The one main difference between other genres and horror games is that we aren’t scared for players in horror games, we’re scared with them. How real these psychological principles have become areal components to these games—particularly fear responses, anticipation, and subconscious cues—and the terror behind these games would lose a great deal of its effectiveness. This article focuses on what it is that the horror games do to generate this tension, or else hopefully put into words how it is that horror games manipulate psychology to make you afraid.
Indulging in Horror as Genre with the fear
Fear is the base of horror games. To know which psychological schemata calls up fear responses in the players, developers need to know… In this article, we take a look at some important psychological propositions about playing horror games.
1. The Fight-or-Flight Response
Scary horror games make us scared because it puts the brain into it’s own primal fight or flight response. Foremost among horror game genres is one that requires the player to traverse, or, more often, avoid terrifying environments, confront malevolent opposition, or encounter supernatural terror: As a result, the world becomes a highly anxious place.
2. Ambiguity and the Unknown
Fear of the unknown is the human brain. Now this is used by horror games: they tell some of what they know and fill their environment with uncertainty. In situations, players are placed in areas in which they cannot see what comes next nor what is dangerous.
Psychological Tools And Horror Games Used In
Typical psychological tactics these games use to make you feel uncomfortable and on edge include controlling the players perceptions and making them feel uneasy, as well as controlling it so the game feels more terrifying.
1. Sound Design and Audio Cues
One of the best tools that horror games have is sound design. Human brains are tightly responsive to auditory stimuli in threatening environments.
Silence: Silence is a powerful tool. There is no sound, leaving players crouching and tense, with their hold on the world cinched tighter and tighter as there is a lack of sound that their ears might hear.
2. Darkness and Visual Distortion was all it was
With horror games becoming one of the many psychological triggers for fear of the dark, they have been used many time previously, albeit with the players in dark rooms or mostly dark spaces. Resident Evil 7 or Dead by Daylight are exactly the sort of games where you’re navigating things you can’t exactly see, all with your peripheral vision.
Visual Distortion: The trick of most horror games is to throw off the player’s sense of balance with reality: blurry eyes, flickering lights, belligerent graphical effects and so on. It subtracts sense of control from the player and it is part of a pretty scary kind of experience.
Psychological Concepts in the Power of Horror Games
Certain central psychological ideas are used to exploit their players’ emotions in horror games. So then let us look at some of these key concepts that create the fear factor.
1. The Uncanny Valley
People in the uncanny valley describe a psychological phenomenon where people grow uncomfortable with things that are almost human, but not.
Example: Specifically Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill where some grotesquely and distorted humanoid creatures with fears that could be said to be unsettling and creepy. When put together, human traits distorted, familiar, but still uncomfortable are most psychologically scary.
2. Fear of Death and Cognitive Dissonance
Fear of Death: The hall mark of horror games is death or near death experience and it leads to fear of dying. This is especially true in games such as Dead Space, where players are locked in an endless struggle against a never relenting set of threats, all too similar to the (very real) fact that humans can fall.
Future Horrors in the Psychology of Games
Technology will only go so far, and so will horror games, getting more and more psychological, stretching your nerves of fear even more.
VR Enhancing Fear: Already, VR horror games like Resident Evil 7 have demonstrated that this kind of experience is possible. In a very realistic world VR could take place, players could envision themselves in this terrifying world.
Conclusion
Horror games can be very dependent on the psychology if it’s good enough/sucked into and scary enough. The horror games are going to develop further still within the technologic, but I believe that they will become more psychologically interesting, in that they will continue to offer the players more and more fear and engrossment.