Survival Horror Analysis

Horror games are an increasing popular theme for video games, particularly survival horror, FPS and
role-playing games. Examples of such games are that of the Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Rising,
Dead Rising 2 and many other games. Studies carried out in Great Britain provide the enormity of
the video game playing audience, which in the UK are around 32.9 million people. Using a group of
4,000 people between the ages of 8 to 65, a survey indicated that of the 32.9 million people 82% of
them are between the ages of 8 to 65. 51% of who are male. Seven out of ten of them are between
the ages of 16 to 65 and play games on a regular basis. 54% of people who play games are in the
upper middle, middle and lower middle class, and the other 46% are skilled working class, working
class and those of a lower level of subsistence. The study shows that those who play console games
are more likely to play for longer periods of times, while people playing on mobile and tablets play
more frequent but for a shorter period of time, as are browser and social network games. Meaning
the target audience for this genre of videogames would be males, in the middle class, between 18-
32, who own consoles or PCs.

Survival-horror is very particular in its format. The player character is majority of the time an average
Caucasian male trapped in a creepy area, this area could be as small as an apartment or as large as a
town. They must strategize, travel, team up with others, and survive a horde of monsters, demons,
or other horrific creatures associated with the sci-fi or supernatural part of the story, eventually
escaping the situation. Guns and projectile weapons with limited ammo are placed in rare positons
for a player to defend themselves, what is more frequently found are melee weapons like bats, steel
pipes, a board with nails in it. But they often leave you much more open to attack, and will some
games even break after prolonged use, the rest of the weapons are items the story calls for such as a
torch in Alan wake. Though combat tends to be a minor focus in survival-horror, making the
character feel much weaker than in action games because they are more vulnerable. Traditional
survival- horror games were very controlled, often having uneasy movement and awkward fixed
camera angles that used to unnerve and disorient the player, adding to their sense of helplessness.
To uncover more of the narrative, various everyday items and keys must be found, combined, or
otherwise used to solve puzzles and progress forward. This is very reminiscent of the point-and-click
adventure format the genre branched off from. Lastly, death, game over, and failure scenes are
often disturbing and gory, fitting the overall tone of the game, and are also a tool to discourage risky
play. Though in doing so it elicits this style of play, because it is rewarding to win by breaking the
rules.

The genre rested on the shoulders of two major franchises, Resident Evil from Capcom, and the
soon-to-follow Silent Hill from Konami. Although both series stuck closely to the previously
mentioned format, they were both massively successful by being polar opposites in every other
detail. Resident Evil favoured sci-fi plots involving zombies and scientific-experiment mutants, and
dealt with stories of people trying to survive an outbreak within large and labyrinthine buildings. On
the other hand Silent Hill leaned towards supernatural stories of people trying to find their way
through the titled town while fighting off deranged monstrosities, and usually involved a more
complex plot drive. Silent Hills stories could be fairly subtle, obscure, psychological, and even
outright ambiguous or inexplicable. There were a fair number of other survival-horror games
produced during this time period, but while some have been notable, none came close to reaching
the critical or commercial success of these two franchises.
In 1999 the genre was growing stale, so Capcom laboured for six long years, and through multiple
iterations, to re-invent the series and the genre. Resident Evil 4 was released in early 2005 across
multiple consoles, and was a massive blockbuster hit that changed survival-horror forever.
Emphasizing much more of an action aspect, the game removed the fixed-camera style and sense of
desperation from the previous entries in the series in favour of a shoulder-mounted third-person
camera and precise aiming system for strategic shooting. Enemies came at you in waves, ammo and
supplies were abundant, and horror was conveyed through strangely frightening opponents who
could easily kill the player and had to be defeated in a specific way on certain occasions. It was a
game like nothing the world have ever seen, and brought the genre more fans and interest than ever
before.

The major issue with Resident Evil 4, however, is that the noticeable addition of more action to the
series put in motion a failing formula which has slowly driven the genre to mainstream slump today.
Specifically, more action has been perceived as equal to greater sales numbers, which is rarely true.
This was true for Resident Evil 4 because it was new and literally a game changer, but recent
versions of the franchise have continued to emphasize the action aspect more and more over the
horror aspect in order to maximize potential sales, leading to some of the worst reviews in the series
for Resident Evil 6 in 2012. Silent Hills own drive to add more of an action bent was coupled with
issues faced by foreign developers taking the reins in attempt to revitalize the series, resulting in the
franchise continuing to sink further and further into mediocrity and obscurity beginning with the
fifth iteration (Silent Hill: Homecoming, 2009) and leading through the eighth (Silent Hill: Downpour,
2012). Dead Space, an immensely successful new franchise that single-handedly carried the genre
for its first two iterations in 2008 and 2011, which appeared to be just what survival-horror needed,
recently forwent horror in attempt to maximize sales itself; it abandoned almost all sense of horror
in the drive towards action-oriented titles with its latest iteration, Dead Space 3, released 2013. This
shows the genre was niche, and to appeal to larger audiences studios were willing to abandon
horror. Fitting in the mainstream gaming industry towards unintelligent, action-centred shooters.
While it is important to note that horror as a tool and concept for storytelling and atmosphere
within a game will likely never truly die out, survival-horror as we know it may not last for very much
longer.
Fear not, in all this despair a new light has emerged a new form of survival-horror has come to
reform movement within the genre, completely countering the trend that is popularizing action-
based horror titles. Spurred on by the indie game movement, this new form of survival-horror
emphasizes desperation and utmost survival in a way rarely experimented with in the past, through
a first-person perspective. Horror has often been used in FPS games to add a new element of
interest to plots within those games, dating all the way back to Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. Yet it has
never been persistent enough in its appearance to become its own genre in the way that modern
survival-horror has, especially considering the fact that it namely only effects the storyline and tone
rather than actual gameplay, which still tends to just follow the FPS format. It has often been
present in the genre to some extent, and is even the overwhelming theme of certain FPS games such
as F.E.A.R. (2005), but it still has never altered the mechanics enough to fully remove those games
from the FPS genre. No, this new brand of FPS horror completely changes the game once again,
breathing new life into the genre.

This new light was brought in the form of Amnesia: The Dark Descent in 2010. In this particular
subgenre of first-person survival-horror, the player character explores a creepy area for different
reasons, collecting items/keys and using them to solve puzzles and progress, as in standard survival-
horror. The main difference is that not only is this new style played entirely from a first-person
perspective, but the player character has no real weapons or offensive abilities to protect
themselves, making them even more helpless in the presence of enemies or monsters, they must
simply run and/or hide to get away. Any and all action is entirely removed from the game itself in
favour of physics-based puzzles and stealth elements. Its a surprisingly creative take on the genre
itself, and definitely opens up room for new ways to immerse and engage the player, of which most
people would say Amnesia deftly succeeds at. As well as this it featured a Caucasian male lead as
usual, which really brings up issues of representation in this genre.

What is alarming, is how praised Amnesia was by many people, that sort of attention seems to have

been dangerous for the FPSH subgenre in the same way it was for survival-horror following Resident
Evil 4. People have been quick to copy the formula of the subgenre into different stories for various
different games, rather than be more original with the genre and continue to let it evolve. However
Resident Evil has been plagued with representational issues, throughout the franchises existence.
Their insensitivity was really brought to light in Resident Evil 5, was one of 2009s biggest games. It
re-invented the survival horror franchise by moving the action to a bright, sun-drenched setting and
introducing co-operative play. That new setting was a fictional country called Kijuju and the way that
the infected citizens were portrayed in the game made a lot of people uncomfortable, myself
included. A controversy raged about whether the game was racist or not. The bugged-out eyes and
animalistic savagery of the zombie attackers in Resident Evil 5 was a reflection of racist imagery
used to perpetuate stereotypes and ignorance about black people. Though its also important to
take into regard some level of cultural disconnect, that happened in the game making process.
Capcoms a Japanese company RE5 exposed some serious tone deafness. There are around 15
different major indie games coming out this year that play into that exact same gameplay style, just
with minor tweaks in the settings and storylines. In a genre that has shown only limited potential for
major success to begin with, this trend appears to be an overkill which would be completely
unsustainable for survival-horror, regardless of how skillfully formulated and well-crafted each of
these titles are. Amnesia as a single experience began to lose much of its momentum towards the
second half of the game as the various gameplay systems embodied within it became outplayed over
an extended period of time. This raises the question, how are that many titles supposed to keep
interest in such a genre for long without just leading it to a quick death?

Lastly, and even more importantly, the creation of this sub-genre is still bound to the very same
thinking that made action-heavy, survival-horror-light games so common. The idea that you must
either have a high action, or no action whatsoever, to make a game successful, and that removing all
action somehow automatically makes a better survival-horror game. As with the first point, so many
indie developers have quickly given into that line of thinking, under the assumption that it is the
future of survival-horror and the only natural way for the genre to progress as a whole. This thinking
seems very dangerous, quite simply it implies that the genre has nowhere else to go but further into
the FPSH subgenre, which appears more like one more death rather than a totally revitalisation of
the genre.

Recently, Shinji Mikami unveiled his work on a new survival-horror title named The Evil Within. The
reason why this work is so exciting is because it he has indicated that he is still willing to work with
the basic format that made survival-horror so great. He personally said that he thinks survival-
horror has been drifting away from what makes it survival-horror. And so I want to bring it back.
Bring back survival horror to where it was. The fact that his game seems similar in style to RE4
shows that he understands the necessity of maintaining the essence of what the genre was and
should continue to be, rather than getting too caught up with false views of how much or how little
action is required. The lead character is detective Sebastian Castellanos, who heads to a reported
disturbance at an abandoned insane asylum, only to find a squad of police officers dead and a
murderous spectral force on the loose. As Castellanos investigates, he uncovers the story of a
deranged young scientist named Ruvik who carried out horrific human experiments, attempting to
control the thoughts and actions of his victims. The rest of the game takes place through a series of
supernaturally charged environments that may be real places or figments of Ruviks splintered
imagination. The game followed a single strand structure, and the conclusion is very enigmatic due
to its alternative narrative. Which was a bit disappointing because the game felt really incoherent,
one minute youre in a village, next youre in a hospital, then youre in a cave, then your meeting
your friend in a construction yard, and it didn't help that no one seemed to care or question what
was going on, like it was just a normal day. This made the narrative less engaging, because it seemed
as if you were carrying out tasks for no reason and they didnt affect the plot. Many players found
that the biggest drawback obviously is they had no attachment to the games areas, as they just link
up randomly without sense, they could play chapter 7 then chapter 3 and it probably wouldn't make
a whole lot of difference in how things play out. This shows that in horror, environmental storytelling
is just as important as the story, in order to completely engage the player. Another disappointing
factor of the game is that it once again featured a Caucasian male lead, showing a hole in the genre
as a whole, year after year there are new iterations trying to evolve the genre, but they all carry the
lack of representation of other ethnic groups, and females shown in the previous generations, which
only helps to alienate a portion of the audience.

Seeing the indie game scene explode with enthusiasm for new techniques of storytelling and
gameplay is exciting, and recent successes within it have shown that the right games in the genre
can still compete commercially with titles from AAA developers that cost much more. Yet there are
new opportunities with VR to create even more immersive horror experiences for players which can
help evolve the genre further, but ultimately what will allow more people to immerse themselves in
the worlds the developers build will be seeing themselves represented in the worlds. In the end this
lack of diversity is what survival-horrors are lacking to tap into a larger audience, because gamers are
now a much more diverse group of people.

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/711441-the-evil-within/70483119

http://team-
ignition.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/9/7/13970136/target_audience_and_competitor_analysis_report.
pdf

http://gamingdeath.com/the-complex-state-of-the-modern-survival-horror-genre-an-
analysis/#sthash.PB9cimH4.HGHn7PsC.dpbsn

http://www.livescience.com/3385-worse-resident-evil-5-exposes-racism.html