Saturday, April 28, 2012

Interview with Trey Blankenship: Mechanics of Horror


While conduction the previous interview with David Budd I was able to have another member of David's team, Trey Blankenship, answer my questions about their work on Depth, a modification for Amnesia: The Dark Decent. Even though the two were asked the same questions, their answers cover different topics in horror gaming. In this interview, Trey Blankenship discusses more mechanical elements and design.


Dan: What is your role on the team?
Trey: I am the programmer for tam Lucid Genesis

What is the project called?
The project we're currently working on is a survival horror game named Depth.

What is the project about?
The project is about creating a survival horror game where a major part of gameplay is the implementation of a sanity meter. The game is that a child wakes up in an orphanage and finds himself trapped in a city that is under siege from animals that are almost alien compared to what he's seen before. As the game develops, he finds that the monsters are actually mutated sea life attacking humans as revenge for polluting the ocean. 

Is the project a full game or a modification?
The project started out as the prototype of a full game built in the Unity Engine, but after the team assessed the time we had left versus the amount of work we had to do to make the game in Unity, we decided to make the game a modification of Frictional Game's Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which implemented the gameplay features we wanted. 

What is it like working with a team to create a horror video game?
In truth, working on a team making a horror game is not much different than working on a team on any other project. The only real difference I saw was that the assets your art team makes for the game are considerably more unnerving than in other projects. 

Is horror more difficult a genre to work with than action?
I feel that it is more difficult to work with the horror genre because the team needs to do more research and that the game's design needs to be more strict, placing as much attention to atmosphere and writing as to gameplay. If you don't keep the goal of the game in mind, I think what will happen is that the game will end up being like DooM 3. The very beginning of the game is actually kind of scary because the only two weapons the player has are a flashlight and a pistol, and the player cannot use them both at the same time. Considering that DooM 3 is one of the darkest games in a literal sense, you find yourself spending most of the time staring at a very poorly lit level that may or may not contain zombies, zombies with guns, or demons. That part of the game is scary. It's the most tense point in the game, as you find yourself with two weapons that don't do much against your enemies, who are faster and better armed than you. However, around the time you pick up the machine gun off the body of the possessed riot cop you just killed, any tension is lost. In the end, the game reveals itself for what it really is: a so-so first person shooter with survival horror elements and a really crappy lighting system that disappoints both horror fans and fans of the first two DooM games. The point is that team needs to keep the original design goals, that is, never give the player the means to confront the enemies directly. When this happens, the player feels empowered and starts taking on threats directly rather than trying to run away from them. Another thing that the team needs to keep in mind is that the player must feel an empathetic connection to an avatar, or else the player will not be scared. The player avatar must be written such that the player can relate to them. 

What constraints, if any, are present when working with horror?
From a design standpoint, the most important constraint one needs to keep in mind while making a survival horror game is that the player must be weak or otherwise unable to confront whatever is threatening him. That being said, I don't think a game where the player is being menaced by the color blue would make for a scary game. The threat needs to be tangible or something that people generally agree on as being scary. For example, the darkness. Despite most people outgrowing their fear of the dark in adolescence, adults can find darkness scary for very similar reasons that children can. The reason most people are afraid of the dark is that we can't see in the dark and we don't know what is in the dark. It's not that you're afraid that you're alone in the dark; it's that, at a very primal level, you're afraid you're not. It is a part of the self-preservation instinct that is common to all animals. For a less advanced animal, the darkness can hide predators or other threats to its survival. Even though humans have no natural predators, the instinctive fear of the unknown, and thus the dark, remains as it is a deep part of our psychologies. At one time, our survival literally depended on it. 

What is a unique aspect of the horror genre that sets it apart from others?
There is not one single defining trait that separates survival horror games from action games. Instead, it would be more meaningful to say that there are several aspects about these games that make the genre unique. The most prominent characteristics that define the genre are ammo starvation, dark and claustrophobic levels, a constant sense of isolation, unpleasant stimuli, some aspect of gameplay that makes controlling the player cumbersome, and a weak player character attempting to survive in the face of far stronger or faster enemies. One might think that clumsy controls would hurt a horror game, but there is a point where just making the control scheme a little more difficult to manage, particularly during a tense moment, such as running away from a monster, that make the game terrifying rather than frustrating. It has to do with  humanity's universal fear of losing control of its actions. In essence, in an action game, the developer tries to get the player to attack any threats directly. In a survival horror game, the developer's goal is to cripple the player to the point that the player needs to run away and hide from threats rather than confront them.  

Are there any mechanics or elements that are easier to accomplish when working with horror?
I can't think of many that would be easier, but I can list mechanics that would be more difficult to achieve without the game losing its atmosphere. I feel like I have already listed them, however. 

How does one go about creating a project that is meant to frighten an audience?
Beginning a project that is meant to frighten its audience can be somewhat of a challenge. One has to know what they're doing, or else the end product will not be scary. For one, it requires a more talented art and design team than if one was making a puzzle game. As stated before, atmosphere is a large part of what makes horror games so terrifying. Also, a team has to have good writers who can write characters that the audience can relate to. More or less, the goal is to not make a character that the player controls, but make an avatar that the playerbecomes.

Any advice for someone wanting to do a project like this?
From a design standpoint, my first advice is that you do your homework. Understand what people are afraid of and why. How can you implement your findings into your game design? How can you implement your findings into gameplay? How can you implement your findings into environment and character designs? If you have any other questions, here is an amazingly well written article on Gamasutra that goes into even more detail than I did. 


I appreciate both Trey and David taking time out of their schedule to discuss horror game design. I highly suggest reading the Gamasutra article Trey mentions for further reading on designing horror games.


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