Symbolism 101 - How Horror Games Instill Fear - Extra Credits

[Music] all right it's our favorite holiday Halloween that exciting time of year when everyone takes on a roll and indulges in the Fantastic it's the one time of year where we unabashedly flirt with our subconscious and celebrate together the things we would normally find abnormal or bizarre so of course we got to do an episode about it unfortunately it seems we already did an episode on Survival horror so that's out we've been racking our brains to figure out another good Halloween topic we considered an episode on Lovecraft in games but quickly abandoned that idea we briefly considered doing an episode on propaganda games which are the type of games James finds scariest we even thought about trying to untangle the Silent Hill methos but nah in the end we were left with this symbolism H well it'll do today we're going to take 6 minutes to discuss what many people devote their lifetimes to studying if you happen to decide this stuff is really interesting then we strongly

reading works by Carl Young and Joseph Campbell because we are about to butcher their ideas for you over the next several minutes well let's get to it shall we the basic idea is that there are certain fundamental symbols that are deeply ingrained in us on a subconscious level some of these symbols are personal in that they relate only to the person viewing them and some of them are Universal and that we all have a basic reaction to them for those of you who are familiar with Young's ideas I know we're really cutting corners and mixing terms around here please don't hate us for the most basic example of a universal symbol let's take the color red red is the color of of Fire and Blood almost every culture uses it as a warning or a cautionary color we see this used all the time in games enemies names are highlighted and red our targeting reticles turn red when over a hostile Target our characters or screens flash red when we take damage our interfaces turn red when an enemy locks onto us and you get the idea now we could just as easily choose green or light blue to be the warning color in games but this is almost Unthinkable to most of us try and picture your character flashing blue or green when taking damage imagine seeing enemy names in the color of spring grass wouldn't

really make sense would it okay so you can see how at least some of this psychology simple stuff has value when designing games right sweet now we can start talking horror we're going to look at Three core psychological Concepts in regards to game design the self The Uncanny and the other let's start with the self we all have a very firmly rooted subconscious understanding of ourselves of what is us and what is not us there are three parts to each of us what we believe ourselves to be what we are and what we show the world these three things constitute the the space between what we believe to be and what we are is a terrifying place it is referred to in yian psychology as the shadow in story-driven games this is a great place for creating fear or a cloying sense of discomfort take Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 this character was a strict shadow of the main character it was the manifestation of his self-denial frustration and violent nature in fact look at all of Silent Hill 2 every enemy and every character represents an aspect of the main character psyche but this is hardly the only way that we can use symbols to help us convey narrative or create fear in

the player see we all have numerous root areas that leave us uncomfortable because they represent our baser nature things which we keep hidden or are ashamed of and have left unresolved when you couple these things with a fear for the flesh a fear for life itself you get horror created to be explored in a cathartic and meaningful way sexuality parental issues bigotry our own insignificance these are all issues that when coupled with the most basic fear the fear for Life leave us petrified not only at the moment that life is threatened that monster pops out moment but continuously in a way that's harder to shake you have to be careful not to be too heavy-handed in applying this type of horror to your game it takes subtlety but if you really look closely at a lot of your favorite works of horror you'll often find that they deal with the character's secret shame or even more creepy the viewer secret shame the best horror designers use these principles in character enemy and even World design if one is consistent with their application one can convey a great deal of death to the player without having to resort to a single written line but that's enough about the self

let's move on to one of the other great psychological principles of horror The Uncanny The Uncanny is a space where things are just slightly off it is the realm of the unfamiliar familiar we tend to be scared by things which are totally foreign to us but oddly enough we tend to be just as frightened or at least unsettled by things which are similar to us but not completely have you ever felt unsettled around a gibbering transient or an amputee even though you knew they were harmless it's hard to admit it but most of us have at some point that feeling is the The Uncanny it happens most often with human beings because we're all hardwired to have a very specific well-established expectation for how a human being is supposed to look and act when those expectations aren't met perhaps it reminds us of how fragile we are perhaps we're forced to face the fact that our most basic understanding of the universe might be wrong whatever the case it leaves us unnerved some of the best examples of this are the works of David Lynch if you watch Twin Peaks or any of his films really you'll find that everything is just a little bit off so even though nothing frightening is happening the

viewer is left Disturbed unsettled perhaps even shaken and it's a feeling they carry with them even after they've turned off the TV deadly premonitions recently tried to capitalize on this principle but other games from Parasite Eve to max pain have used The Uncanny to surprising Effect The Uncanny allows the game designer to tell the player something subtle about the world and the character perceiving it it lets the developer ask you to try to understand what's wrong and why without simply telling you now moving on from The Uncanny let's look at the third major psychological element in horror the other we've received many emails asking why are Japanese horror games so much better than the ones we make here in the US well I will say that they have one huge Advantage they're utterly foreign to us as a western audience when we try to interpret things we can only do so through our own filter our own tools for processing information when we try to approach games from Japan especially the ones heavily rooted in Shinto mythology our frame of reference no longer applies the symbols we've been given by our culture become meaningless or take on strange and alien meanings our preconceived notions of what's normal

and acceptable break down and we simply have to accept the strange otherness of the world we're now in but we can never be truly comfortable doing so so are Japanese horror games just better I don't really know but many of them come to the Western audience with an element of otherness that is in and of itself unsettling of course this is not to say the Japanese hold exclusive rights to this element I mean with enough thought and diligence Western developers can capture that same unsettling otherness in their own games Japan just has it a little easier they don't have to make up anything new to get that effect I cannot believe we made it through all that for now I hope that's enough food for thought to keep you busy these few days before Halloween we'll probably do a broader episode on symbolism in games eventually you know you could probably make a really dangerous drinking game out of the number of times we say that well that's all we got for today go have an awesome Halloween [Music]

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