All language subtitles for TerrorBytes The Evolution of Horror Gaming 5

I think the truth is,
people enjoy being scared.

I mean, I think it's pretty simple.

I think we've just loved
the idea that you're here

and there's evil out there
and it’s trying to get in.

What are you going
to do about it?

I think the reason that
horror is so huge in games,

because I don't think there's any argument
about whether or not it is, it's massive.

I think it's because of
the immersive element.

I think it's because
people love to be scared.

It's very effective to
scare people in a game.

Horror video games aren't
quite like horror movies

because you're in them.
You're controlling the character

Your character, who you identify with,

you project into your character,
“this is me.”

And you enter a dark
room and can be scared.

You're feeling that fear.

You're looking behind you.
I mean, you're really.

you're inside of that world.

It's usually going for the fault lines.
You know, the most controversial

or scary taboo subjects.

I don't think it would be effective
horror if it didn't go for that.

“And it's hard to identify who's
going to turn out to be,

the Michael Cho or the Columbine.”

I think there was just a point
where people who don't play video

games kind of decided that
this being an interactive experience,

that you were just mowing down innocent
civilians, and that's what the game is about.

“Some experts warn this immersive,
almost lifelike experience

desensitizes people in a troubling way.”

It's strange because when
you think about it,

a lot of horror games,
you actually survive. You don't kill,

“you're engaged as the person who commits the
violence, not just someone who watches the violence.”

It's easy. It's not high brow.

It's low brow. It's messy,
it's grungy, it's an easy target.

“And also video games. I'm hearing
more and more people say the level of violence

on video games is really
shaping young people's thoughts.”

But, fuck ‘em.

“The whole fascinationation with
violence in video games is nothing

more than an adjunct to what's going
on in media forever I mean, you know?”

“This comic book describes a sexual
aberration so shocking that I couldn't mention”

“even the scientific term on television.”

“I think there ought to be a law against them.”

“Movie makers have gone to deplorable lengths.
in order to emphasize what they've done,”

“they have produced some ads
that are not only in questionable taste,”

“but are also downright
degrading to the whole industry.”

“The second game is Night Trap,
which is a game set in a sorority house.”

“The object is to keep hooded men
from hanging, the young woman from a hook,”

“or drilling their necks with a
tool designed to drain their blood.”

“Night Trap uses actual actors and achieves
an unprecedented level of realism.”

So when it comes to Night Trap
and all the problems that it had

with every new technology,
there's always fear.

Fear of the unknown, which is,
you know, very Lovecraftian.

People were seeing this
technology for the first time

and were thinking it had more
impact than a horror film would

because of its interactivity.

“Night trap, which adds a
new dimension of violence”

“specifically targeted against women,
is especially repugnant.”

“I find that so extremely offensive,
and the only word you can say is shame on you.”

“Small children bought this at Toys “R” Us
and he knows that as well as I do.”

“What it amounts to is pornography
being placed on, a CD-Rom technology.”

Wanna sell something to 16 year old boys?
Get it banned by Toys “R” Us.

You know. You can’t keep enough
of them in supply at the warehouse.

The danger arises when the subject
of the software is of a violent nature.

“Bob Keeshan made another excellent
point last week when he said that children

don't need violence to be entertained.
His show proved that for over 30 years”

“At the end of the hearings,
I walked up to Lieberman”

“and I said to him, ‘Senator, have you
ever actually played this game?’”

“And he said, I don't
have to. This is filth.”

“It is a sick, disgusting
video game. In my judgment.”

It's kind of baffling how
Night Trap was one of those games

that, was caught up
in the whole ordeal.

Mortal Kombat made sense.
There were head decapitations and hearts

being ripped out of bodies.

Night Trap I feel got
sucked into the controversy

almost completely by accident.

It's almost like they just needed
one more game to talk about.

So they just grabbed it.

And I feel like a lot of
it has to do with the fact

that was actual video footage that
they were using in that game.

“It was so new. It was so revolutionary
at the time that it first”

“came out, that it was ideal fodder
for somebody who wanted to use it”

“as, a political hand grenade.”

So a lot of these people
looked at this thing

and oh my goodness,
it's a real person.

And they're actually being attacked.
And we're selling this to children.

“I mean, how would you like to have
a teenage daughter go out on a date

with someone who's just watched
or played three hours of that game?”

“A guy from The New York
Times called me and he said,”

“‘we hear these terrible
things are happening.’”

“And I was like,
‘have you seen Night Trap?’”

“Look at all the pretty girls!”

If you actually look at
Night Trap and compare it to

something like Halloween,
it's nothing.

It's silly, goofy fun.

“It's not violent, it's not gory,
it's not anything like that at all.”

“And the object of the game is to save the
girls that go in for the slumber party.”

“Way to go, control.
I knew you could do it!”

“I'm afraid the augs
aren't our biggest problem.”

“My personal observation is
I think it's pathetic and shameful.”

“I'm pulling the plug on you
before you do any more damage.”

“Violence and violent images permeate more
and more aspects of our lives,

and I think it's time to draw the line.”

The day before Doom was
released on December 9th,

there were congressional
hearings on video game violence,

where they basically pulled up
Night Trap and Mortal Kombat as examples

of how low games have stooped down to.

They had no idea what was going
to actually show them where games were at.

And that was the next day with Doom.

-”Now on 32x”
-“Doom for the Jaguar.”

Doom was probably one of the
most influential video games ever.

Look what a small group of people
can do in the entertainment field.

“These games are getting really realistic.”

I think it's set the foundation
for a lot of things. Certainly as a horror game.

That was the mantra, wasn't it?
It was scary, dark, fast.

One thing that I
think is lost now

is that the whole diminished
lighting look of doom,

there was a lot of darkness as
you got further away from light sources,

the light level would be diminished. It was
intended to always have this element of spookiness.

On the tin, I would say that
most people probably wouldn't

look at Doom as a horror game,
because we're told

that we're this
big, strong, masculine hero

and we have all of the weapons
that we need to take down

the terrifying demons that
we're going up against.

But when you take it back to its roots,
this is a game that is dealing with demons

and the occult, and it very
much is a scary game.

Contrast was kind of a key
word for the entire game,

because the contrast isn't just
light contrast, it's contrast in space.

Like we need a tight corridor
opening into a really big room.

We need contrast and experience.
We can't be fighting all the time.

We need to be exploring and feeling
the suspense before the next combat beat takes over.

The flashing lights, things are
broken like a space station

that's been overrun, destroyed,
but you can't see anything yet.

You're just like waiting for
something to happen.

And then all of a sudden all these
walls open up and here comes fireballs.

It was all about like taking
inspirations from horror movies

and putting them into the game
as if this is a horror scene.

What I remember as being
sort of repulsed, but also intrigued.

At that point, it was just like,
dang, there is a lot of blood.

There's like dead guys on the floor.

You're shooting guys, and
their chests are like exploding.

Making the game to me wasn't scary.
There was not really any way

for me to experience the
game the way that the players

will experience it for the
first time, because I'm making it

so I know where everything is.

But then when Sandy Peterson
came in and he started making E2M6,

that was really, really
great to have that feeling

of just like the terror of playing

where it's like I get to
a certain point and it's like,

I need to go into the dark.
There's an area that is pitch black

and I have to go in there.

Doom established certain
things with video games

where you could get this
non-linear experience.

This was interactive and it was
real time, and it was marketably different

than anything you saw
for film and television.

It blew me away, quite frankly.

“Good afternoon. This is news two,
and we are following a breaking story today,”

“a shooting at a high school
in Littleton, Colorado that's near Denver.”

“Here is what we know so far:
Witnesses say two gunmen dressed in black”

“trench coats with black masks
opened fire at Columbine High School”

“about lunchtime in Colorado.
They said the gunman went from”

“one area of the school to another,
shooting students as they went.”

We know that there's people out there
that have done heinous acts,

and sometimes people have
tried to make a correlation.

Like I remember when the Columbine shooting
happened, there was some rumblings about, oh,

they played Doom or they played Quake.
That that must have been what happened.

“In every school shooting,
we find that kids”

“who pulled the trigger
are video gamers.”

“Lawyer Jack Thompson filed the
suits against Doom and Quake,”

“claiming they are
partly responsible.”

It couldn't have been any of
the other things about American culture.

Couldn't have had anything
to do about access to weapons.

It had to be the video games, logically,

“…and the result is we are
programing many of our children to kill.”

-“He’s trained to do it.”
-“Bingo.”

People need to spend more
time blaming the guns

and less time blaming the video games.

And if they looked at the data,
they would see that

people who play video games are
less likely to do things like that.

“Todd Hollenshead, CEO of the company
that made Doom and Quake, says,

they were just trying to make
something fun and entertaining.”

When the news came out,
it was it was a huge shock,

especially when the front of CNN
had pictures of them drawing,

You know, Doom 2 and, you know,
imagery from the levels that they had made.

“Some people hold you
responsible for real murders.”

Lots of kids play games.

Tens of millions of people had
played doom at that time and never did this.

“The teen gunman, says Thompson, superimposed
yearbook pictures of their classmates”

“So that they could literally,
for weeks in advance,

not just practice shooting, but practice
shooting a particular student.”

There was something wrong with those kids,
you know, like any mass murderer.

You know, there's something
wrong with them.

It's not because they played some games.

We felt that the best thing to
do at that time was just like,

support the families of the kids
that were affected.

And, you know, try to heal at that time
because it was such a horrible time.

But not go pointing fingers at
the entertainment or media

as the reason why that happened.

What a horrible event in
history being tied to video games.

When it comes to horror and
gore in fighting games.

The two of them go way back.

Everybody's going to immediately
go to Mortal Kombat, and for good reason.

We all know the controversy that brought,

but it also brought
in a whole lot of money.

So a lot of other people out
there suddenly decide,

oh, gore sells in fighting games.

We need to do that.

So, Thrill Kill was always a
fighting game from the start.

It's just it wasn't the fighting game

that it's kind of infamous
for what it became.

It actually started out as this thing
called Earth Monsters, which was kind of

a Mesoamerican, Aztec or
Incan inspired bloodsport game.

But gradually, over time,
Virgin was telling the team,

yeah, you know, the fighting
game part of it's really good.

Could you maybe just like have these guys
beat the hell out of each other?

So they did. And then they
were like, you know what?

The Aztec thing's
not really working for us either.

We've got a different art direction
we want to start exploring with you.

To me, the thing that made
so many people start

clutching their pearls over
Thrill Kill was the sexuality of it.

There is a story from the
developers that I have heard in

which one of the producers came in one day

and just dropped down a
massive stack of porno mags

and said,
“Gentlemen, this is your art style.”

I can't say that's exactly how it went.

But when you look at the game,
it feels like that's exactly how it went.

So we were looking at
this stuff and going,

okay, well, we'll take the
boots off of that one

and we'll take the mask off of that one
and kind of piecing these things together.

But there was no rhyme or reason to it.
There's no nothing holding it together.

Like, why are these characters
dressed this way? What are they doing?

And that's when we decided, okay, well,
what if these were all damned souls

and they were trying to
fight their way out of hell?

And the other surprising
bit was probably Cats.

Yep. Cats. The musical.

People dressed up in fur and tails,

and they all tell their sob story
of what their life was like as a cat.

And the cat that's had
the roughest life gets granted

nine new lives, and they get to
go back to the mortal world again

and carry on being a cat. So obviously
you see how these mesh right together.

It's Clive Barker meets cats, except it's a
bunch of damned souls in leather fetish gear.

Fighting to come back to the mortal plane.

Writes itself.

What would have been controversial
about Thrill kill?

Well, the first thing that you're
going to notice is the gore in there.

They're not trying to hide it.
There's a guy in there

who's eating a leg as
one of his normal moves.

And that is another reason why it got
so controversial. It was the characters.

Every single character was
designed to push the envelope

even before you know their backstories.

And if you do know their backstories,

it becomes jaw dropping at times.

There's a character in there
who was a postal worker

who ended up shooting up his workplace,

and this was made during the 90s

when that was a thing
you were reading about

in the newspapers
on a fairly regular basis.

So after all of our hard work,
sleeping under our desks

and doing everything we could
to jump through Virgin's hoops,

ultimately the game did not come out.

And the reason it did not
come out is during production.

And we're talking very late in production,
like we were approaching Gold Master.

Virgin was acquired by Electronic Arts.

Then we started getting these rumblings
that EA wasn't happy with the game.

You know, this was the time of Joe Lieberman
and his crusade against video games,

and they shelved it.

And so the developers of Thrill Kill
suddenly found themselves with no place to go.

But they had this game that they
spent all this time making.

And then all of a sudden,
Activision calls them up and goes,

“Hey, yeah, we understand that
you guys make fighting games.”

“We have a license with the Wu-Tang clan
and they want to make a fighting game.”

“Can you do something with that?”

So this hasty marriage was arranged to give

Wu-Tang to, Paradox Development,
and that is how the Wu-Tang Clan: Shaolin Style,

I think is the subtitle, came to be

I did play the Wu-Tang game
many years later,

but I just remember thinking,
what a turnaround from this hyper violent,

hell based game to a hyper violent,
you know, hip hop game.

It was a real interesting, transformation.
But I'm glad that they still got to use

the ideas that they had
because they were, you know,

even if they weren't executed the best,
they were interesting.

There were those kind of ideas
that would push genres forward.

It was definitely innovative.
You could not have a game back

then that had four people all
fighting at the exact same time.

That was way ahead of its time.

And I am positive that if it came out,

it might not have exploded.
But you know what? Like 20 years later,

people would have been nostalgic for it.

They probably would have forgotten
all the stuff that they didn't like in it.

It feels like one of those kind of games.

So sometime around 1998, 1999,
yes, was probably about 1999.

I was living in Scotland.
It was a weekend and I was on a train

and I was wearing, my Thrill Kill hat.
I was wearing this very hat, actually,

up the row in the train
comes these two backpackers

and they spot my hat and they're like,

“Oh man! Is that a Thrill Kill hat?”

So I was like, “you know what this hat is?”
and they’re like,

“oh man! That game is fucking
magic man's it’s the best game, all…”

And they, they’re telling me about the
characters and the fight moves and stuff.

And I was like, “how the hell is this possible?
How did you ever play this game?”

And they're like, “oh, we bought it down
at The Barras for £5 down in Glasgow.”

The Barras is like a,
like a car boot sale.

It's like a, like an
open air market.

So that's how I discovered that somebody on one
of the teams that could have been Virgin,

it could have been EA,
it could have been Paradox.

Somebody let out a gold master of the game
and it became a underground pirate hit.

“It's banned in Australia.”

“The Kiwis put the kibosh on it.”

“Verboten in Germany.”

“What is it that the rest of the world doesn't
want you to see? Why it's Manhunt of course.”

Yeah. Manhunt was really
interesting because,

obviously we had been used to
violence for a long time

from all forms of entertainment, but it was
when you were put into control of that

that I think it really resonated
with people, for better or worse,

because when you're watching it
happening on a screen,

this is filmed, you know,
it's special effects, whatever.

Or if it happens to you in a
video game when you die,

that's you being kind of punished
for losing, but when you're the one doing it…

Oh. Wow. Where do we
even begin with Manhunt?

I mean, I remember I worked at
blockbuster at the time.

Manhunt was out for a week, and then we had
to pull all the copies off the shelves

and slap it with its new adult
only sticker.

To be fair, even nowadays, it is pretty graphic.
I mean, it's a game based around.

Killing people. I mean, it is,
but in like, gruesome ways

for a rich person to film
and make money off of.

We're focusing on a prisoner
who was set to be sentenced to death.

He's saved from death row by
this mysterious director

who's now forcing him to commit
these grave acts of violence against gangs,

all for the purpose of
creating this snuff film.

Much like when we were doing The Thing,
right Manhunt looked to push boundaries

and make people uncomfortable, and I
think I always admired Rockstar

for pushing games in that direction

If you look at Grand Theft Auto,
they did all those things

that people told them, you can't do that.

You can't do that in a game.
You can't do that in a game.

And they're like, “fuck you.”
We're going to do all of it.

Rockstar drew a lot of heat and
vilification from the media at this time,

because they were involving elements
of brutal violence and voyeurism,

and there was definitely
a moral panic going on.

The news found out about this,
and it was all over the place that,

Hey, this is like teaching our kids to kill.
And they're, it's teaching us that

the more graphic the kill,
the cooler you are.

“Most infamously, Manhunt was linked to
the murder of a 14 year old boy in the UK.”

“It was later revealed that it was the
victim who owned a copy, and the murderer”

“had never even played it.”

When I was growing up, my dad wanted to
buy me a Hitman game for my birthday,

but my mother didn't want to because she
was worried I was going to be a Hitman.

I think you see that a lot with
people who don't really look in

and understand. The things I do in video games,
I'm not taking to the real world.

I'm not going to go to, you know,
an army base and steal a plane and fly away.

It is called Manhunt 2,
and it is being described

“as one of the most violent
and gruesome video”

“games ever produced for a mass market.”

“So violent, in fact, that it
was banned in Great Britain.”

“And we must warn you, there is nothing
about this that is not disturbing.”

“What sets this video game
apart is that the player can become”

“physically involved
in the acts of violence,”

“rather than just pushing buttons.
The player actually wields a knife”

“an axe, a glass shard
to stab an opponent.”

There was a bit of controversy
surrounding Manhunt 2

in the sense that
it was on the Wii.

We kind of get this degree of
separation previously where we're playing

with a controller against the screen.

Now, instead of just pressing a button,
you're actually like,

using the Wii remote to like
slash people and all that, so,

the fact that that even
came out at all is a miracle.

“Violence in video games is nothing new.
The difference is you're”

“actually committing the violence.”

“By doing this, I can hit somebody
with a sledgehammer, or a knife.”

There was this specific execution
you had to do with a telephone.

You know, to do it on a controller, it's hey,
you hold, I think, like L1 or R1 to target somebody,

and then you hit a button and that's it.

But with the Wii, you actually had to, like,

do a motion like this, like you're wrapping
a cord around somebody's throat

and then like pull back on it.

So I mean, I get it.

“So we've got them on record: ‘The Rockstar
team has come up with a game

that fits squarely within the horror
genre, and was intended to do so.’”

The ground that it had to stand on was the fact
that you were kind of defending yourself.

You're fighting for your life,
but that got lost in translation

because all people were
talking about was the violence.

You know, Rockstar were just so
notorious that, you know, your parents

or whoever was against video games
just didn't, they didn't want to hear it.

“So if you have a child who's a gamer, discourage
this form of, quote unquote, ‘entertainment’,”

“too much time playing video games
is hazardous to their health.”

“And with this latest entry may be
hazardous to the health of others, too.”

I remember reading really old
newspaper articles talking about

“Don't let your daughters read
too much poetry. It's really bad for them.”

When it comes to new types of
entertainment and new technologies that

that we don't quite understand,

I think people are always going
to question it and be afraid.

“Best friends butchering one another, babies
strangled in cribs. The whole city went to hell.”

But it is really interesting to
see how sometimes that can work

to the media's benefit, or sometimes
it can work to its detriment.

A joke that insulted the president of
China and called him Winnie the Pooh

resulted in one of the year's best
horror games being removed from steam.

Devotion came from this Taiwanese
development studio called Red Candle Games.

They had previously put out
a different game called Detention.

Detention was an incredibly
bold game, because the story

all builds up to being a
message about a very dark time

within the Taiwanese government.

It's not even a time
that was that long ago.

They specifically make sure to
point out the people who suffered

during this time
period are still alive today.

They wanted to come in here
and make a message in a horror game

that the true horrors
aren't spirits. They're not ghosts.

They're things that
human beings actually did.

And then they come out
with this game, Devotion.

This absolutely horrifying
game about this man.

His life starts falling apart.

His wife starts to
become unhappy with him.

His child gets very sick,

and he gets really desperate.

And he meets this woman,
and this woman says,

All I need is your devotion.

And I can cure your child.

What's so beautiful about it is
the entire thing is done in first person.

You are seeing all these really amazing visual
representations of what's happening.

But there's something they hid in there that
is comparing the president of China,

Xi Jinping, to Winnie the Pooh.

“When interacted with,
the poster in the game would flash”

“the words ‘Xi Jinping,
the Winnie the Pooh moron’ in Chinese.

It's not even something
that's a focus in the game.

It's almost like an Easter egg or a
secret that you have to find in there.

Because of that, the game could
not actually be sold in China.

It got taken down from the Steam store.

It is, to this day, one of the
best horror games I’ve ever played.

And it just for like 2 to 3 years,
it just disappeared. You couldn't buy it.

That game deserved so much better.

It is always interesting when
specific moments of visual violence

get pulled out of movies
or TV shows or video games,

but the entire concept,
which is absolutely horrific,

all good, all good. Infanticide? No worries.
Just don't show this little part of it.

When prepping myself for this documentary,
I was made aware of some controversies

over Silent Hill: Homecoming.

Germany and Australia didn't want
to have anything to do with the game,

and they had to go back in
and make some tweaks to the game

to remove some of the violence
so that apparently the other horrific

things would be deemed okay.

“After just some hacking to get it through classification, Silent Hill: Homecoming”

“is finally in Australia, minus some camera
angles and drills, but still full of crazy”

“scantily clad nurses, angry skinless dogs,
fantastically weird bosses, and a whole lot of fog.”

Regardless of this game or whatever, but every
country has a series of censorship laws that impact

all kinds of things books,
games, TV shows, movies.

And so it's not surprising.
I mean, I think it's hilarious

because it's like cutting
out a couple of scenes

of graphic violence here
and there doesn't change the fact

that, like, these are parents that
killed children, but I guess

somebody has to censor
something, somewhere in the world,

and they've got to put a, they got to
put a stamp on it, and that's what happens.

As much as like, hey, controversy
gets you news and stuff.

Controversy tends to hurt
a lot of video games as well.

I mean, just look at
Rule of Rose for example.

That game got slammed
with a bunch of controversy

and ended up being
banned a bunch of places.

“Read the story. Please read the story.”

Rule of Rose is controversial because…

okay, the real answer here is I think
some fucking idiot needed to write a headline.

So, way back in the day you had a
teenager who posted a review,

his honest review of the game online, and he was
actually quite supportive and positive of the game.

We then got this Italian magazine called Panorama
who essentially plagiarized this review.

But not only are they plagiarizing it,
they're sort of twisting the words.

They're making it out as though
Rule of Rose is this masochistic game

that you're engaging in child abuse,
and that there's really weird

sort of perverse representations
of children in this game.

Before anyone really had time to
sort of correct any of this

that had been said or done, we've now got
Italian politicians who are damning the text.

You've got British tabloids that
are running very similar headlines.

From there it kind of like
snowballed to the point where

for the longest time,
you couldn't even buy

a copy of Rule of Rose
in North America.

I think the worst thing that happens
is our main character gets like

buried underground for
like three seconds.

it's not about torturing or killing children.
There's just a lot of children in the game.

But it's also got this
really distinctive, unique vibe.

Rule of Rose, believe it or not,
I think is very underrated.

I think that there is just
such a clear motif with that game

and how it's presented
and the story that it's telling.

The story is good. I do think
it does interesting things.

Gameplay wise. It's a little rough.

Rule of Rose is not fun to play,
and it's not fun to play

in a way that even survival horror
games aren't, like, there's a competency

to Resident Evil and Silent Hill

Rule of Rose is frustrating,
and it can just be kind of exhausting.

But despite that, I think
it's like, it's worth it.

It's weird and it's strange
and it's got this incredible atmosphere

and these beautiful cutscenes.

Particularly like, when you start to see,
like the cruelty of these girls

and like how they treat you,
how they treat like the player character.

There’s something just
really unsettling about it.

And it's unsettling in a way
that no other game did.

It really was its own thing.
Everything from when you open the menu

and it's like a chalkboard and
the sounds that go with that.

Everything about that game feel so intentional,
and I think it's really amazing for that.

I think ultimately what I love
about horror is the ability to explore

very deep, primal feelings right
about our existence as human beings.

“That's why I needed you…”

I get how much fun it is
for people to be really scared

because they're scared in a safe way. They're
in a safe environment. They're in their home.

“OceanGate is now putting out a
statement that they do believe

that that debris that was found is
indeed the debris of the small submersible.”

An interesting thing happened with the
OceanGate disaster, where

when people were trapped
underwater with the public

not knowing if they were
still alive or not, suddenly

a lot of people had this new anxiety
about being trapped under the ocean.

When people heard the
situation around OceanGate,

they're like, “wow, that sounds
a hell of a lot like Iron Lung.”

Whenever a bunch of people start talking
about a game, it's going to get a spike in sales.

I kind of didn't like it.
Because thinking about like, people

being actually trapped
down there in the Iron Lung,

basically, and running
out of air and stuff is,

“it is a difficult day.
And it's especially difficult,

for the families. And our
thoughts are with the families.”

I feel personally with all
the things that we've created

when it comes to taking
people to dark places.

“This is god?”

There's something to be said for
pulling yourself out of those dark places.

I'm pro human. I'm pro,
“let's always keep hope.”

Hope is one of the major aspects,
I think, that defines the human soul.

“If there's anyone alive,
contact me now. Just give me a sign.

I repeat. This is your last chance.”

I had to find the strength and
the courage to play Jill in a strong way.

The players have to do the same

for themselves. They have to make the
right choices, the courageous choices.

“Start talking.”

In overcoming the fears, it allows us
to shine a light in the darkness

and really allows us
to experiment, take risks

that we wouldn't normally
be allowed to in real life.

I had the honor to meet a couple
of people through the conventions

that were talking to me about
why they enjoyed Dead by Daylight.

And one of the things that came up was,
there's a group of of veterans

like Army veterans
that are back with PTSD,

and they play together and
they like to play Dead by Daylight.

And one of the reasons they were telling me
was because it's a, it's a tense environment.

It's a scary place, but you're
experiencing it in a safe way.

A place where you have challenges
and you have all the tools to overcome them.

And if it ever gets too much,
you can just turn off the game

and move on and go do something else.

And I think that comes up quite
a lot, for a lot of people

to be able to do that in a safe
environment and sort of work through some,

some issues, or maybe just feel that way
so that you can become more comfortable

with intense emotions,
which is not something

that's necessarily easy to,
to everybody, right?

“…Dad.”

“Dad…”

I think there's something profoundly
optimistic about the genre in that way.

You don't have to be, you know, super spec ops.

I have 18 machine guns on my back.
You can just be a person who can think

their way through and, you know,
just keep trudging along and you'll be okay.

And the horror genre is telling us that you can
be okay. You are enough to overcome this.

So I would say, like what
horror games mean to me…

I think this comes back to like
something that's become huge online,

and that's the idea
of the save room.

You know, you play these games and you
enter the save room and you're okay.

It's like for a moment, all the
fucking weird horrors

and all the monsters and
everything you have to deal with.

It's gone. And you're in
this just safe little room.

I think you know different games
do it in different ways.

I think with something like Death Stranding,
you know, sitting in that menu

where you’re organizing
your bags is your safe room.

You know, nothing's coming for you there.

And so that is a big part of any,
any horror for me

where you need a safe space before you then go
out before you then pluck up the courage

to then, you know,
traverse to the next bit.

As a much younger human, there was
a game on the Amstrad CPC

that was, a tie-in game for Aliens.

You're supposed to be in the
command HQ looking at the,

the camera feeds from the marines,

and you'd kind of scroll
the camera to move through these rooms.

And then every now and then,
an alien would show up,

and the “beep beep beep beep beep”
would start happening very crudely.

The kind of gun mechanics were so bad that
it was almost guaranteed that you would die,

if one of these aliens got you.

I remember that being so powerfully
upsetting and stressful as a game.

If you press the pause button,
the blast doors kind of came in

and then it played this kind
of jazzy, upbeat music.

We kept having to go into that
pause screen to just take a moment,

because it was getting so
stressful and so intense.

And then if we look at games
like Bloodborne and Dark Souls,

I think the bonfires and
the messenger lamps,

I think they're really great
at what they do as well.

We often think of the weary traveler.

The bonfire is acting as a sort
of light in the darkness for them.

They're coming to sit at the bonfire to rest.

I'm not really interested in a horror
game if it's full on, just like a

nightmare the entire time.
I need that like that change of pace,

because I think something about
it is like really deeply

healthy in a way. It's like nearly
kind of human, where it's kind of

Shit is awful. Shit is terrifying. Shit is scary.

But it's okay because there
are going to be these moments

where you're going to be all right.

There will always be these little moments of peace.

And I love that.

Horror games were like a bonding
experience for me and my friends.

When P.T. came out in 2014,
that was a huge deal.

We all huddled around
the TVs, you know?

My friends actually
invited me over to play P.T.

because they got to a point
where they couldn't finish it,

and so they invited me over
for like emotional support I guess.

So P.T. was meant to be a playable teaser

starring Norman Reedus
in a brand new Silent Hill game.

One it was a genius move
from a marketing standpoint.

I mean, to make a
playable trailer, essentially.

I mean, back in the day,
we would call it, you know, a demo.

Like, everybody was just kind of expecting it to
be like, just a first glimpse or a trailer and then,

oh, no, it's a playable experience.

“The only me is me. Are you
sure the only you is you?”

And it's not just a terrifying experience.
It's from Kojima, and he's brought along his friend,

Guillermo Del Toro, you know,
another master of horror from another medium.

It's just like it was such an event.
It was an event in, in games

and an event in the horror genre.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

“Daemon here with IGN News,
Konami has issued a statement

that Silent Hills
has been officially canceled.”

And then not only did they cancel
the game, they like removed it.

So now you don't even have
the ability to experience it.

“P.T. was delisted from the PlayStation
store shortly thereafter. A brutal and final end.”

P.T. gives me feelings
of happiness and rage

because I didn't own a PS4 before it was gone,
so I've never got to experience it firsthand.

I think P.T. was absolutely horrifying,

and I think it was brilliant in a way
that, like, only video games can be.

That entire game is your
relation to a specific space.

You are walking through this hall. You turn the
corner. You walk down the rest of the hall.

You're back to the start. It is this infinite,
looping, liminal space in a video game.

A liminal space has no identity and
therefore, like neither do you in it.

And I think there's a weird,
comforting oblivion to that.

They get you so used to it, like you're
just used to this hall again

and again, and again,
and again, and again…

…and then all of a sudden…

And it's not just that
she's a terrifying ghost woman.

It’s that she's a terrifying ghost woman
in this space, you are familiar with.

And it's beautiful, and again, it's like,
how do you do that in any other medium?

So cool seeing something so
unique that seemed professional,

made from a studio that it got
my hopes up that were immediately dashed.

Like it was almost a moment of like,
this is too good to be true, and then it was.

It takes a lot of things to go right,
to make, to make a game.

But then again, maybe that
was the best it could get.

It's very different making
a 6 or 8 or 12 hour game

that maintains a sense of
tension and, interest

and making a 10 or 15 minute
playable demo that does the same thing.

So it may be one of those cases
where it was best that it didn't come out

so that everyone could maintain
this illusion, that it would have been

the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I don't know if it would have been.

What people don't realize about Konami
is that their main business is gambling machines.

When you fly into Las Vegas airport,
you will pass a massive warehouse

with the Konami logo
strewn across it.

That is their bread and butter, actually.
They’re, they made gambling machines,

slot machines, video poker,
all that stuff.

Video games were like a
tangential business to it.

“Konami is committed to
new Silent Hill titles.”

“However, the embryonic Silent Hills
project, developed with Guillermo Del Toro”

“and featuring the likeness of Norman
Reedus, will not be continued.”

I never got the feeling
that there was like,

tremendous love within
the company for Silent Hill.

There was love amongst the people
working on it. Those guys loved it.

But you go up the chain in the the hierarchy.
I never got the feeling that they loved it.

I think after the fans
reacted to P.T. and the outcry

when you couldn't play it anymore,
that is probably what spurred them on

to go, oh, actually, there is something
really valuable here, let's…

the, you know, blackjack machines are cool,
but maybe we should actually invest

in this Silent Hill thing.

“They say there was once a game.
A game unlike any other that infiltrated”

“arcades in 81, when gaming fever
was hot, it captivated the youth”

“who lined up in a magnetic
trance to play it.”

Polybius was this non-existent game,
that is rumored to have existed.

It sort of feeds on the
minds of the player

and takes control of them. It causes
hallucinations or whatever.

The story varies a little bit.

It's a story of an arcade game that was really
popular in the 80s, but only in Portland, Oregon.

There was this idea that the FBI
are monitoring arcades, and already,

like I say, that sentence
and it's like you can feel

your imagination going
into overdrive, right?

“why would they be doing th- that's so crazy!
Like, what? What are they doing?”

This was all a secret test
by the government to see whether or not

they could use addictive
radiation through television screens.

You know, there's subtext to it, too.
Like, everything can be an addiction in some way.

But it was also from the,
you know, the fear of,

you know, the influence that
video games could have on people.

I think the reason people make fake
video games is actually really simple.

People making games like this
make the forbidden media that you can't touch,

you can't interact with,
because to interact with it,

you're kind of consuming it,
and you're alleviating

the horrors that you feel
from just thinking about it.

Valley Verde is one that
looks very Animal Crossing

and has some kind of helmet
you're supposed to wear to play it.

And there's kids trapped in it.

They take that idea of the glitch like the game
is corrupting. This is like a tear in this world.

And when those tears
appear and the characters

start acting in ways they shouldn't, or
you start seeing environments you shouldn't,

it becomes this window into
this complete underworld of that game.

I think creepypastas have
influenced the broader horror space.

Creepypasta are essentially online
urban legends created by the community,

and take the form of short stories.

One of the most famous creepypastas
was something called Ben Drowned,

this famous story about a guy
finding this Majora's Mask copy,

and in it the file is called Ben.

And already, like, there's
something to that, right?

Because it's like your save
game is distinctive to you.

But when someone else gets that save game,
it is like walking around someone's house

and they don't know you're there.

Now, Majora's Mask, for a lot
of people, is already

a very creepy game, both in its
aesthetics and its characters.

Ben drowned built upon that.
It took those mechanics and characters,

and now we're adding in this creepypasta
story of the owner of the cartridge

has passed away, and they're
haunting this game cartridge.

There's some ghost in the machine. There's some
elements of this game that is hostile towards you.

There’s a whole subgenre of, like,
game corruptions where games can just suddenly

turn from a happy, child friendly game
to horrific by random chance.

One of the first games of this
kind was called Frog Fractions.

And Frog Fractions is
this educational game

where you have to swallow a bunch of flies,
and you do that for about five minutes.

And then it turns into this spaceship
game. It turns into a text adventure.

It turns into like a
Phoenix Wright style court game.

And that idea that like, okay,
you were looking at the surface,

but there's so much more here.

That is what so many of those
creepypasta like haunted video games were.

And now you're seeing it in
like all these different titles.

There's games like I'm Scared by Ivan Zanotti
and Doki Doki Literature Club

that literally mess with your computer.

But they really have this sense
of breaking that barrier between

player and game, and they,
they reach out to the player.

When the horror comes, it's like you have
been lulled into a false sense of security,

and then you're grabbed
and pulled somewhere else.

Pretty quickly on, you realize
this is not a typical,

you know, schoolgirl,
titillating story about,

you know, a visual novel kind
of thing of that genre.

You know, a girl in the game
ends up having a crush on you,

and she is really violent
and scary and threatening,

and she starts messing with the game
and it starts, the game starts glitching.

And in fact, the only way to beat her is
to exit the game and go into the actual

like files stored on the
hard drive and like delete her.

You have to find her character data and delete her.
And that's actually the only way to save yourself

from this psychotic schoolgirl.

It’s genius.

That is a creepypasta.
Except it's an actual video game.

And I really think, like, we're probably
only at the beginning of seeing weird

and interesting stuff like this.

Game’s is at a point
where we can do anything

that we want to do on a screen,
that we want to actually show.

There's nothing stopping
us from doing anything.

So a lot of it is now, what is the design
of the game that you want to actually go make,

that is a horror game
that is going to be interesting?

That's the most fearful thing in the
world is to, is to look at yourself.

It sounds like a cliche,
but I really think it's true.

If you have a monster right, you
don't really have to look at yourself.

You’re looking at the monster,
it's jumping out at you.

You can stab it, you can burn it.

What are you going to do when
you know, when you find out

you're the monster or
you have something inside you,

some kind of body horror,
cancer or something.

Your skin is rotting and, you know,

I find that stuff just horribly scary.

It just really penetrates into
the basic core of our being,

having to deal with those fears.

If there's something I'm
portraying in a horror game,

It’s because I find
that thing horrifying.

When I became a parent and I came
back to writing after becoming a parent,

I had to sit with, what are the things
about being a parent that is terrifying?

I'm afraid of not being enough. I'm afraid of
everything that I don't like about myself

passing on to another person. I'm afraid of
not being there when this person needs me.

I think the best horror games are the
ones that make it personal for the player.

It's what makes games such a
better medium then more limp

mediums like film or television,
because games put you in the action,

and when you make a horror game,

you know, you literally have to
get your character out of there.

You can't afford to close your
eyes and hope it goes away.

It's got to be uncomfortable, but you
feel the urge to go back regardless.

You want you want to go
through those, high emotions.

I think being scared makes you feel alive.

There's a really interesting
kind of relationship that's formed

between the game creator and
the game player when that happens.

I want it to happen to me,
and I want me to be the adventurer.

I don't want it to be John McClane.
I don't want it to be Master Chief.

I don't want it to be,
you know, anyone else.

I want to be the one to
think that I did that.

And I want that to be on me as a person, and to
have players get up the next morning to think,

“I just messed up bad.”
And then go have their coffee.

“There's always trouble
heading my way in this job,

but I'm always up for
a little excitement too.”

Horror, naturally is
abnormal and innovative.

Horror is the unfamiliar.
Horror is exploring uncharted territory.

You can't show somebody the exact
same scare over and over and over again,

and expect them to keep being afraid.

You have to constantly reinvent
the wheel when it comes to horror.

You have to constantly be innovating.

I think you're going to have horror games start to
explore more, more of the social conditions.

Wspecially with technology,
censorship, control,

in ways that we
haven't seen so far.

Social media, cloud technology,
artificial intelligence.

I think that's going to be fertile
ground for people to explore in, in the genre.

“You will stream.”

“They will watch.”

A lot of the best innovation
will come from indie devs.

I think VR will continue to contribute to a
lot of the innovation we see in horror games.

We're no longer going to see this
separation of player and screen.

We're actually going to be a part of that monsters
world. We are physically going to be hunted

by horrifying things like the Xenomorph.

All it takes is a couple seconds for
your brain to really kind of think,

“Oh! I'm fucking here.” You know?
And if there's like,

like a little attachment where you feel like
something's like kind of grabbing onto your throat,

we're going to scare ourselves
to death because that's what we do.

We're dumb like that.