Rutgers University-Camden

Metanarrative Horror: The Existential Dread of Choice

This paper, by Claire Stricklin and Samuel Muscente of Rutgers University-Camden, argues that the opposing design paradigms of "sandbox" and "railroad" games each carry a distinct existential horror, and that these horrors can be deliberately exploited as a resource for self-reflexive horror design.

• The paper argues that the sandbox and railroad game paradigms each carry a distinct existential horror: the sandbox becomes aimless wandering through infinite choice, while the railroad becomes restrictive control that strips players of meaningful agency.
• Its central claim is that both extremes can be deliberately exploited as a resource for self-reflexive horror design, through alternating cycles of freedom and restriction.
• Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is analysed as a railroad exemplar, where binary choices and metanarrative framing make the player feel as pressured as the protagonist, and where a single decision is overridden regardless of input, revealing the apparent meaninglessness of choice.