Culture Clash

(August 2007)

World of Fearcraft

Leftovers: last month's column came out the very day Microsoft issued its 360 warranty extension, and though my article had nothing to do with it, I allowed myself a few sunlit days of belief that we were entering a new era of executive maturity and common sense. Then Jack Tretton compared the 360 to food poisoning, David Reeves claimed that cutting the price of the PS3 would upset customers, and Chris Lewis said that the Red Ring fiasco is a selling point for the Xbox.

A recent article frets that all horror movies are devolving into torture porn, a subgenre until recently more associated with underground Japanese films than mainstream western cinema. This is alarmism – it happens perennially – some had the same concern about slasher films, the largest and best-understood horror subgenre, in the 1970s and 80s. Torture porn is just waxing right now for some mysterious cultural reason. It, like a number of subgenres of “horror,” is actually varied grotesquerie; these are easy to pull off, the lazy man's answer to horror filmmaking. Evoking true fear in an audience is not so effortless in movies, books or theatre.

It's not a cinch in games, but it's less of a challenge. Because games mistakenly equate genre with mechanics (hint: first person shooter is not a genre, any more than hardcover is) you don't really see “drama” or “comedy” on the list. But you'll see horror, right up there at the top – one of gaming's more popular “genres,” and one of the few that actually describes literary as well as play style. Horror games have undergone enormous growth since their early beginnings. Indeed, horror gaming has already defined a complex web of subgenres, and plenty more lurk in the darkness, unexplored.

As in cinema, many of these subgenres aren't really trying to terrify, but nonetheless fit under the umbrella. In the vein of the torture porn argument, some detractors try to equate videogames with splatterware, Manhunt 2 being the current poster child. This is light years from the truth; horror in games is lush and varied. It is the cruelty of normal human children, not gore or looming supernature (and certainly not semi-erotic lesbian imagery, as claimed by some) that powers the potent-if-clunky Rule of Rose. Fatal Frame terrorizes much more with its nightmarish imagery than the occasional spots of blood. The agonizing, Jenga-like edifice of tension upon tension in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth far outweighs the game's admittedly generous entrail quotient . Horror gaming has its share of gore, because properly used, gore is scary. But horror is most horrifying when you fear not for you life, but for your sanity. It's both unfair and ignorant to suggest that gore is the engine that drives interactive fear. In really well designed horror, that engine is dread.

I recall finding Thief 3's Shalebridge Cradle mission – which has almost no enemies at all – so difficult to play through that I delayed finishing the game for weeks. Acronymphiles F.E.A.R. and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. foster suspense with endless what's-around-the-corner situations, when more often than not, nothing's around the corner. Horror has a lot in common with sexual tension: both can build to a near-unbearable level, but once it's broken, it's inherently weaker than before. By the same token, though, it can't just escalate forever. The challenge is finding the balance. Impending doom is easier to manage when it's interactive, since players allow themselves to be participants in the amplification of their fear. I'm inclined to believe that we haven't yet seen the true pinnacle of fearcrafting in game development, and I'm very curious what's next.

Humanity's social condition is the stellar nursery of genre, and much can be learned about the current state of a culture by examining the popular art it's producing at one time or another. Disaster films, for example, are most common when a nation is at or preparing for war. Escapist action and teen comedy tend to reach their zenith during uneasy peace, such as that which existed during the Reagan years. But horror is present no matter what a culture is going through. Cinematic horror almost always allegorizes something else – slashers are fundamentalist morality tales, for example. Horror movies are usually about teaching you a lesson or reinforcing a cultural phobia. This is not the case in games, horror or otherwise. You're afraid of the little girl in F.E.A.R. because she's an evil little girl who melts people, not because she symbolizes Communism. Videogame narratives are almost never allegorical, which is something that should change in the future, as games continue to evolve as an art form, recognized even by developers as more than empty entertainment.

This brings up the inevitable censorship issue. Since games are still perceived as “for kids,” what place does horror, particularly gross horror, have? Well, ESRB and friends have been pretty universal in assigning mature-level ratings to horror games of all kinds, which would solve the problem if parents paid attention to the ratings. Meanwhile, hearken back to the cannibalism, incest, torture and bestiality found in children's fairy tales. It could be argued that attempting to protect children from these modern, interactive fables could actually be detrimental to their growth. Fear is more, much more, than just a sensation evoked by entertainment.