine sense of loss.
From these effects, they enduce real emotion as well. For example, hate mail or something within EVE known as 'smack talk', there has even been situations where the sentiment has been extended into real life threats and harrassment. Usually, becuase someone was attacked and killed by another pilot, but as involved as the game is, there are many ways to 'screw' over another player; such as undercutting their business stealing their customers or sabotaging political ties with alliances/corporations for your interest, or internal disloyalty and corp theft/betrayal.
This is all on account of game structure and mechanics. And, if this much can be enduced simply by interactive 'situational' analysis, then any other game could be developed to target a particular effect just by building up all the variables to justify the reaction whenever something happens. One of the chief causes for the seriousness of EVE, is that you do encur real loss and actual gain. If you die, you lose what you had and have to work towards acquiring it again, if you win, you may loot your victims wreckage for items valuable to you (that, and you get the killmail to further insult them by posting it on public forums.)
Re:Perhaps not disturb, but a real effect. (Score:2)
It certainly makes the game less accessible, but those who want a good experience can get it and create epic stories.
Another poster once written about an idea where there's near permadeath (as in stats are reset, items are partly inherited). Normal players would rather stay in the safe town and socialize / advance their non-fighting skills and only the brave would go outside and really fight the epic battles and increase
Re:Perhaps not disturb, but a real effect. (Score:2)
Electronic Arts (Score:3, Funny)
Whenever I think that EA games could eventually buyout and control ALL game development....
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
/catches breath
Man, that is truly disturbing.
Sometime in 1993 (Score:3, Interesting)
I dare you to find anyone that played those late at night that wasn't at least a little scared. The environment on those two games... especially with the sound was just creepy.
Even some of the Myst ones had some creepy moments in them. Not near those other two though.
XCOM (Score:3, Insightful)
The general ambience was just plain spooky, especially the night terror missions.
The Path of Now and Forever was plenty disturbing! (Score:2)
As you work through the game, meeting new alien species and trying to free Earth from its enslavement, you meet the two subspecies of Ur-Quan, locked in eternal war. The Kzer-Za want merely to dominate all species in the galaxy. The Kohr-Ah, on the other hand, will stop at nothing short of total exte
Re:The Path of Now and Forever was plenty disturbi (Score:2)
I'm a prude I guess... (Score:2)
Demographics: 35 year old male, married, 3 kids. Gamer since Atari 2600 and Asteroids, played most every FPS starting with Wolfenstien (downloaded from a BBS at 2400 baud) and currently (still) playing Call of Duty, so I don't mind killing virual bad guys, even realistic ones. I like Fakey horror films (Sean of the Dead), Monster horror films (Alien), but not Freaky horror films (Saw
I read that ... (Score:2)
Re:I read that ... (Score:2)
Silent Hill, anyone? (warning: spoilers) (Score:2)
This isn't like GTA because you really get to empathize with the characters and get into their minds. And then, wham! You're a murderer.
Those games are really screwed up. If you want my advice, don't play them and go to sleep afterwards.
It already did... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It already did... (Score:2)
Same.
I can't say that I genuinely enjoyed it either, but I feel like I grew somehow for having played it. I don't think anyone could pull off a whole video game like that, but they might be able to sneak in pieces of it like in MoH:AA.
One idea (Score:2, Interesting)
I've yet to see a game that presents an undefeatable boss. The idea being how long you survive IS the game. The environment could be anything but you could slowly ramp up the pace and create traps that would confound the player
Re:One idea (Score:2)
Re:One idea (Score:2)
Re:One idea (Score:2)
Answered 24 years ago. (Score:4, Funny)
Quake 4 (Score:5, Interesting)
And it doesn't stop there. The various body parts acting as part of the machinery are everywhere, complete with vaguely humanoid pumping noises. Some of the bodies are missing most of their limbs, others are fairly complete but are attached in cruciform positions and writhing in response to various stimuli.
And Quake 4 is not the only one out there in that genre. System Shock 2 (especially with the enhanced graphics mods) gets right inside your psyche and keeps hitting. To say that there are no disturbing games out there either indicates that the reviewer hasn't played many games or is remarkably blind to the horrors around.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
System Shock 2 enhanced. (Score:3, Informative)
If you want the original commercial versions, you are probably going to be bin diving at whatever game stores there are near you, raiding Ebay or cruising the darker side of the web.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Sanitarium (Score:4, Insightful)
It's disturbing not because it tries to shock you with weird stuff, which it certainly tries to do and doesn't do that well. It's disturbing because as you play through the fantasy worlds you get the impression that something very wrong is going on in the real world that you are powerless to stop.
The answer to how to keep players playing disturbing games is so simple that it's sort of depressing that people get mystified and ask if it is even possible in games. Give the game a compelling story, what they are going through now may be disturbing but maybe the characters and scenario will develop. You could also, like, make the game fun to play. Worth a try.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That feeling of guilt... (Score:2)
Well it's quite hard playing as dark side when the game plot drives you against the dark side..... (at least in Jedi Knight)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:That feeling of guilt... (Score:2)
And now that you're beyond your first time, how easy will it be when you are called upon to be psychotic in real life?
Careful which direction you allow your neurons to fire in. The pathways in your brain grow wider and more permanent with use. --And they don't differentiate between virtual and real. That's why computer simulators are used by flight schools and the military. They work.
-FL
Re: (Score:2)
Creepy is not disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
Storylines that pull back the fascia of society to reveal ugly truths about the nature of man are disturbing. Hotel Rwanda is disturbing. A love story like Oasis [imdb.com] where one social outcast rapes another and yet the two are able to develop a relationship that is 100x more healthy than the "normal" society around them is disturbing (just read the comment from the woman who naively rented the movie for valentines day).
The point of the articles is that movies like those are the level of story-telling to which video games should be striving. What the article doesn't really discuss is just how to motivate someone to continue interacting with a game when the story hits them with such a huge emotional wallop. When it happens in a movie, the audience can just sit there, stunned into immobility (and often tears) and let the experience flow over them. But that's not what games are about. Perhaps it is just not possible for a game to evoke the kind of strong, personally felt, emotions that a movie or book can. Or perhaps the genius who will figure out a way just hasn't been born yet.
Re:Creepy is not disturbing (Score:2)
You say that people only stay in movies after being disturbed because they are stunned. I acutally walked out of a movie once after being disturbed, but that might just be because I'm weird. Once something hooks you emotionally at that level you are more likely to want to find out more about it, I walked back into that movie then bought it on dvd. I've certainly read disturbing books that I haven't given up on.
Re:Creepy is not disturbing (Score:2)
People arn't forced to sit through something disturbing that they don't want to see in a movie any more than in a book or a game. It might have an effect on you but that doesn't mean that you can't engage with it any more.
I recently read Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham. Parts or it were disturbing, especially in the first story. I neither gave up on or read it one session, there was no sense that I just had to passively sit back and wait for it to end. It was just
Re:Creepy is not disturbing (Score:2)
Re:Creepy is not disturbing (Score:2)
Donnie Darko? (Score:2)
Eternal Darkness on Gamecube (Score:3, Insightful)
For those who aren't familiar (shame on you) the game used so-called "Insanity Effects" which were basically designed to make your character think they were going crazy - except they also applied to you. You would walk into a room and be immediately decapitated. Then the screen would flash, your character would scream a bit, and you could continue playing the game. Other effects included rooms appearing completely upside-down, invincible monsters, and ever-present whispering that really freaked me out the first time I heard some of them.
ED was fantastic at really working the psyche and trying to make a real "Horror" game that didn't involve things randomly jumping through windows at you [penny-arcade.com].
Lara Croft... (Score:2)
Fatal Frame (Score:2)
first time I played it I was using a stereo to play it so every sound was amplified, I still remember seeing one of the ghosts and went to pull up the camera only to have it staring me right in the face when I did. That scared the shit out of me cause it was right there.
The other time was near the end of the game where there was a ghost you could faighntly hear saying "My eyes" well when you went down into this pit she was suddenly RIGHT behind you and screami
Plot turns when not pre-spoilt (Score:2)
UK movie critic Jim McClellan wrote about his wife watching Terminator 2 without having seen any trailer or advance warning. She thought Arine was still the baddie, and saw the scene at the mall (with the flowers and the shotgun and the second Terminator) the way it had been scripted: as a surprise, and as a revealing of a key plot element: namely that Arnie was this time a good "guy".
I experienced the same surprise in Half L
Disturbing games or games with disturbing moments? (Score:2)
Example: Alone in the Dark 1/2 and the original Resident Evil had (for me) some scary moments. Silent Hill 2 (which I never finished) and System Shock 2 disturbed me.
Scare as in horror is fleeting. Sure, you'll remember the dogs leaping suddenly from the windows in RE1, but it was a brief fleeting moment. Where as the whole premise and executition of Silent Hill 2 was just disturbing. The idea and it's
Re:Serial Killer: The Game (Score:2)
What's Rockstar's phone number again?
Re:Serial Killer: The Game (Score:3, Insightful)
Stalking people, then killing them, then worrying about the evidence, add some shootouts and narrow escapes from the cops... that'd be great! You could have a voice in your head telling you which victims to find ("Balding man between the ages of 30 and 45", "
Re:Serial Killer: The Game (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:game connotates the frame of reference (Score:2)
Chicken-or-egg situation (Score:2)
I also think few games have managed to capture a feeling beyond toying with our survival instincts.
Re:Role-playing (Score:2)
Re:Role-playing (Score:2)
I switched an entire friend-group because I got to see how people really functioned on the inside.
Torturing creatures in game is like the adult version of watching kids pull the legs off grasshoppers. Unsettling and infuriating, and it made sense of much of their normal social behavior which I'd always found somewhat baffling and painful to be around.
No more an never again.
As for video games. . . If it disturbs me in the wrong way, I quit playing. I don't lik
Re:not to karma whore, but... (Score:2)
At the time of its release, I was working with video game reviews.
Undying was a title I had definitely been waiting for, so when I got home from a business trip late at night and found our review copy of it in the mail, I started installing it.
First of all, the installer set up the mood completely (even though I normally hate installers with background music and invasive interfaces), but when I started playing the game it freaked me out.
Ten minutes into the game, I had to quit, t
Re:God of War (Score:2)
Re:I can think of one.. (Score:2)