Fear means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

For some, the anxiety that comes with interacting with anyone else is fear incarnate

My long awaited return to Silent Hill has unfortunately not been quite as grand of an occurence as I would hope that it would be, for a multitude of reasons. I think it’s worth it to mention, with perhaps a little more emphatic explicitness than I usually put forth, that it has nothing to do with the quality of the Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R) itself: Bloober Team have done a great job of readdressing a classic experience, and certainly done it justice thus far. I definitely felt the need to say that from the jump, as I have a feeling that for some, I am not quite specific enough in my address of whether or not I like I certain game, and without trying to do a takesy-backsy about the SH2R, my enjoyment remains thusly. I’m always more interested in what’s under the hood of what makes a game tick, however, so good to me might be more akin to engaging, not necessarily “fun”, per se, which is a hard concept for some people to wrap their brain around.

I think immersion plays a big factor in my mind, of how one divines intent in the matter of intentionality involving game design, what the developers were going for, how far they went in creating the kind of experience they were trying to express, etc. I went on at some lengths specifically about this with a number of my Silksong articles, and while I have been under the impression of these notions for sometime, Silksong did an excellent job of bringing into focus what I meant, in terms of games not necessarily bring designed as “fun”, first and foremost. This observation definitely relates to the SH2R, as it does with much of survival horror as a genre, and is another easy way to bring to light the semantics of which I speak.

I feel as if bringing attention to this might be slight overkill? But whenever I consider how I detail, what is essentially the notion “games aren’t necessarily suppose to be fun first”, most certainly makes a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of survival horror, very much in borrowing from the idea of “non-traditional fun,” associated with going to a haunted house ride, for example. The obvious point is that it is a simulation of a haunted house: there are no actual ghosts, ghouls, monsters etc, and you’re never in any actual danger of being hurt or maimed (realistically speaking). Part of the “social contract”, as it were, involves on some level, you playing the part of hapless wanderer or some clueless shoot-mark, just waiting to be scared shitless by some otherworldly entity who’s in reality just some dude with a mask. Not only would it likely come off as disruptive, or a mood killer, or possibly even rude if you went through the entire experience without any reaction, but reacted in a way that was antithetical to the experience, like being literally violent, or derogatory towards others, maybe even just going behind the scenes where you weren’t suppose to, you would be breaking the immersion, and ruining the entire experience in the process. I haven’t even discussed people who suffer from legitimate conditions like anxiety, which in and of itself makes every outside trip a haunted house experience, with anxiety itself acting as if always being haunted by the idea of socially motivated contractual obliation.

Obviously, a video game is slightly different, as one is in the comfort of their own home, away from people etc, but a lot of the same logic goes into it. And as a reexamination of the non-traditional fun factor involved, I know there are some people out there who do enjoy being scared, terrified, exposed to horror elements, gore and unsettling ideas, but I would contest it’s not necessarily like a normalized concept of what most people would think of as fun.

In maybe what is a slightly weird comparison (maybe not though), we could take hiking for example. Hikes can be enjoyable, engaging and maybe satisfying on some level, but probably not fun in a super basic sense. With survival horror viewed through the same lens, it all starts to make a lot more sense in terms of how one is engaged, but not necessarily overtaken by the basice stipulation of fun.

There is of course another snag to this whole endeavor, one involving the recognition of the work put in, even if not through the feelings of visceral affect due to familiarity to the craft. That idea is predicated upon the notion (and also contrast) of people who are maybe are not as skilled at games, and therefore don’t know the basics, so are then thrown off in really not knowing what to expect, heightening a sense of fear, as they are unfamiliar with things like loading zones, or monster closets, or trigger spawns, or hit box detection, or stun animations etc. Knowing some of these things (and more); the tools of the trade, the tricks of game design, make it even harder for a more experienced vet to be kept on their toes, cause even if they’ve never played the game before, based on design tropes, visual tells, familiarity with design, they already know the limitations of the virtual reality they are dealing with, and basically know what’s coming, in some sense. So, the idea of the immersive factor is still recognized, even if it is much harder to be felt.

Quite honestly, this was not really the article I initially wanted to write, as I had a couple of other ideas, both involving a deeper detailing of both the design machinations of non-traditional interpretations of fun in video games, and a further deconstruction of some of the metaphysics involved with the interactive player element worth investigating, but something was telling me to take a more basic, bare bones approach to the nitty gritty today. We will get to juicier stuff on our next go around, time allowing.

-Pashford