JORDAN THOMAS
ROLE: Writer / designer, Question
HORROR CREDENTIALS: The Blackout Club,
BioShock 2, Fort Frolic (BioShock), Robbing the Cradle
(Thief: Deadly Shadows)
THE MOMENT: The one I remember scaring me the most was
probably, by most folks’ standards, mundane. In Fatal Frame
II, you have a twin sister that you’re exploring a haunted,
abandoned Japanese village with. You get used to her tagging
along everywhere, and they brilliantly make you scared for her
as you would never be for yourself, trying to capture first-
person photos of ghosts as they loom up behind her, and she
doesn’t see it coming.
But the moment that worked on me was far simpler – at
some point, my sister simply wasn’t there with me. I thought,
“OK, bad AI,” and started looking for her. I saw her, frozen,
through a door frame, looking at something I couldn’t see.
It was brilliant. I don’t even remember what it was she was
looking at, or if I just misinterpreted something that wasn’t even
technically scripted. And honestly – I don’t care. It grabbed my
brain stem hard and made a real memory, regardless.
THE ADVICE: In The Blackout Club, we try to build a design
vocabulary out of systems that behave predictably, and
empower you to start speaking their language. You close your
in-game eyes to perceive certain information that the arguably
supernatural presences in the game have hidden from you. You
play a kid, so your reality is already malleable. In closing your
eyes, you shut yourself off to the presence of nearby threats in
the material world, but you’re able to see a hulking figure called
the Angel who moves around in ways you’d expect an old-
school Shadow archetype or slasher villain to do.
Even with the sound cues, it’s often on the floor just above
you, seeking you, or even right next to you. It feels like a
cinematic scare, but we’re not cheating by manipulating your
camera – you’ve got all the tools. Some folks are more scared
of seeing their friends harmed, so along the lines of that Fatal
Frame moment, they see the Angel right behind a co-op buddy
and flip out.JON CHEY
ROLE: Programmer / designer, Blue Manchu
HORROR CREDENTIALS: System Shock 2,
BioShock, SWAT 4 (yes, really)
THE MOMENT: For me, real video game horror
comes from losing progress. Demon’s Souls was super-scary
because of its incredibly harsh save system. I was also pretty
scared when I played through System Shock 2, just after we
sent the game off for mastering and saw the level progressing
bug that our QA team had just found. That was a traumatising
experience that I still haven’t fully recovered from.
THE ADVICE: In my opinion, horror and tension are very hard
to create successfully and are often confused with gross-out
shocks. Tension relies on what you don’t see or can’t know.
Once the monster has been revealed, whatever it is, the
horror tends to evaporate. That’s a tough problem for video
games since you usually end up fighting the monster (and
beating it).
I think successfully scary levels introduce the tension
gradually and ramp it up over time. If you sense the monster
or hear about it but don’t know what it is and can’t see
it, your imagination will create something scary for you.
The encounter with Steinman in the Medical level of BioShock
is a good example. Or if you slowly put together a picture of
something terrible based on environmental cues, the effect is
stronger than if you’re directly told about it – like in the Fairfax
Residence from SWAT 4.
24 / wfmag.cc
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