"Silent Hill" Towards horror. Games and the Theory of Fear by Bernard Perron

Today we are talking about a book for gamers who like to delve into theory.

Bernard Perron is an expert from the world of cinema and computer games, a professor at the University of Montreal, and co-editor of the sandbox game Landmark. The book is small, but informative and without water. If you want to read it in one go, it’s better to have a fresh mind in order to catch all the examples and names: the author refers to developers, colleagues, films, magazines, and quotes a lot of things.

The terms and conclusions here are quite complex. It’s great that the translators took up this book and gave it a second wind. By the way, these superhumans who translated the text left a foreword and afterword, signing themselves as nurses at the Alchemilla Hospital in Silent Hill. In general, welcome to a resort town full of horror, fear and silence – read from the very first page.

The focus is on games from the Silent Hill franchise. At the same time, the author examines the laws of survival horror, that is, survival games, as a whole as a genre. Bernard Perron analyzes the plot, details, objects from SH – sometimes directly indicating what, where and why it is, which is why there are a lot of spoilers in the book. This is worth taking into account if you are going to play (and if, suddenly, you haven’t played). Horror films, as we know, are conceived for the sake of fear. A person is scared by the unknown, so when you know everything, you won’t be able to get really scared.

“The first three Silent Hill games were all described by the press as “the scariest game ever made.” The player's fear is an integral part of his experimental path, for the sake of which everything is started. This route is a lonely psychological journey that draws the player into many nightmarish scenarios,” writes Bernard.

However, a few pages later he mentions something else: “One can conclude that the Silent Hill series is intended for a certain archetype of the player – the tracker who seeks to overcome the zig-zag narrative, fighting monsters and other opponents. opponents. As Espen Aarseth clearly pointed out, you need to decide what type of player the player is. Adding to the list of cheaters, Aarseth refers to the four types of players described by Richard Bartle and their playing styles: careerists who only care about accumulating points and/or leveling up; researchers who enjoy uncovering the inner secrets of games; social workers interested in establishing connections with other people and social communication; and killers, whose goal is dominance and related interactions in the gameplay. This typology was created to study real-time multiplayer virtual worlds and should therefore be adjusted to fit the criteria of single-player games (gamers and their characters interact little in survival horror games).” In general, the book contains a basis for game scriptwriters, space for self-knowledge, and everything about survival in a foggy, ashen town.

Bernard Perron reveals the user experience in detail through comparisons with cinema, video and audio components.

“Using the categories that Giles distinguishes, we can say that the obvious threat expressed by the presence of the monster on the screen is layered with shadows, chiaroscuro and fog – an element especially important for Silent Hill. Giles also writes about the “ghost light” mask in Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982) and the camera glare. Emotions from the artifact are awakened by the image, “evoking a special stimmung, combining a sense of threat and curiosity.”

In the afterword, Giles notes that the sound “intensifies the sense of danger of the visual image” and “echoes the space outside the frame without betraying an off-frame presence.” This way of expressing stimmung is clearly one of the most notable stylistic features of Silent Hill,” he elaborates. The author devoted a separate block to the arrangements, sounds and other screams, and even analyzed the gameplay features in screenshots. In general, he approached the issues of fears and games in a comprehensive, thorough manner and did not skimp on anything.

By the way, if you are interested in learning more about the creation of video games (even if you have not played and do not intend to play SH), also watch the movie Making Of Silent Hill 2. Bernard Perron refers to it in his book. This will help you learn more about the underbelly of creating a town.

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