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6 hours ago
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Horror is so hot right now. There’s Obsession, Evil Dead Burn and Hokum in the cinema, Widow’s Bay, From and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen on TV, and, of course, a rotting smorgasbord of horror games including Resident Evil Requiem (pictured top) and Reanimal, soon to be joined by Silent Hill: Townfall, Silver Pines and Dreadmoor. We’re also seeing weird cross-pollinations, with horror movie studio Blumhouse making games, while games themselves become horror films and the whole backrooms genre infects every medium it touches.
So it was fascinating to attend last week’s horror and gaming conference at Falmouth University, in Cornwall: a gathering of students, researchers and lecturers, all engaged in the academic study of horror games. There were brilliant talks on zombies and posthumanism, the gothic in games, and the role of monstrous little girls in survival horror (there are a lot of them!). Subjects as diverse as masculine fragility, disability and ageing came up; Will Doyle, creative director at Supermassive Games, gave a great keynote on the art of creating horror in games using tools such as revulsion, spatial alienation and the human instinct of apophenia. I learned a lot about theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Mark Fisher, and about the technical similarities between indie horror games and film noir (for example, the use of darkness and creative camera techniques to “hide” budget restrictions). It was incredible fun.
One theme was the way horror tropes such as zombies, the apocalypse and the supernatural are continually reframed to remain current. What’s particularly relevant about horror games right now is how they explore the feeling of being helpless observers – and victims – of multiplying global crises. “Agency is a big theoretical concept that permeates cultural studies – thinking about agency as our capacity to take action, as an illusion of control or the way in which control is framed and negotiated,” says Poppy Wilde, senior lecturer in media and communication at Birmingham City University, who spoke at the event. “What’s interesting about video games is questioning where the agency arises between the player and the game, or the character, or the settings, and how that all comes together. Horror video games often explicitly play with that idea of control and lack of control as being horrifying; they have a tension with the feeling or illusion of agency in terms of what your capabilities are and what they are not.” We certainly see this in titles such as Routine, and The Complex: Expedition, which constantly ask questions about the player’s role and ability to effect change.
Career stability, or lack of it, is also becoming a popular subject of horror. “The idea that the company you’re working for is not doing its best for you, is a theme in a number of contemporary horror games,” says Ewan Kirkland, a senior lecturer in critical studies at the University for the Creative Arts. “In Lethal Company, Five Nights at Freddy’s and Mouthwashing, there is this theme of the workplace being dangerous and your employer not really caring about your wellbeing, which is interesting given the times which we’re living in. Clearly video games are engaging with some quite weighty political issues.”
Is it important that academic work is being done on horror games? Hell, yes. It’s important for video games to be valued as a cultural medium, but it’s also important on a practical level, as the industry matures, to pass on ideas and information to new developers about how games work – not as computer programs, but as cultural, aesthetic and sociopolitical texts. It is also wild to talk about the link between tentacle porn and Baldur’s Gate 3, or Anthony Vidler’s theories of the “architectural uncanny” in relation to Raccoon City.
And it’s a life skill. Horror is a thriving cultural genre because it is, and always has been, a radical means of disassembling society’s problems, threats and terrors. We need to know what lurks in the cellar; we need to understand what the zombie wants and what it represents. We need to understand that no work of apocalyptic horror fiction was ever about some far distant future – it was always about now.
What to play
Keza has been playing Rhythm Paradise Groove, a strange little rhythm game that has you talking to aliens, bouncing apples off a bodybuilder’s biceps or launching frogs to the beat. Endearingly strange and simple, it’s a holdover from handheld gaming’s less complicated past. Unexpectedly, though, the multiplayer modes have been a huge hit with the family, especially the one where you all try to grab a slice of cake with perfect timing. She tells me: “We’ve gotten a couple of weeks’ entertainment out of a game that I thought would last a few days.”
Available on: Switch/Switch 2
Estimated playtime: a few minutes at a time, 10 hours cumulatively
What to read
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For more from Poppy Wilde, read this piece about what she terms the “response-ability” of players in post-apocalyptic games, zeroing in on My Friend Is a Raven, a short game from 2019 with four potential endings. And from Ewan Kirkland, this paper on Silent Hill and psychoanalysis.
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Following the latest round of brutal job cuts at Xbox, Id Software has stated that it still has the staff it needs to keep working on games and its Id Tech engine, despite losing half its staff. Id co-founder John Carmack has also spoken about the situation: “My ‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t ageing well.” Meanwhile, Bethesda staff are planning strike action to protest against the layoffs.
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The excellent Critical Distance, which curates video game writing online, has links to some thought-provoking articles on Sony’s recent announcement about ending physical game production for the PlayStation. There’s a personal story about games and poverty, and a piece on the value of retro gaming.
What to click
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Pokémon Go fans gather in Times Square to celebrate 10 years of game – video
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‘You never truly quit’: how RuneScape survived to 25 – and beyond
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Question Block
This one comes in from Nick, via email:
“My boys (11 and nine) have an hour of screen time per day, which they usually use on their basic PCs in the living room. We all played Minecraft together for a while, but they’ve moved on from that now. They also played Breath of the Wild and Pokémon Z-A, but my elder son in particular increasingly just wants to play Roblox.
I am aware of the risks on that platform, and have enabled parental controls, age restrictions, switched off chat etc. But the ‘brain-rot’ games he is playing are frankly rubbish – little more than fruit machines, where he is just clicking to spin and win ‘ultra-rare’ loot. [They have] no actual strategy, challenge or any other gameplay.
I know there is a rich world of engaging enjoyable games out there. What can I tempt him away from Roblox with? Either for the PC (which can’t cope with intensive graphics) or the Switch.”
This is tricky, because it’s the channel-hopping environment, rather than a particular game, that a lot of young Roblox fans find compulsive – sort of like a playable version of TikTok. There’s always another experience five seconds away. On Switch 2, consider Donkey Kong Bananza or Pokémon Pokopia, which have a lot of colour and variety to keep your sons engaged.
To get them back into Zelda-type experiences with a bit of a twist, try Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster or Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. On PC, there’s Palworld (which has a Pegi 12 rating, so check it out yourself first), Satisfactory, Minecraft Dungeons and Terraria, which combine elements of Minecraft and those Roblox mini-games but offer more structured and expansive gaming. For yet more Zelda vibes, try Mina the Hollower or Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter (Pegi 12, again), which a lot of people have named as a great introduction to more complex Japanese role-playing adventures.
Fellow readers, let us know if you have any recommendations for games or strategies to expose kids to new games.
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on [email protected].
